There is something I thought existed, and I referenced in a post earlier this year. Yesterday I mentioned it to my husband — for reasons — and he was like “wait, those don’t exist? I swear I’ve seen them in a movie.”
Well, as far as I can tell these devices don’t exist at all.
In my head, the lore was that there were these gigantic bells, on the shore or near the ocean (not sure why there, but that’s where I saw them) that were so exquisitely balanced they tolled at the slightest ground movement, movements too small to be detected by the human senses. (But not as small as to be provoked by waves, I guess?)
So that when the tiny foreshocks came people were aware an Earthquake might follow, and were on the alert.
I don’t even know if any of that makes sense, but I swear I thought they existed. And apparently so did my husband, because when we were discussing the feeling a lot of people right now have at the back of their minds that there’s something approaching, even when the signs are not yet there, or not yet clear, and I said “It’s of course worse for some people who are like Earthquake bells, even though those don’t exist,” he said “Wait, they don’t exist?” And it turns out, in the back of his mind he had the same image, of the bells by the sea, tolling at the slightest tremor.
So there you have it: A lot of us are vibrating and starting to toll like the Earthquake bells that don’t exist.
Oh, there’s plenty of reason for it — outright and open, and the only reason the “normies” (I hate the term) aren’t feeling it is because they trust the tv and “learned news”over their lying eyes.
There’s the fact that all of us have friends — or us ourselves — desperately looking for work that doesn’t seem to exist, or at least not anywhere we can find (a combination of a labor market corrupted by easy imports of quasi-indentured, educated servants, and the fact that more and more people only hire those they know). Then there’s the economy behaving in very weird ways, including supply shortages, and the fact the oil price is falling, which can only be explained by the economy being completely upgefuckt. And the fact that feeding ourselves, let alone the little pleasures left after 2020, like going out to eat once a month or so, have become prohibitive. (Now eating out is birthdays or major celebration, pretty much, for most people. Which in turn will propagate into a lot of restaurant failures, beyond the ones that failed in 2020.)
And there’s the certainty those who are paying attention have, that there is no law in the land, or at least no equally applied law. And yes, you can say there never was, because the phrase “usual suspects” exists for a reason, and once you’re one of those you’re in trouble. That’s possible. Probable even. There is no perfect justice, on the side of humanity. So there is always the chance we are influenced by all sorts of things: how someone looks, how they talk, their antecedents, who they associate with.
But there was a reasonable expectation, once upon a time, that if you kept your nose reasonably clean, and you didn’t bother others in a physical and persistent way, you’d be relatively safe from the long and intrusive arm of the law. There were failures, of course, but not frequent. Now? Ah. If they can go after the rich and well known and make up stuff about what happened at a very filmed event, are you safe? Why should you be? the only safety seems to be in keeping the czar far away from us. And that’s not possible, since the Biden-zar wants his sniffy, twisted nose into everything you do. Particularly that. And that too.
And then there’s the election next year. You’d think with vote by mail enshrined in 36 states, they wouldn’t be scared, right? You’d think with the machines ready to alter votes at will, they would be confident, right?
But then, with the army at their side and a quiescent legislature, they would have been confident enough not to have the inauguration behind barbed wire, and without military escort. But you’d be wrong.
The only thing I can figure is they know perfectly well what they did. And they know, beyond the polls that I’m sure still are glossing how bad it is, how profoundly they are hated by every Jack, Jill and Bob across this great land of ours.
They also think we’re like them. They know what they want to do to us, with less excuse, so they imagine what we’d like to do to them. In technicolor. And they can’t imagine why we haven’t moved yet — it’s complicated. The best answer is these things take time. And yeet not before thou art yote upon — so they are white knuckled, and seeing conspiracies at every turn. And the longer it takes, the crazier they go.
Or if you prefer it simpler and Biblical “The Wicked Flee Where No Man Pursueth.”
Or if you prefer yet again, they’re going nuts, with extra nuts, and a lot more of fucking crazy sprinkles.
And next year is election year.
And you know what they did in 2020.
I don’t know how they can top a scamdemic and putting the entire country under house arrest. The only thing you know and I know and we all know is that they’re going to try.
That alone, without any other reasons is enough for the sense of creeping unease at the back of our brains. For those of us who are “Earthquake bells” to be vibrating.
But you know, some of us, perhaps through a surfeit of Celtic blood, can also sense something else just over the rise, something huge and formless headed to us.
It might also not be woo woo at all but our subconscious adding up everything that’s wrong and starting to see how big and horrendous the something wicked headed for us is.
I’ve written about this “something wicked this ways comes” feeling before and recently.
The thing is, this one is really bad, the feeling really urgent, so each day that goes by without something it gets worse, because, well, why is there something that feels so close, but hasn’t happened yet. Oh, it must be big. No, bigger than that… And then you wake up in the night, clutching at the sheets, and expecting the whole world to dissolve around you.
And the normal thing — I’ve been doing it too — is to start examining your life for what personal thing you could have missed that will end in close-up and soon catastrophe. I mean, that’s normal, right? Everyone does it, more or less.
Like at the end of September, when what I was getting was a sense of doom and a sense of infinite mourning, I called all my aged relatives. I tried to get younger son to go to a cardiologist. I got that weird mole checked out. You know, the normal. And every time it was nothing, it felt worse, because I was sure I was missing it.
Again, no idea how my brain was giving warning for 10/7. It shouldn’t be. It was not near us. But it was, I think, a step in a series of escalations to come. And it was obviously that because when it happened, there was mourning but natural mourning. The sudden, intrusive, no explanation mourning that came out of nowhere in the middle of the night, stopped.
Or rather, came back again in two weeks, but as a minor thing, in the background of this insistent tolling to prepare and hold, because the Earth and the sky were going to change places briefly, and nothing would ever be the same again.
People who are susceptible to this all seem to be feeling it. People who aren’t susceptible to this are also feeling it. (Husband. No really.)
For some of you it might be the first time. And for the rest of us, you feel this but nothing is happening close-up as it should be to justify the feeling. And it gets worse.
In either case, if you’re checking all your instances of jeopardy, stop staring at your boss like you expect him to turn into a werewolf and make you throw him from a seventh floor window. Stop looking at your co-workers like one of them might be a disguised Oni considering you for the stew pot. Stop going through your spouse’s underwear drawers or disk drive for indications he/she means to leave you. Stop wondering if your cat is intending to escape for the haven of the neighbor’s warm back porch.
Yeah, one or the other of these might be true. I mean, some of you might have some catastrophe close up and personal headed for you. But it’s unlikely, or not more likely than usual. It likely has nothing to do with that cold feeling in the back of your neck, and the voice at the back of your brain that says “protect yourself and those you love. Do it now.” Or if you prefer “Duck and cover.”
Too many of us are feeling it for what you’re feeling to be personal.
It’s just a sign of the times. And the hells bells ain’t going to get any quieter till it come to hell and high water. (And me with no galloshes.)
No, you can’t turn them off. I’ve tried. Heaven knows I’ve tried. But you can mute them somewhat by setting them on ignore.
Some of us have lived with extreme pain and ignored it. It’s possible to ignore unlocalized anxiety and feelings of doom.
First, make sure it is nothing in your immediate environment. Set that on periodic checks. Like, say, once a week should be enough. Doing it obsessively won’t be any more helpful. The reasons for this anyway is that the really big alarm might make you miss a little fire alarm in your own kitchen.
Second, make things as secure and fast as they can be. Make sure you have a place of refuge, and a secondary place to run to, if needed.
Third, well, you know, have your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
And as hard as it is to concentrate on anything else, remember that you can’t do anything right now. Even vibrating and tolling away, like an Earthquake bell — that doesn’t exist — won’t do anything but making you and those around you crazier. (Which means I need to cut down on this sort of post, only I think this one is needed.)
There is nothing you can do — yet.
There might never be anything you can do. Even though I knew what was going on in 2020, it turned out that yelling it at the top of my lungs did not much of anything, because there are big people-movements where the herd stops hearing anything but its own bellowing.
Or there might be something you can do. If you keep your head and steer just a little, in the right direction, at the right time.
But right now, right now? Right now, you need to do what you need to do.
Look, sure, Noah built an ark. But I’m sure he also worked to get money for timber and nails and provisions.
While other people marry and are given in marriage, and things proceed as normal, keep your ark building in the backyard, and fulfill your every day functions and duties. However you can do it.
I recommend Jordan Peterson’s hacks for how to get things done. Work for periods you can, in well-delineated tasks, and reward yourself. Or use the pomodoro method. And reward yourself. And pet your cats (and dogs) always. (And make sure you have food for them, if worse comes to worst for a bit. Oh, and litter too. If they’re used to a type of litter they might not take sand from the yard.)
And try to stop vibrating and tolling quite so alarmingly. It just spooks everyone else.
I presume the time will come to sound the alarm. Well, in a way we already are, but low and slow, and only the attuned can hear it.
For now do what you have to do and keep your head down.
Yeah, perhaps what’s coming is that huge and that disruptive. It doesn’t follow the results will be bad. Just that for a while things will be very strange and unpleasant.
Stay as steady as you can. Earthquake bells don’t exist. And you have to keep functioning.
Until it all shakes apart.
And then you have to function through it. And out the other side.
Be not afraid. In the end we win they lose.
How precisely the shaking comes and when is not ours to decide.
Ours is just to secure ourselves and ours. Go to it.
According To Hoyt 
One of the greatest lines in The Avengers (in a movie with a lot of great lines) was Nick Fury’s in the start of the movie- “Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”
The world’s going to keep spinning. Keep your part of things clean and balanced. Prepare, but don’t obsess. Smile and let people go crazy around you, as long as you stay calm.
And be ready to move when the time comes.
It’s going to happen. Of that there’s no doubt. The only thing we are unsure of is when it pops, and how bad it gets.
I’m praying for soon, and light.
Either way, we can weather this. We are resilient.
Unrelated, is the twitter not working for anyone else?
That link is broken, but I can get to my account screen. From there, I am seeing Sarah’s tweets, and I can click on them.
And the preview is working here, and I can click on it here and it opens. Just the link in the e-mail notice is down.
When I click on the tweet link– in either place– it hangs and then tells me “This page is down
I scream. You scream. We all scream… for us to fix this page. We’ll stop making jokes and get things up and running soon.”
Are you on Twitter.com or X? Any google blockers, or ad blockers?
I’m on twitter dot com. I have ad blockers, and Avast Premium Security.
And is now working.
Weeeeeiiiiird.
Gremlins.
There may not be earthquake bells, but there is (or was, supposedly) Zhang Heng’s earthquake detection device (132 AD), a bronze jar that spat balls out of dragon mouths into frog mouths to indicate the direction of the disturbance. It was parodied in Pratchett’s “Interesting Times,” if I remember correctly.
I seem to remember something similar being used for siege mining detection in Europe.
Could be that one. I remember Pratchett using it, but I have vowed upon the bones of my ancestors that I will never read that book again. The first time i read it was was the second week of September, 2001. The second was the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, 2020. Oh hell no, never again.
Beat me to it. It seems to have the same flaw as the earthquake bells, to wit: “How do you prevent it from triggering when you walk across the room?” My guess is, you don’t, which is why they made exactly one earthquake detection device.
There is an analogy to be made with the current situation, but I’m not sure what it is.
Republica restituendae.
When I was 5, we had a pair of doors that would shake on earth quakes, yes they would also shake on jumping around the floor and big trucks going past, while we had the doors shake a few times it was never a precursor just NZ being NZ.
The only earthquake I haven’t slept through felt like the floor slapping my feet. My beloved and my best friend thought a heavy truck had gone by. My beloved joked to the shopkeeper that he guessed that was an earthquake. A mi ute or so later the shopkeeper got a call, listened, hu g up and said, “That was my husband in Philly. It was an earthquake.”
The only damage was the phone lines temporarily going down because peop,e were calling one another about the earthquake.
I’ve been in two, slept through one, at 3, and went flying mid-stairs in the other. I was running downstairs in sock’s feet. I got off lightly, landing on my well padded posterior in the front hall. it was just a pain to sit for finals that week.
I was in one on the 6th floor of a 12 story building, and the first thing someone noted, since we had windows facing DC about 20 miles away, was that since the movement wasn’t preceded by a bright flash, we knew it was just an earthquake. We had to evacuate the building down the stairs “just in case”. People on the 12th floor had things flying off the shelves and could literally see the sway.
I lived in California for (counts) 29 years, and have had my share of shakers. Once I was sleeping on a borrowed mattress (the oh-so-70s waterbed failed for the last time) on the floor, and it felt like I was the gearshift knob on a 5 speed car.
The 1989 Loma Prieta quake (7.0 on the OMG scale) was the most impressive, but lots of quakes in the 5.0-5.5 range. I had a couple of cats, and after they hooked themselves to the carpet for the duration, they’d make their way to the roof of the house for a few days. After the LP, they stayed up there for a week, only coming in for food and water. (I think they were upset when one of the stereo speakers fell over and the roast in the slow cooker crashed to the floor in the kitchen. Beef with stoneware shards was not an attractive item.
The doughboy pool I put in over the summer emptied itself, trashing the pool wall in the process. Still, I got off light.
For me, it felt like the house had been buffeted by four or five blasts of wind.
Creepy, since the air was dead still.
That the footsteps of liberty across the room might save us from a conflagration. The chances are slim,but it could happen.
And yet, there’s something bad coming.
I’m not saying you’re wrong that something bad is coming. I will say that numerous bad things have already arrived and set up housekeeping.
We’ve suffered their slings and arrows, and gotten used to them. Perhaps we shouldn’t have.
Fascinating if true.
https://chcp.org/ancient-seismometer/
Fascinating if true.
https://chcp.org/ancient-seismometer/
Right now I have the luxury, as a lot of us do, of fighting not interlopers or starvation but rather my own anguished gravitation toward…well, anguish. Rage and bitter hindsight, finely marbled with a keen Weltschmerz. Pairs nicely with Velveeta.
But as you say, and I sadly agree more than I’d like, there will inevitably be worse things to fight. Some of those things I’ve brought upon myself.
I happen to be reading this post while in the radiology waiting room for my annual MRI.
As far as I know, I don’t have any Celtic blood, but my ancestors came from all over Eastern Europe, and we have our own version of Second Sight.
A storm is certainly coming, but we won’t know how bad until it’s past.
The best time to prepare for what’s coming was years ago. The second best time is now.
I’m thrumming the vibration is so intense.
Be brave! Be Guy Fawkes!
Why? He failed.
Can I be John Brown? At least they sang songs about him.
I’m not sure I’d want a song about me that starts “…. ‘s body lies a-mouldering in the grave”
LOL
TBF it’s marginally better than “penny for the guy”
I prefer the much better known song that uses that same tune…
Um, no thanks.
As I take it, old Guido & his co-conspirators planned to overthrow the Protestant tyranny and replace it with a Catholic tyranny.
I’m thrumming the vibration is so intense.
Be brave! Be Guy Fawkes!
Don’t be Guy Fawkes, who was a bumbling idiot who got caught and paid for it.
Be The Grey Man, but able to do grey things without getting caught.
Be “unknown perpetrator”
(Grin)
If you mean from the movie V for Vendetta, Kathy, then you have a good point (even if the movie was SUCH heavy-handed propaganda that it tripped over its own feet.) I got tired of the obligatory “BusHitler” visual digs, among other things, even though I sympathized to an extent with V .
OK, folks. Cheer up. Channel your inner Patton – We are going to take advantage of any crisis, grab the Communists by the throat, and kick them in EVERY organ and orifice. Hard. While wearing steel-toed boots. With ice cleats.
That is a cheerful thought.
“…we are going to tear out their living guts, and use them to grease the treads of our tanks….”
Had his way with words.
Now eating out is birthdays or major celebration, pretty much, for most people
Gosh, it’s just like the 80’s all over again.
“Stop staring at your boss like you expect him to turn into a werewolf and make you throw him from a seventh floor window.”
I understood that reference!!
It was actually the 14th floor. With a big-ass desk on top.
Right. I’m digit dyslexic, so I forgot the number….
I always thought throwing the desk down too was just adding insult to injury. Which was AWESOME. ~:D
Insult and injury — the best of both worlds! 😀
Getting smashed again by the desk was likely what finished the critter off.
Deep Breath Larr.. er Owen. Deep Breaths. Don’t hulk out. Yet.
Had a couple dozen members of the “Jewish” (and Palestinian) protest group If Not Now block and shutdown the 110 Freeway in Los Angeles this morning, demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The event happened just past the interchange with the 10. And if you’re familiar with the Downtown LA freeway network, you know that’s one of the worst places to stop traffic.
A couple of delivery drivers on motorcycles forced their way through, but otherwise a complete stoppage until the CHP reopened the freeway
Idiots.
That was the word I was mentally using at first.
But then it occurred to me that “brats” might be a better fit. It implies a greater sense of entitlement.
From what the Reader remembers of driving in LA (lots of work trips to that neck of the woods), he thinks you may have understated the traffic consequences. Someone did some serious research.
Or just got stuck in L.A. Traffic Hell a few times, or noticed the results of a collision at that location. “Wow, look how f*ed up the traffic is!”
One of these days some truck driver is going to get Fed Up With This Shit and hand out a passel of Darwin Awards.
Oops; brakes failed. Sorry ’bout that… 😈
Or. If you are old enough. “I hit the break!” Might even be able to add “my foot slipped off!”
It will happen. But it won’t be someone sane, right of middle. It will be a lunatic left of marx (does not deserve capitalization, dang it) who plows through a pro-Jewish/pro-Israel rally that isn’t blocking anything.
Wouldn’t have worked this time. The idiots did one semi-smart thing: they didn’t go stand in the freeway to block traffic. Instead, they organized a rolling block, lined up truck-to-truck in all the lanes. They then slowed down gradually, and stopped inside a tunnel where getting to them would be hard.
Putting on my amoral critiquer hat for a moment, I give them props for good tactics, but take away points for lousy strategy. Did they think this was going to get people to look favorably on their cause? Hence why, even though I said they did one semi-smart thing, I still called them idiots.
Huh?
No tunnel. This was out in the open. It took place here –
Sorry, no protestors visible. You can probably find a picture of the line if you search, though.
The pic on the left is after the protestors had all been removed, but before the CHP reopened the freeway. The two cars visible on the left-hand shoulder were both up in front in the middle lanes. But after the protestors were hauled away, both cars popped their hoods, and the drivers had a talk with the CHP officers. Both cars were slowly driven to the side of the freeway, and then hauled away on flatbeds. I’m not sure what was going on with them.
Based on what I’ve heard, I’m guessing that the brats took advantage of the usual LA gridlock on that freeway They hopped out of their vehicles, and formed their human chain across the freeway. The vehicles that delivered them apparently then drove away as they were safely on the unaffected side of the line.
Whoops, wrong protest. I was thinking of the one in Minneapolis: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/winning-friends-and-influencing-people.php
I hadn’t heard about the one in LA yet, so I assumed the one you were talking about was the one I had read about recently.
Junior pointed out to me that my reply about the tunnel was incorrect. I was thinking about the protest in Minneapolis that https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/winning-friends-and-influencing-people.php was about, but you were talking about the protest in LA. Sorry about the mixup.
That sounds like the one on the SF Bay Bridge – protestors stopped vehicles in all westbound lanes, then threw their keys into the bay.
I would have suggested sending them to get the keys back.
I would have pushed the cars over the edge of the bridge. Short of a big truck, it’s doable with enough people, and is fairly fast.
That was on the new section, which has cables and a wall in the way at the edge.
This was during the APEC SF-commie-clean-up event, protesting in favor of team-baby-beheading, and per the photos it was basically a couple hundred shrieking women and one long haired dude in leather:
https://www.kron4.com/news/apec-sf-2023/bay-bridge-protest-dramatic-photos-capture-hours-long-shutdown/
Embrace the power of “and”; send them after their keys and send their cars after them.
And yeah, I know the cables and wall would probably make the second part a real bugger, but I can dream, can’t I?
Need a crowd, but playing “stack the cars” can be done. Think of it as “tetris” if they are turned sideways.
Just imagine. Dont atually do it. Oh no. dont.
I had a physics teacher who used to get groups of students—this was a girls’ school, mind you—and take them out for a physics demonstration using the chemistry teacher’s VW Bug. Get enough noodle-armed teenaged girls together and yeah, they can move a car. So imagine what a smaller group of strapping youth could do.
You know how much I don’t follow the news? This is the first I’ve heard of it, that’s relatively local, and I went to my sister in Novato’s for Thanksgiving.
Where we talked about much more congenial subjects, like my niece’s interview for a prestigious veterinary graduate school, or another niece’s year in Dublin, or the fact that one nephew has yet to have Indian food because his college apparently can’t count when it comes to signups for special events.
I did note that it was one of the worst places to stop traffic, which is true. I didn’t put it into subjective terms because, really, a person can’t understand just how important those Downtown LA interchanges are unless they’ve been there.
I’m hoping that there’s enough political will to throw the book at these brats. But my suspicion is that they’ll either get a slap on the wrist, or quietly be let off with no punishment at all.
Correction – more than a couple dozen people were involved. I’ve heard arrest numbers of 45 and 75. I’m not sure which one is right.
A pity that people stopped for them.
I think the reason this is so troubling is that the elite fucks and “powers that be” who gather at Davos and climate conferences around the world have set, as one of the major goals to bring utopia, ending 7.5 billion of us. This isn’t Hitler level evil or even 10x Hitler evil or 100x Hitler level evil, it is 1000 TIMES Hitler level evil. It is evil and utter insane hubris as has only happened once before in the history of the universe, when Lucifer fell.
They are THAT evil, biblical level evil, end times evil. And they think they are angels, they think they are irrevocably good. They are quite literally the modern mindset of Satan.
That is why our worry is justified. They are a part, as like the greatest evil ever.
That is why prayer and faith is more important now than it’s ever been.
It’s pretty much the definition of evil, that it must either own or destroy everything good.
Which explains why they hate the US so much, since we have refused to be owned and resist being destroyed. Violently, if necessary.
If I remember from what my dad told me (ancient memories they be,) Earthquake Bells come from church bells making noise when they are not being rung by people. Bells being in bell towers makes them more susceptible to vibrations, supposedly.
Other than that, yeah, it’s getting weird.
Recession in all but name for the last three years, Depression peeking its head around the corner. The country being national socialist in all but name (thanks to idiot city people, who seem to be insane and mentally incapacitated.) Oppressive government actively attacking anyone who voices a suspicious thought.
Who needs concentration camps when the Government and the Powers Behind the Government can seize your assets, basically get you fired, cut your benefits, take your guns away, take your healthcare away, restrict your travel…
I think it’s the combination of leverage and inertia creating a standing wave in the tower.
If the bell happens to be tuned to the same frequency as that standing wave, the bell ought to start humming in rapidly increasing volume.
I mean, the base moving an inch translates to the top of the building swaying several inches, but by that time the earth is already quaking in a very obvious way.
Been weird for years, as far as my own experience goes. I had the feeling in the mid-oughties that I ought to start writing historicals, as a way of getting people (Americans) to take an interest in our history, to lead them into a realization of how incredible and outside-the-norm of human experience it was, to have a country run by ordinary people electing their leaders, instead of the usual nobility/royalty/brutal-strongman bossing around a bunch of peasants. I’m not as tuned in to the otherworldly as my daughter is — but I could feel that something bad was coming, something that would necessitate us having to hold on to what we were, and could be again.
What I write is being weirdly “pushed.”
In what direction?
For me, I can say I have gained motivation to do all the stuff I’ve been putting off, like repairing the roof, getting a new mattress, buying a wood burning stove, filling the freezer, and building the 2nd coop. Almost like those things won’t be possible shortly…
Oh, the one book I’m resisting like mad. It makes no sense.
Until the last bit clicks into place.
Then it’s on.
Normies: (noun, plural, derogatory)
Those oblivious, round-peg sons of b1tches who fit in with all the other oblivious round pegs in their nice round holes, can’t see lightning or hear thunder without permission and a 6 month course of instruction, who none the less presume to tell ME how it is, and how I’m doing it wrong, and why can’t I just sit in my round hole and shut up like I’m supposed to.
The kind of people who saw the footage of October 7th 2023, and were OUTRAGED, and the very idea, and how dare they, and this means war! Who, on December 12th, 2023 are out marching for Palestine, and those Jews were asking for it you know, and the poor children, and can’t we all just get along?
The kind of people who give you a blank look when you mention September 11th 2001, and can’t find Europe on a map. Much less Afghanistan. Or Ukraine.
The kind of people who stand frozen when something unexpected happens, and won’t move until someone comes along and tells them what to do.
Yes, I hate them too. 😡
I’m not sure if what you are describing is “normie” vs “NPC”. The inference I get for normie is the low-information voter, who may or may not notice that FBJ has caused a lot of the problems in the USA (or Shiny Pony up north), but hasn’t figured out that TPTB are planning on making a bad situation a lot worse.
OTOH, I seem to be surrounded by redpilled people. It’s part of being a red county in a state dominated by the North-left chunk of deep blue/Pantifa types. Attitudes: Pissed-off, but not ready to hit the bang switch. Yet.
Aye. True words, that.
An NPC is a kneejerk Lefty who mindlessly regurgitates whatever was on the top page of Daily Beast this morning.
A Normie is the type of moron who lives in a universe where politics do not exist, and neither does anything outside their narrow experience or interests.
Like people who religiously follow hockey, and they know the Montréal Canadiens, but don’t know Montreal is in Canada. Or where Canada even is, even though they live in Illinois. Or New York, God help me, where people used to ask me if I spoke French. Like, commonly. Weekly.
People who could take a hundred red pills and NEVER EVEN NOTICE. -That- is a Normie.
“I don’t know how they can top a scamdemic and putting the entire country under house arrest.”
They could start freezing the bank accounts of people who contribute to the wrong registered charity.
They could start arresting people for “mischief” and then stretching their court appearances out over three years.
They could start shooting at protesters like they do in Holland. (Quite the last place you’d think cops would do that, but there they are, doing it…)
Never dare the Gods to top something. “Hey Zeus, hold my beer…”
Some ‘protesters’ need to be shot at. Unfortunately, those won’t be the ones that get it.
I would argue that there are some who desperately need to be deterred -by their victims-. Like the ones mobbing Jewish businesses in Toronto, be a real shame if the Jewish guys f-ed them up.
Cops shooting at protesters, no. That’s a very bad thing and leads to stuff like the French Revolution or the war in Syria. We do not like that. Double-plus ungood.
My HTML-full completely eroded. Otherwise I would post the meme photo of that lawyer from way south of the U.S. border who decided those idiots blocking the road needed a lead infusion, regardless of any consequences to him, personally.
I know about that guy. Not really what I had in mind, shooting people in cold blood, not my thing. If they were trying to kill him, that would be different.
But I did love the German chick who started hauling JustStopOil b1tchez off the street by their hair. That was a thing of beauty.
It’s already happened in several places; you don’t get the pattern unless you look past the keffiyeh disguise SturmAntifa is wearing these days.
For example, there was this little incident from 2020:
https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2023/04/09/greg-abbott-vows-to-pardon-army-sergeant-convicted-of-killing-armed-blm-protester-n1685740
“Outside the car, Perry could see Garrett Foster carrying a loaded AK-47. Fearing for his life, Perry shot at Foster five times with his .357 revolver — legally owned and with the proper permit to carry it — and killed him.
What’s rarely mentioned in connection with this incident was that after Perry fired at Foster, other protesters opened fire on Perry’s car. Four shots rang out with three bullets hitting Perry’s car. No one was ever apprehended for shooting at Perry. “Mostly peaceful,” don’t you know?
Perry drove a safe distance away and called the police. After questioning him, the police released him. But Austin’s Soros-backed prosecutor, José Garza, decided to charge Perry with murder and aggravated assault.”
Then there was this from the infamous Charlottesville episode:
https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2019/07/unc-chapel-hill-a-sanctuary-campus-for-terroristic-radicals-on-the-taxpayers-dime/
An AR-15 is not a concealed carry gun. How did he get it into the area without the connivance of one or more of the law enforcement agencies who were supposedly there to stop anyone from bringing in weapons.
Easy enough to hide an AR15 in a 24″ gym bag. I have done so for discreet transport. (20″ AR, belt, mag pouch, 4x30r mags.) It breaks down easily into two major pieces, one of which fits the diagonal of a 24″ bag.
Harder to disguise the weight of it, but if the bag is a rucksack…
Add to those the multiple instances of Trump supporters assaulted outside his 2016 campaign rallies, and a couple of things become obvious:
We’ve actually been in “cold” civil war for a while. The only way not to see it is not to look.
The common denominator for these is that they happen in places where Democrats have control of the local law enforcement. What we’re seeing now along the TX border in particular is openly using Federal law enforcement to establish tactical control of law enforcement in places where local LE isn’t cooperating. They either are allowed to succeed, or they have “Fort Sumter”; both of these are acceptable.
Oh, we’ve been in a cold civil war since Reagan’s election when they realized we still existed and were still the majority. It’s just going hot sporadically, in spots.
There is the Portuguese Road Unblocking too. I wish I’d saved it.
Worth it for “Go the whore that birthed you” by a construction worker while dumping eco-winnie by the side of the road.
The Sun has a video of a Portuguese protest being “resolved” from two different angles. I have no idea what they’re saying (no translation provided), but maybe one of these is the one you wanted?
Not officially, at any rate.
However, piss off the right people, and you might see some unofficial stuff, purely in the interests of making sure that people aren’t getting too upset with their commute. And also by vigilantes who are frustrated by government inaction.
I had a thought earlier today about a C-list supervillain being caught in the 110 traffic stoppage in Los Angeles. So, being annoyed, a “super”, and not feeling particularly bound by the usual rules of society, he puts on his costume, steps out of his car, and starts throwing the protestors out of the way without regard for their safety. Traffic is restored, and he slips away before the cops can arrive.
Depending on the level of force used, I might or might not have some difficulty supporting his actions. But I certainly wouldn’t be condemning him.
Gotta throw them far enough, or hard enough, so they don’t move themselves back out into traffic. The recent videos of self-clearance ops by frustrated commuters has the damn things crawling back out again after being dragged out of the way. The one with the woman dragging a particularly persistent one back off the road by her hair, I think in the UK, is but one example of that.
Ah, German I see from above. Sehr schön gemacht.
I rather like the German treatment of the dolt whut glued itself to the asphalt: Cut out the asphalt, leave it glued to dolt. Remove dolt to someone other place… return dolt to the wild. That thing on dolt’s hand? DOLT’s problem. Self-inflicted wound.
Not on the freeway. Once traffic gets moving again, you are not getting back in the way without getting killed. They were only able to perform the initial traffic stop by hopping out of cars that stopped, and kept traffic from moving forward until the chain had been formed.
LA freeways. Moving is a term for other than commute hours.
“Fast” is always relative. Outside of the rush hours traffic still moves, just not at 65 mph. Even running into 10 mph traffic will get you killed. In the videos of the stoppage, traffic is visible on the 10 (the human chain was just past the interchange) and traffic was moving right along on it.
So it would have been dangerous to run back.
Now if they’d picked one of the surface streets, that would have been a different matter. But it wouldn’t have pissed off as many commuters.
To add…
For comparison purposes, sigalert.com shows that stretch as green right now, which means that traffic is moving at a decent clip right now… though only for a few exits.
Just ask that Turkish MP…
^^;;
Earthquake bells … I’m being driven to write the next plus one Familiar Generations book, even though I need to finish the next Elect story and write another Merchant book. In 2020, I felt compelled to write Familiars books, as if “the Hound of Heaven” was pursuing me.
Make of it what you will.
Never heard of earthquake bells. Now I’ve heard of, and seen, earthquake bolts…in of all places, Charleston, South Carolina. After a major earthquake in the 1880 (yes, in Charleston) they avoided tearing down a lot of the historic old mansions in the Battery by running bolts the length of the buildings and using screwjacks to literally screw the buildings back together. You can still see the bolts and endplates, and Charleston being Charleston, most of them are highly decorated as well.
Some of the older buildings in San Jose had that modification. Didn’t work for many during the 1989 Loma Prieta rumble, but it kept some buildings up a bit longer than their use-by date.
A lot of the old brick buildings in downtown Los Gatos were retrofitted with large braced and tied steel I-beam structures internally, which you can see in shops along the main drag, such that the brick basically went from load bearing to decorative facing.
Those stood up to the Loma Prieta quake well, but the same town had a ton of old victorians walk right off their foundations as they were not strongly bolted down, and/or the foundations themselves disintegrated.
I walked through a neighborhood there as the streets were closed to traffic to check on a coworker right afterward, and the bucked sidewalks and intact-but-displaced old houses were everywhere.
The Murky News had a photo of the damage in downtown Los Gatos. The restaurant we’d go to before shooting on Sundays was just out of the picture on the right side. Sigh, they had really good food. The kitchen tools and machines were there, if you didn’t mind the possibility of the building coming down if you looted it. I think nobody tried…
I lived in Willow Glen at the time. Many of the old houses had decapitated chimneys. Mine had a full stainless liner; the masonry broke but the liner kept it together and it appeared to be OK. (I only used the fireplace insert a couple of times after the quake.)
The post-sale inspection caught it (in 2003, oops), and we had to put money out for the fix. (Along with termite tenting and the usual fun and games.)
c4c
Bells?
I hear a faint but growing tune of fifes and drums…. Yankee Doodle.
Uh oh….
(Grin)
I hear the still small voice of trumpets.
https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/old_issue.html
Well, my thumbs are definitely pricking.
i found a patent for earthquake alarm bells:
https://patents.google.com/patent/CN203149774U/en
The media is once again pushing the idea of a second Civil War. Which is . . . strange. To say the least. And the heroes are journalists, because that’s who the public identifies with, right?
Someone took the brown acid and went back for seconds.
That… wasn’t acid.
Larry Correia has one of his epic threads on X demolishing the trailer for this thing. It’s done by the guy who did 28 Days, so he’s clueless about America.
My favorite comment so far was the guy who said that journalists in a white SUV with “UN” on it would be riddled by small arms fire within 30 seconds.
Just the fact the producer has Texas and California teamed up says he’s….uninformed.
I hope Jack reposts it on MonterHunterNation.
I remember hitting my “never mind-resume suspension of disbelief” button when I was much, much younger watching earlier Doctor Who eps, when the local village public was all in a panic about this or that alien incursion, until the Land Rovers with “UN” painted on the sides rolled up and the blue-berets jumped out accompanied by the Doctor, whereupon they relaxed and followed orders to go hide all together where it would be convenient for the aliens to find them in one place to slaughter.
Obviously it’s the BBC, but the basic premise of “Oh thank goodness the UN is here!” was just, well, alien.
Heck, in any actual boog anyone with those “PRESS” velcro nametags on their body armor, or wearing the blue armor carriers that seem to be the vogue with some “journalists”, would likely get special targeting attention from everything with a scope within range, plus get indirect fire called in on them as well, from all factions on all sides.
They really don’t realize how minimal is the regard in which they are actually held after the past several years.
In any Civil War it behooves you to shoot the liberal press first and often, as they are like lice or fleas and seem to breed from nothing. Not hard to find really, they are the ones hiding behind politicians and surgically joined to the politicians posteriors via their lips. Disgusting creatures really, which is why no self respecting Extra Terrestrial Alien would ever be caught with one live or dead.
I don’t think it’s minimal. The magnitude is large, but the sign is negative.
Larry’s thread unrolled here:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1735006045779444052.html
Great, now I want to read Larry’s Civil War 2.0 screenplay.
Me too.
Oh yes, I saw Gary of Nerdrotic and Chris Gore talking about this trailer on the Nerdrotic Nooner today. As one of the commenters on the livestream put it, “You can tell it’s Woke, because they made the journalists the heroes.”
As for me, I prefer the 1997 made-for-HBO movie The Second Civil War. It’s an extremely dark comedy that pokes fun at all sides. Basically, states start rebelling because of excessive immigration forced upon them by the Federal government. You can find the DVD of it on Amazon, it is also available there for rent or purchase on Prime Video. I haven’t looked lately, but at one time I also found it uploaded to YouTube.
It starts as a farce, but ends up being… somewhat horrifying.
I just saw the trailer for that thing. Texas and California? BWAHAHAHAHAaaaaaa.. cough hack wheeze
Yeah that’s going to be a great one. Boffo box office bonanza, baby.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow did journalists right. No survival instincts or grasp of their own mortality, in desperate need of a saner individual to stay alive.
Annoying, to say that least.
Sky Captain, one of my favorite movies. Jude Law AND Gwyneth Paltrow, AND Angelina Jolie, with zero Woke(TM). Awesome. ~:D
I actually saw it twice. My gripe was that visually and somewhat plotwise it was a gorgeous homage to space opera, but they lost the emotional heart. In a true homage, the reporter would have realized she was a selfish jerk and done something to atone (as well as admit she loved the Captain).
I hate journalists more than I hate politicians.
You don’t hate either enough.
Be sure to save some hate for the bureaucrats! 😦
“Even though I knew what was going on in 2020, it turned out that yelling it at the top of my lungs did not much of anything…”
Didn’t stop the whole thing, but did more than “not much,” I’d say. For those of us that heard, it did everything. This place and the people who gather here are both a bellwether and a sanity check.
It’s started leaking out in my dreams. Sarah, despite the fact that we’ve never met and I usually lurk, last night I dreamed that the two of us were on a train that wrecked. We were scrambling around and gathering up kittens to get into a cage so we could get them off the train safely before it caught fire. Not too hard to analyse that one. My subconscious ain’t very ‘sub’ these days.
This is so on the nose. This sense of something very bad coming down the pike, and the longer we go without the expected rupture, the more the sense of sick dread builds, because if it’s still far away, it must be huge. Vast beyond imagining, the sort of disaster that grinds whole nations and cultures to dust.
At least now we have met with the cardiac surgeon, and tentatively the date for my husband’s procedure will be January 2. I’m hoping that date sticks — it was the soonest they could get him in, although it’s still not in MyChart yet (his pre-op on the 27th is).
But I keep getting this sense of something dreadful happening on Christmas. The enemies of freedom hate Jews, but they also hate Christianity.
In the meantime I keep writing. Recently, instead of the usual shapeless dreams of going to and fro between generic buildings, I had a vivid dream of walking down the third-floor corridor of the Foreign Language Building at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, through the Slavic Department offices, and seeing (albeit at a distance, not actually visiting) one of my favorite professors. I’m taking it as a signal that, as soon as I get some projects on deadlines done, I should buckle down on finishing and publishing The Steel Breeds True and The Balland of Katie Hart. I don’t know why they’d be important, but something’s bubbling under the surface.
I was reminded the other day, by a friend who spent much of her career in muslim countries, that the muslims still use the lunar calendar. Which means that their date symbolism can be very far off from ours. She said that with a few exceptions their dates move around the year rather than being seasonally linked as ours are.
Their year is 10 to 11 days shorter than ours. Which according to my calculation means that the anniversary of 9/11 next year will be right around the middle of January.
Also, using this pattern the attacks in October roughly coincide with the 6 day war in 1967. I may be missing the dates entirely, as I’m not used to calculating dates this way. But with the emphasis of that culture on numerical symbolism, it makes sense to me that they would target attacks based on their calendar, rather than ours.
The Jews use the lunar calendar, as well, for their religious holidays. Not that I’m expecting them to do anything violent as a result, mind you…
It’s also why Easter bounces around every year, since it’s tied to Passover. And since Passover is a Jewish holiday, it’s scheduled according to the lunar cycles.
As for the 10/7 attacks, the general belief is that the date was the fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War (which began on Oct 6, 1973). That doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be something more obscure. But the link to the Yom Kippur War seems straightforward.
I have seen multiple open source reports, including one tied to the amazing coincidence of investors shorting certain stocks the week before 10/7 and making a lot of money, that there was a Ham-Ass plan to do this last Passover which was called off because the IDF went on alert.
Reportedly one of the things that made the Shin Bet discount the signs they saw before 10/7 were those same signs they saw before last Passover that didn’t lead to anything happening.
Note there was a spike in shorting of those same stocks back in the weeks before Passover.
I would assume that if they can break away from the existential threat of parents talking at school board meetings, certain IC people could instead be working out who made bank on 10/7 and pursuing the asking of some questions.
And were I one of those “lucky” short sellers, I would be more concerned about a meeting with Mossad agents with some of those pointed questions than the folks from the SEC.
It might be best to volunteer any and all information in excruciating detail to your local FBI office now, before your name comes up towards the top of the Israeli foreign intelligence “people who we want to ask some questions” list.
No pppphhhhuttt about it….
Anyone messing with Christmas is going to get a very dramatic bit of pushback, I suspect. EVERYONE likes Christmas, except for the people who don’t celebrate it for religious reasons (such as the Jehovahs Witnesses), and the particularly atheists who refuse to allow the enjoyment of even the secular elements. It’s one thing to try and strip the religious elements out of the holiday. But trying to completely shut it down? The holiday that’s about giving gifts to everyone, and being nice to people? That creates the biggest spectacle in the country?
Yeah, that’s not going to go over very well. Nearly everyone would unite in a fury against someone who did that.
The pro-Palestinian protestors have been marching in malls, trying to disrupt Christmas shopping, so maybe.
“Wreck the pet shop, do some damage. falalalalalalalala”
“Send the beagles on a rampage. falalalalalalalala”
“Act up in an uncool manner. falalalalalalalala”
“Drop your pants and moon at santa. falalalalalalalala”
Wreck the Malls
Update — looks like I’m not the only person to be concerned about trouble for Christmas.
Just in Time for Christmas: Terrorism Is Comin’ to Town, in today’s American Thinker.
Analogous, perhaps, but wind chimes were used in monasteries in Japan with the same idea of warn of high winds; important when everything is built of wood and a wind-blown fire can be devastating.
I had my own “earthquake” yesterday when about 20% of my company was laid off or furloughed. I was lucky and got a choice as furlough of either a single severance check or having my health benefits paid for out of that check for four months (the benefits are the more important thing). In theory I could be recalled in 6 to 9 months, but I certainly am not counting on that. Fortunately (?) we already went through this once this year, so some of those systems remain in place, including a small part-time product job. God willing and the creek does not rise and unemployment kicks in and we will be okay at least through April.
It seems hard to me to believe that anyone could miss the signs we all are seeing, except through an act of willing disbelief. No matter what the official outlets say, the actual experience on the ground is very different. Things are contracting, not expanding.
In a way, some people are counting on things to go badly so they can justify their actions. Given our situation, it is just as likely things will not reach the point of going badly; they will just slowly dissolve.
“It seems hard to me to believe that anyone could miss the signs we all are seeing, except through an act of willing disbelief.”
The term you’re hunting is “willful ignorance.” Anything that does not agree with preconception is militantly ignored.
Things like ‘solar power does not work in the dark’, a fact so blindingly obvious you’d think no one could be that stupid. No photons equals no power, right? But you would be wrong, I’ve seen plenty enough argue with me about it. They really don’t understand that it doesn’t work at night, because they do not WANT to understand.
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Mind you, that’s what battery packs are for. But that’s not what you meant, of course.
Related, the wind turbine doesn’t work when the wind doesn’t blow.
It would be interesting to model residential battery packs only, without solar, and their effect on the resilience of the grid vs residential solar and large scale wind turbines, especially the resulting need for peak load high demand generation capacity.
My guess is the dependable and predictable peak load leveling impact of just-residential-batteries might be much more valuable to the grid as a whole than the variable and unpredictable contribution of solar and wind.
Plus residential batteries can be used to arbitrage time-of-day metering rate variability to get bill savings.
If correct the various residential solar subsidies are misapplied, and should be targeting batteries instead.
If wired correctly, batteries will provide compensation for voltage drops: Not enough to even notice, but having 1-2% below optimum current puts extra strain on electric motors, etc.
Combine it with a whole house surge protector, and it’s even better.
the dang things barely work when the wind is blowing.
That meme – Wind power is like a stripper. Only works when you throw it lots of money.
Powell at the Fed announced that not only are they not planning more interest rate increases in 2024, they plan to cut rates, probably more than once. The stock market went berserk, of course.
The cynic in me says this is a try at juicing the economy for the election. Faugh.
It is, but I think the result will be the reverse.
It’s not good to cut rates when things are this bad.
Honestly, so do I.
BTW, final count for our local food pantry was 106. We made boxes for 100. There was a bit of scrambling to keep up.
Interestingly enough mom’s address was randomly chosen for government survey through the census bureau. She got a letter. Topic: Ability to get food and sources: grocery, in-season-farm, food pantry, meals on wheels, etc. (did not ask about game meat). Also would have included employment, lack there of, and looking if latter. She’s 89 so the last topic was DOA.
Initial interview would have been in person (at which point I would have been there for safety reasons), but since mom wasn’t home, was on the phone.
We got randomly chosen for the census survey as well. Evil Rob did most of the work, so I don’t know what most of our questions were. In terms of food availability, we live in a spot where, in a pinch, I could bike to a farm stand. Mostly though, we shop at Grocery Outlet, which does us the favor of being 1/3 of a mile away and which keeps up on the basics like bread, milk, and eggs.
We, sisters and I, did our due diligence (mom did too, she called each of us), reading the original letter and research. (She is 89, so spamming/fishing is always possible.) We were sure it was legit, but there is always some doubt given none of us had heard of this.
Mom couldn’t remember what terms were used on some questions. One was the “food availability” and access. Be interesting to see how next interviews go. As long as on the phone, I won’t hear any of the questions. But if in person, then mom wants one of us there with her. Presume your household got the employment type questions. Mom didn’t say whether she got any questions on what she does with her time (she is involved with women Shriner associated groups that have specific charities supported, including the Shrine hospitals and Diabetes research. Slowly backing out of some. She needs to learn how to say “no”. Trust me. She really, really, does.)
The Fed has decided to risk the Weimar “solution” instead of Great Depression 2.0, hoping that things will hold together until after the election.
We’ll see.
They are so desperate to sell the economy as “doing well” that it’s ridiculous. And it drives them nuts that most of the public refuses to believe this.
Tell them to go stand at the egg section of their local grocery store and try.
Three and a half percent my ass.
No kidding.
Or:
Tillamook medium cheddar cheese: $13.99 up 375% since Biden took over. 64% over the year. (I pick it up on sale at $6.99, which is only double regular from 2019.)
Milk (Costco Milk): up 92%
Butter: up 92%
Heck. Hamburger (Costco, cheap at $4.99/#): up 52%
Only cost down, from last year, right now is fuel ($3.29 and dropping), and that is still up by 88% from late 2019.
Red Lobster All can Eat Shrimp Special: Up 88%
Depending on which dinner out (3 adults): up 75% to double. Easy to lookup. We tend to go to the same places and each order the same thing at each place. Our tips are the same (just as “generous”, over 10 – 15%, but not as much over as before).
2023 COLA increase (just SS, neither pension have a COLA) brought net monthly income to expenses baring “extras”. 2024 COLA won’t even come close.
Seriously, from where I sit the increase seems more like 50% for most groceries. Thank G-d we no longer have teens in the house.
We’re easily up more than 50% on groceries, and I’ve stopped buying high ticket meat, and other items. Seriously, our favorite cut of steak has gone from $12.99/# (high, I’ll think really hard about it this month) to $29.99/# (Oh Hell No). Sirloin OTOH is only up about 50%. There are some groceries I just can’t cut back on to lower cost options. Alternatives too high in fat and/or salt, or one of us can’t tolerate. Costco hamburger has gone up less than Fred Meyer (local Kroger) hamburger. Bulk frozen chicken, I just buy it at what I can get it, don’t remember prior costs. If I can get chicken at Fred Meyers, it is up 50% – 75%. What I do know is I buy at Costco, then swing by Freds and pickup whatever we need that I won’t buy bulk. Costco the joke is always $100+, rarely spend less. Now? Don’t think ever spend less. What is sad, is now Freds is the same with the $100+, every trip. OTOH spend it on Friday and, right now anyway, the 4x fuel points, really help ($1.00 off/gallon couple times a month add up fast). That and the 4% from the groceries on the appropriate credit card against monthly phone bill. Not our first rodeo, or even second, we are old pros at this. We will leverage everything we can. Better prepared than before when we were just starting out and learning the ropes and had no safety margin.
Yeah. We also stopped on the high end meats.
Eggs spiked badly a while ago, (close to $5 for an 18 count) but are closer to “not too bad” ($2.50 this week). This is Willamette, though I thought they lost a facility for reasons in ’21. For a while, it was really hard to get eggs; I used the #10 can of powdered eggs during that crunch. OTOH, the cage-free mandate is coming. Not looking forward to that. If it’s too bad, I’ll talk to the neighbor who’s got a flock.
The cheese from Sherm’s (mini chain; three stores) went up a buck for a 2 pound package, so maybe 20%.
Canned goods, 50% from pre-Covidiocy days. Processed turkey breast. Yikes. Store-roasted chicken (normal sozed birds, not the mutants from Costco) went from $8 to $11. I’ll hit Costco in March and will get 4 birds if I can.
Looks like the COLA for Social (in)Security went up 3% for next year. Whee.
We have next year’s seeds on hand already. We try to get reasonable quantities of tomato seeds (a few year’s supply at a time), though they were pretty spendy.
Costco had eggs at a 2 limit (4 dozen or 10 dozen depending on which buying, max) during the shortage. Freds had the limit at one (18 or 12 count). Still can see there aren’t as many, and, at least Freds has gotten down to only a few between deliveries, but still can get them. We occasionally get free eggs from a hobby farmer hubby golfs with (he brings in eggs to club, first come, we save the containers for him). Son eat 4 eggs (with toast) most mornings, so we go through a lot of eggs.
I think it was the bird flu that shutdown a lot of egg producers. Something that if it gets into the flock at all, the whole flock is lost. Not sure if it applies if a facility has different flocks located in different barns, or if the whole facility is wiped out. The hobby farmer didn’t lose any birds, but his flocks were stressed at the same time, thus not producing little extra for give away.
Something that if it gets into the flock at all, the whole flock is lost.
Result of “cage free.” They’re not isolated.
As I understand it, it’s “just” for that barn, but there’s enough cross-contamination that it frequently gets the whole thing.
Iowa still has outbreaks going on.
For those interested:
https://iowaagriculture.gov/news/HPAI-case-confirmed-mills-county
I can’t find anything on how they’re defining “flock,” I know most locations have a ton of different farms and am not sure about how many barns are normal.
The small chain (3 stores, more like an independent) was selling 1 package for one price, and subsequent packages for the full price (IIRC, about $3.50 for the first 18, then $4.50 to $5.00 for the rest.) It balanced the load somewhat.
–
Well, if you compound 3 1/2% inflation per quarter for 3 years it comes out to just over 50%.
So, yeah, you could say inflation is 3 1/2% without technically lying…
It’s much more likely a response to the implosion in China and especially Japan.
Don’t listen to what the Fed says anyway. All they do is react to data, and the data are bad. they don’t actually set interest rates either, that’s another of those we’re in control and we know what we’re doing expert myths.
The sad fact is that the economy never came back from the Wuflu nonsense. The labor force is still below where it was in 2019 and all the current employment numbers need to be seen in that light. Everything else is in contraction. the market is at stupid levels, but “the market” only consists of 7 companies now, everything else is either flat or in contraction. the money supply continues to contract and the banking system subsists on handouts from the Fed — ultimately from us.
yes, I’m talking my book, but don’t be surprised to see zero interest rates again before this cycle is over. Sure, they’re trying to push it past the election. they’re not succeeding.
Not even a little surprised.
Precisely.
Again, I’m looking at this and thinking of BGE’s evocative phrase “pushing on a string.”
Keynes, my dear lady, Keynes.
Oh geeze… Not again.
One of the tinez that I got really annoyed with Trump was when he went after the Fed for talking about raising interest rates. Yes, I know it was likely being discussed as a way to make the economy on his watch look less good (it would have affected the stock market prices, which everyone was overly fixated on). But the rate has been zeroed out for over eight years at that point, and needed to be put closer to reality.
I really hope that they don’t pull that crap again. It’s the ultimate in “We’ll put out the fire by yelling that there is no fire.”
I woke up a day or so back from what most would consider a nightmare with a feeling of exasperated annoyance. You see, the whole Problem was caused by some Artiste Hollywood Director thinking that having a “live” infectious zombie on the set would be fine, perfectly fine, it’s all for the Art….
You might also consider that besides earthquake bells, some of us might be living acoustic mirrors, picking up tiny traces of sounds most miss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_mirror
Hoping to get to rough draft edits tomorrow after a good night’s sleep. But my brain also wants to seem to fumble at an idea of a Fae Apocalypse, and I’m wondering if I should try to do both at once…. I have character names and world basics in my head, I’m just trying to find the key story. Cinderella doesn’t seem to fit as a framework, even if the orginal idea-shred did crop up in my head as “Cinderfella and Lady Crow-Goblin”. Argh.
I can’t find the title, but I remember an Australian low-budget zombie movie about the making of an Australian low-budget zombie movie. While filming in the outback, they encounter actual zombies and don’t realize at first what’s happening. I think it’s from the 90’s.
Sounds like a kindred spirit to Tropic Thunder.
I believe that there are “Earthquake bells”, but not in Japan; I believe that they are on the Andaman Islands north of of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. And they don’t ring for small tremors; they ring for BIG ones. The message is, “If you hear these bells, move immediately to the temple on high ground.” After the giant 9+ earthquake near Sumatra in December, 2004, the bells rang and people rushed to the temple – and watched the tsunami destroy their villages, but they didn’t lose any PEOPLE.
Which was the whole point of the bells!
Japan doesn’t have bells, but there are markers placed several hundred years ago, which warn “Build no closer to the ocean than these markers”. Where that advice was heeded, the death toll from the Japanese megaquake in 2011 was low. Where it was not, many people died.
Googol does have a link for “tsunami bell” on Ceylon, not too far from the Andaman Islands.
yeah, but I don’t think it just works. I think it needs to be tolled by a human.
I had no idea there was no such thing as earthquake bells. I remember distinctly my mother telling me about them when I was in my teens.
She’s been dead since 1997 so I can’t ask her.
What timeline are we in again?
“What timeline are we in again?”
A crappy one. We’ve got most of the cyberpunk dystopia but no cybernetic enhancements or the cool clothing.
And no guns for sale in vending machines.
The stupidest one.
The feeling I’ve got is there’s one of two “big events” possible:
1. The DC doofuses try for “Lockdown and vote by fraud v2.0” late next year
2. One or more of the current hotspots (Ukraine / Russia, Israel / HamAss) turns into a much larger conflict
In either of those cases, the DC doofuses try to use it to fraud their way into another 4yrs as well as a crackdown on anyone they perceive as a possible threat to their being in power. Things like “sorry, this is so bad we’re not having elections this year, everyone in power, stays where they are, even if it violates your state constitution. Oh, and if you try to hold elections expect a visit from the FBI, CIA, IRS, FDA, and ANTIFA.”
I would expect the compliance in the case of lockdowns to primarily be the cities, once you move out to the ‘burbs (depends on the ‘burbs, of course) and the rural areas? Yeahno, they’ll by-and-large ignore the restrictions.
And if the DC doofuses try to get frisky? They’ll find that the conservative side doesn’t have a knob for violence, they have an on/off switch.
Naw, they’ll come up with something so stupid no sane, intelligent person could ever predict it.
The Obamas apparently financed a Netflix film about a massive cyber attack causing lots of infrastructure to go down and general chaos to ensue, along with a nice dose of racial division among the protagonists. Then Microsoft announced they’d stopped a massive cyber attack from Russia. Preparthe ground for next year’s festivities, or just tapping the zeitgeist?
There are massive cyber attacks all the time. You just typically don’t hear about them until well after the fact, when the government required reporting deadlines approach.
Someone or several on that side has a decent sense for appearances, even if theatrics – make J6 look violent, and we can tar them with it.
So I doubt they’d cancel the election entirely – too hard a sell compared to national popular vote/fraud by mail/DC+PR statehood.
Methinks a rebroadcast/amplification of the Dem’s social campaigns in PR would have an interesting effect. Somehow I doubt that a bunch of Hispanic Catholics are going to be all in on abortion till birth and transing all the kids…
Would that we had Old Testament prophets, not that they were heeded in their time.
* You guys are screwing up.
* If you keep on screwing up God is gonna smash you flat.
* So stop screwing up.
* If you stop screwing up and fly right God will bless you.
Nowadays prophets, few though they are, are cancelled, shadow banned, twitter mobbed and thrown in the klink.
Plus ca change …
Disclaimer: I am neither a science fiction writer nor the son of a science fiction writer.
well, I’m not the daughter of one. 😀
Coming in a bit late – I too have this nagging feeling that “stuff” just ain’t right. My usual go to (only half joking) was “buy more ammo!” It is now at the point of being much more situationally aware on a daily basis and thinking logistics not tactics.
Heck, I’m in a stable mid-western mostly conservative area but just don’t trust the “calm” and keep looking for what’s coming. I am still of the mind that “it” will be regional and localized. There may be some states that are wholesale crazy but there will be large pockets of sane folks all over. I’m hoping for and thinking that I just may be lucky enough to be in such a pocket. We will see…
Have good boots, two pair, fit well and broken in. And, multiple pairs of socks, preferrably good wool.
Boots to migrate in, in other words.
BTW, according to X, the West Point cadets at the Army-Navy game were chanting, FJB, only not just the initials. That does strike me as a Bad Thing.
They weren’t. Both academies would have immediately put all their students on lockdown. And I’d have heard about it through multiple military sources and alumni groups.
It wouldn’t surprise me if someone dubbed it into the footage. It also wouldn’t surprise me if someone there did it. But I’d hope if it was any cadets there would be a huge number of disciplinary actions afterwards. Even though I’m not fond of Biden, there’s these things about, “respect the office, not the office-holder,” and “prejudicial to good order and discipline,” to consider.
It was a fake. “FJB” from a crowd of service peeps rises to “mutiny”. The disrspect to the CiC is actionable as is.
I would have been busting heads. Lots of them.
I approve the sentiment, but isn’t there an issue with military (even cadets) being that contemptuous of civilian leadership?
Yep. Which is why It’s A Bad Thing. 😦
Prediction; one of the kangaroo courts will convict Trump and send him immediately to jail even while an appeal is pending; Team ObamaBiden will use it as a pretext to strip Trump of secret service protection based on the claim that it is not “appropriate” to have the secret service detail with him in jail, and then Trump will be murdered, either by a “deranged prisoner” or via Hillarycide.
Yes, there doing so has some very predictable consequences. The regime doesn’t care because they think they will come out on top and will be able to finally destroy all political dissent. No one ever said they were smart, or even more importantly wise, but their ambition knows no bounds.
Maybe. I expected that before. But it hasn’t happened, because I think someone in the cabal is still sane.
I wish that were the case, but I think it is simply a matter of timing;l they want it as close to the election as possible to kneecap any chance of a replacement being able to get on the ballot in enough states to even pose a challenge to the regime’s candidate, and to try to create a pretext to simply not hold the elections at all.
I think saner heads wil prevail over that, because long before that scenario reaches endgame, there would be a mass conflagration the likes of which would make 1861-1865 look like a food fight in a kindergarten. Heck, plenty of -donks- would see themselves as “next” and step up to the plate on the “good” side.
Keep in mind that Trump supporters outnumber the entire US Armed Forces by about 40 to one. Or more.
A more likely scenario is some “lone crazy” trying for Kennedy or Trump sua sponte.
It has been reported by Just the News the Turkish lawmaker who invoked the “wrath of Allah,” on Israel has passed to the next level of existence.
God -is- Great!
Too bad for him he didn’t die fighting.
No 72 virgins I guess. Inshallah!
72 Virginians.
George and Thomas are currently beating the crap out of him. The other 70 await their turn.
Oh my watch that wrath of god stuff out there.
https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2023/12/14/turkish-mp-dies-after-having-heart-attack-during-wrath-of-allah-tirade/
To bad God doesn’t do the same thing to all the Liberal/Communists in the Democrat party and their Rino whores, like Romney.