Don’t Look Down, it’s a Long, Long Way To Fall* a blast from the past from November7,2013

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Don’t Look Down, it’s a Long, Long Way To Fall* a blast from the past from November7,2013

I confess yesterday I was very depressed.  I don’t think it came across how depressed I was – I was trying to be reasonable and being, by nature, depressive, I’m aware of how to compensate for depression – but I was.  Between certain speculations on who will run against Hilary in 16, which prompted me to say “In that case, I don’t have a dog in that fight,” and “let it burn” there was an article about how thoroughly screwed my kids’ generation is.

The article was written from the POV of “you bought this, you voted for this buffoon.”

Except that not all of them did, of course.  (At least I hope not.)  When I was manning the phones, many people my kids’ age were there and they were fully aware of what waited them if the buffoon won.

So to have them be told “you’ll never pay your student debts, you’ll never have a decent job, you’ll never be anything but some sort of retail aid, no matter how brilliant or what your degree is” depresses me.  It depresses me more than it would if you told me that I had no hopes of ever getting anywhere.  Because I know my limitations.  I’ve stared my potential failure in the face.  I don’t even expect full success at this point, just “not dying” as far as career goes.  I’m me, I can cope with that.  But not my kids.  I’ve known them all my life, I know their potential.  Yes, I’m their mother, but I see their failings too –but they’re not the sort of failings that should consign them to a life as debt slaves.  They’re hard workers, they’re focused, they’re battlers.

Don’t tell me “But they’ll be all right then.”  Meh.  Guys, I grew up in a country where my limitations were stark and clear.  For instance, I never considered writing as more than an hobby, because in Portugal it wouldn’t be.  The excuse is that the population is too small to support full time writers without government grants and stuff.  I call poppycock.  The population is large enough for writers – multiple – to earn a living.  I suspect the Portuguese publishing industry is even more effed up than ours.  Not that it matters to me at this point, except if I had money – like, if I won the lottery – I’d start an ebook publisher publishing exclusively in Portuguese and serving the entire Portuguese speaking world.  License to coin money – maybe – but above all a chance to destroy the entrenched publishers in Portugal.  (Okay, I was born a trouble maker.  Deal.)

And I knew just how far my lifestyle could go, and where it was limited.  In the same way, even in the States, my generation’s chances have been limited in comparison to the older boomers (which fuels some of the generational hatred on blogs.)  Inevitable given their population-bulge and the fact they were post war babies.  (It’s really not their fault, not even the lefties.  We just like slapping them.  But it’s irrational.)  We have friends who are ten years older than us who never had to make as many sacrifices, and who are looking at retirement.  We aren’t.  By the time we came along the housing market had been inflated, and a lot of our work has been running to stay in place.

What I mean – I don’t want to start boomer bashing, so please none of that in the comments.  It really is a matter of chance.  No one chose this – is that when you are born and when you come of age, and when you enter the work force shapes your life and limits your choices.

And d*mn it, I don’t want my kids’ limited.

So, I was a wee bit depressed.  Sort of.

You see guys, I have some insight you don’t have.  Some insight I’m sure those who want to bring us to the level of “other countries” don’t have, because they’re pampered little snowflakes, whose pampered paws never touched hard ground – and it’s encapsulated in that title above, which I woke up with it running through my head, “Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.”

Look, I grew up upper middle class.  I also grew up dirt poor.  Yes, both are true.  For the village we were “of good families.”  My family had never been barefoot laborers, we owned land.  We didn’t own enough land to amount to anything but a small farm, but…  And my grandfather was a skilled worker – a cabinet maker – and my grandmother ran her own business (would you believe hand painting/building cosmetic boxes?)  Yeah.  And my dad had a college education and a white collar job.  And all the grandkids attended college.  (Though a couple didn’t finish.)

We were not “peasants.”  I doubt we ever had been.  All my ancestresses as far back as memory stretches knew how to read, which is not normal in Portuguese peasants.  And we had some nice China and stuff.

So, why do I say we were dirt poor?  Oh.  Well, there was the three suits of clothing, one for best, one for everyday and one for rough.  (We might have had double that, because mom made them, but honestly, she stored ALL our clothes – for the four of us — in ONE dresser and one wardrobe, when my brother was a teen, and I was little.)  I had a never ending succession of pinafores, which is what I wore to keep the “good clothes” clean.  There was the ONE alarm clock in the house, which had to be moved around depending on who needed to get up (and for these purposes the “house” included my grandmother’s next door.

But perhaps nothing will encapsulate it as well as the fact that it was normal, both from my family and other middle class families to take a sweater apart, re-dye the yarn, and make a “new” sweater.  You could go three or four rounds before the yarn itself became too bad to use.

Relatives from abroad brought us chocolates as gifts when they visited.  You know, your normal multi-square candy bar.  We hoarded it like gold, and ate a square or two a month. (Yes, there’s Portuguese chocolates.  I believe they are categorized as soap.  Or were, at the time.)

I don’t say that to induce pity.  We were neither conscious of being poor nor were we in bad shape in relation to other people.  On the contrary.  And in a comparison either with the world or with historic norm, we were rich.  Rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

This is something that shocks Americans born-and-bred.  But it is true.

We are so rich that even the rich of other countries don’t fully get us.  They don’t see how well off we are.  They don’t see how our MIDDLE CLASS lives better than their upper classes.  Sometimes, and in some things, better than their middle class could dream.

Portugal is considerably better off (technically, though it’s all apparently borrowed money) now, but still, guys, I’ll be blunt with you.  I’ve been to their grocery stores, and I don’t know how people live.  I know what they make, and their salaries seem to range about half of ours, but everything – EVERYTHING – is in a smaller package and costs more.

I submit to you a lot of our stupidity is the stupidity of the well off.  You can decide to be vegan – if you have enough money.  You can be very tolerant of stupid people yelling at you for being imperialistic, if they don’t destroy your way of life.  You can pick odd styles of dress and “go back to nature” because you have enough money and because other people are well off enough they don’t care.

That I’m very much afraid is coming to an end.  I’m not a clairvoyant, if I were I would not have spent two years trying to break into short stories and twelve years trying to keep a foot in other-publishers-than-Baen.  I’d simply have gone Baen only twelve years ago and right now would have piles and piles of mysteries to go up.

But I do have the ability to get pictures in my head that describe a situation. Sometimes a situation I can’t explain rationally, and one no one believes me on.  When I first came into publishing, I could see it as a rotten ladder, breaking low and middle.  If I got to the top, I’d be safe, but there was no path there.

Everyone kept telling me I was seeing what wasn’t there.  “Publishing has always been in trouble.  It’s okay.”  It wasn’t okay.  The combination of consolidated publishing houses and big bookstores was killing the field, low and middle, and only the darlings survived (but lost readership every book.)

The image in my mind right now, with this Obamacare insanity, is of someone taking a car that is barely running, opening the hood and pouring a few buckets of fresh cement over the engine.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long, long way to fall.

And as I said, the prospects for my kids, and for all the bright kids of their generation HURT me.

But we’re all born where we are and even I can only do so much to prepare the kids, and to ensure they’re not hurt by this.  And cr*p like what is already in the pipe and flowing at us?  It’s going to hurt EVERYONE.

However, I’m no longer depressed.  I’m no longer depressed because… well… turn that around.  “It’s a long, long way to fall.”

We could lose half of our easy wealth and we’d still be better off than 90% of the world (let alone history) and that’s if THEY don’t fall too.

And that’s the other reason.  The crap that’s flowing down the pipe?  It’s going to hit the whole world.  America is a late-buyer into teh shiny (I typed that initially whiny) of socialism.  Which is why we’re the world’s largest consumer and the best well off.  And the shiny is running out of other people’s money all over the world, because the system promotes redistribution, not creation of wealth, which means people slowly get poorer.

America is going to hurt.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Are we going to hurt as much as the rest of the world?  Impossible.  Wealth doesn’t vanish over night. Look, I think I admitted to you before I buy most of my clothes from thrift stores.  This is something that’s not even really available in other countries (oh, yes, it exists, but there isn’t that much surplus.)  Nine times out of ten the clothes I buy are new, sometimes still with labels.  Someone bought them/got them as a gift, and either gained/lost weight and never wore them.  I think it’s expensive to pay $10 for a pair of designer jeans.  I wait for the half price sale.  This is only possible in a VERY wealthy country.  And that wealth won’t vanish.  Not for a decade or two.  The surplus is still around.

There is another reason – when societies are shocked, they revert to their founding myth.  It’s not by chance that things like Golden Dawn are resurgent in Europe.  A lot of the countries are going to revert to their founding myth which is both racist and triumphalist.

BUT that’s not our founding myth.  We were founded in liberty.  Yes, there are many who think this mean “liberty to have everything I want given to me.”  But those are not the active, able people.  Those who can stay on their feet during the tumble are people like us, who believe in individual liberty.

Is this guaranteed?  Oh, h*ll no.  We could end up with a strong man.  (Only we won’t.  We’re ungovernable, as the idiots at the top are finding out.  A state or two could go for a strong man.  The rest of us?  — pah.)

The statists think out of disorder will come communism.  Guys.  Remember they’re a religion.  A particularly dopey one.  There’s almost no chance of that, because communism requires a strong man.  The current buffoon ain’t it.  Nor are any of the people around him.  And given present-day America, there might be no one strong enough.

My biggest fear is that we’re wealthy enough to limp along another three generations, by which time we would be tenderized as it were, for the “Strong man.”

Bah.  Won’t happen.  They want the full socialist shiny and they want it now.  They’re pouring the cement over the car, because the engine is still running.  And if it stops – communism!  (The poor dears never get over the idea that the starving masses are JUST waiting for the intellectuals to lead the revolution.  Poor num’kins.)

A rebirth of liberty is far more likely than communism.  And it something we can fight and work for.

As for my kids and their future?  Well!  Who in the depths of Carter foresaw the Reagan boom.  And guys, if we can arrange for a boom now, it will be bigger and better than Carter.  Has to be.  Like after WWII, the rest of the world will be in a shambles.  Which is why my kids are so lucky to be American.

Is this pie in the sky?  Not hardly.  You’re going to have to work for this one.

First, the preparation for the crash, which you should already be making: pay off/streamline/prepare.

Then the preparation for the resurgence: this has to do with what makes us uniquely American and I can’t give you instructions because I’m not there.  Which is good.  You’re Americans.  Make your own instructions.  “An Army of Davids” – what the man said.

Roll up your sleeves and see what you can do – ideally what will make you money (multiple streams of income) and also keep things going.  If you don’t have my brown thumb and have land, growing some food might not be amiss (I think food will get expensive and there will be disruptions in delivery.)  If you have the time and the inclination, learn how to keep cars running.  People are going to be holding onto them for longer, and it will be needed.  Other stuff like that – not preparation for the stone age, but for the conveniences getting more expensive and harder to find. Figuring out how to keep computers running, or small appliances, might not be a bad idea either, though there is a lot of wealth between us and new ones being utterly unaffordable. Learn to cook from scratch if you don’t know how.  Learn to make bread by hand.  Flour is cheap.  So is rice. (I wish I could have either.)

I’m a fairly useless person, other than telling stories and doing some art, but yes, I’m working on both of those.  People don’t live from bread alone.  They’re still going to need entertainment.

My kids are in STEM degrees and hopefully they’ll find jobs, but if not… well… I told them my best advice, the one that kept me working throughout 10 years in which everyone in the publishing field except Baen seemed to be actively trying to sideline me: I won’t die.  Even if they kill me.

I’m now giving that advice to all of you – and to America in general.  Refuse to die.  Even if they kill you. (Metaphorically speaking, of course, though if you find how to do the other, do let me know.)

It might be, and I always certainly guarantee will be, that you’ll hit the wall on what you’ve done all your life; what you know how to do.  Don’t sit there and go “it’s all over.”  Despair is a sin. It’s also a sure route to utter destruction.

Instead, go “I won’t die, even if they kill me.”  Find new ways to do what you love, or find something new to do.

Go under, go around, go over.  Use their regulations against them.  And never give up.

Don’t look down.  It’s a long way to fall.  Fortunately, we’re on the high wire, and as long as we keep moving and doing, we’ll be fine.

*Give me a break okay?  The furniture refinishing mysteries will ONLY be written to Evita.  Other music, nothing happens.  And then you guys wonder why I cry, bitch and moan about writing another of those.

156 thoughts on “Don’t Look Down, it’s a Long, Long Way To Fall* a blast from the past from November7,2013”

  1. Evita? Okay, I admire even more the lengths to which you are willing to go for my entertainment.

    Prescience. We did have that boom. The opportunity to commit election shenanigans wasn’t the only reason for the CoViD scam – they also had to kill off the resurgent economy.

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    1. I had a book that only wanted stuff by Corvus Corax. The most recent Merchant book worked best with Corvus Corax, Furor Gallico, and Eluvitie. Arthur’s scenes want classical music and masses. Now I’ve got a short story that insists on guitar music. (OK, It’s set in the Arizona Territory, so there’s a little justification there, but sheesh.) Muses are Odd.

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  2. Surviving, adapting, improvising, and winning is what Americans do. Even without orders. Even against orders.

    But… but nothing. This war won’t win itself. And the only “bugs” I’ll eat are lobster and crab…

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    1. I will not be eating bugs, except those accidentally inhaled. It happened again during the Memorial Day picnic. Sigh.

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  3. 2013.

    And now? We’re seeing Irish democracy, quiet and not so quiet resistance, people baling out of public school, the traditional non-Woke churches growing in membership, more and more people at the [fun]stores and ranges, and more and more derision and laughter aimed at the central government. The grey economy is growing, based on what I’m seeing at the local produce swaps and other things.

    Things aren’t great, but We the People are starting to stir, and the rabble has been roused. Aslan is on the move, even if snow remains on the ground.

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  4. It’s too bad the Perons were evil commies… okay, “just” socialists who played with nazis, commies, and other fascists (and frankly, the little folks get stomped the same by all of those groups)…

    Who best sang “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”:
    –Sarah Brightman
    –Elaine (at the time) Page
    –Madonna (my least favorite)
    –Olivia Newton-John
    –Karen Carpenter (my favorite)
    ??

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    3. Oh… I won’t claim to have sang it better, but I was almost thrown out of a vacation resort run by Englishmen for singing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina. It was during the Falkland war….

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      1. Snerk. I had a prof in College 2.0 who said it was great watching his hard-core Labour colleagues twist during the Falklands War. They hated Iron Maggie, but they also hated the Argentinian government. Talk about the horns of a dilemma! Evil kitty grin.

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    4. I think Lady Gaga sang it at least once, as well. I haven’t heard the entirety of *any* of the renditions, though, so I can’t comment on which one might be best.

      If the Perons *hadn’t* been socialists, then people in other countries likely wouldn’t care at all about them except to call them just another pair of corrupt South American dictators. Meaning there would have been no musical by Mr. Webber. :P

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  5. The last three posts have hit home for me. I’m now “old” and sure can’t do what I used to do and have to deal with those present limitations. I’ve got some (minor and hopefully will stay so) health issues and limits so no “bugging out” for me. Wife is tied to Rx due to health issues and without that medical support is ‘no go’ status. We have our issues. To top it off, the tiny bit of family we still have (totally wife’s side – mine is all gone) are nowhere near us or in any position to be able to do anything – our kids included.

    I will keep plodding along and being retired have a lot of flexibility now too. My biggest plan, for now, is to keep on being that quiet, old fart down the block with the little dog and fly under the radar. I am also going to keep my options open for any upcoming emergencies and will be prepared to “man the wire” if needed. Looking down isn’t an option as I am busy looking ahead to see what I can do with my journey to make it the best. Thanks Sarah and fellow Huns – I enjoy all the hope, ideas and just plain conversations here.

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  6. F Commies, F Democrats, F Rino’s, F all those who would take my freedom’s away. I will not comply, I will not respect anyone elected from/in a Blue city/state. If you are a democrat politician you are a demon from hell, crucifixion is too good for you. I ll leave it to God for now, he says Vengeance is his, let it be so, for now. May You C***’s reap what you sow.

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    2. In one of the Cat Among Dragon stories, Rada Ni Drako said (I’m paraphrasing slightly) “Veangeance is mine, says the Lord, but sometimes he subcontracts.” Thanks, TXRed!

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    3. Speaking of Snerk, I read that FICUS was going to be in Europe for the D-Day commemoration. That brought up a question and some potential answers:

      Q: What is Biden going to do to go off the rails on his speech (assuming Jill lets him talk)?

      A1: Take credit for winning WW-II.
      A2: Claim that Beau died in the D-Day jumps with the 183rd Airborne.
      A3: Blame Trump for starting the war (almost certain for that one).

      Thoughts, comments, snarky answers?

      Liked by 1 person

      1. A4. Claim he had an uncle in the French Resistance

        A5. Refer to June 6 as “January 6”.

        A6. Confuse General Eisenhower with General MacArthur or General Custer

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        1. A7. Go to stack rocks on a sand beach only instead of a cross he does a pentagram and then chases little girls around the beach trying to sniff their hair.

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      2. He won’t say that Beau died in World War 2. But I can all but guarantee that he will make a reference to Beau’s death, and once again suggest that Beau died as a result of fighting in Iraq.

        He’ll accuse Trump of wanting to start World War 3, despite the fact that Trump was the first president in quite some time (including Reagan) who didn’t get us involved in any new wars.

        He’ll claim French ancestry, or that he was raised among French people in the community that he grew up in.

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  7. Well, the “you’ll never pay off your student loans” may not have been far off. When I went (back) to college in the early 2000s, student loans were the only way I could see at the time to pay for it. I’ve had a lower-middle tier professional job since I graduated in 2004 — a fairly typical career with the degree I got. Checked the balance yesterday…the principal hasn’t been paid down AT ALL. Still working on paying off capitalized interest from the unsubsidized loans 20 fucking years later. There was a point when I could’ve declared bankruptcy and got rid of them (was flat-out unable to pay for 3+ years due to adverse circumstances), but nope, not allowed; that’s just more capitalized interest added to the bill.

    Unless I win the lottery, I’m taking those loans with me to the grave. That’s the only silver lining here; at least my family won’t be stuck with them when I’m gone (probably…maybe…unless the government “fixes” that loophole, too).

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    2. The reason we refused loans when I went back to school in the ’80s. Community college hours wasn’t a problem. When I started back to university level my employer was paying for successful completion of classes. One class, with books, was running at half the cost I’d paid a decade earlier for the entire year. Even after the employer moved out of town and we were paying for me to complete, we paid out of pocket as we went. Finished up as we finished paying off our ’70s college loans. Our ’70s college loans were 1% and 5% fixed. Interest didn’t start for 6 months after graduation or non-enrollment. Paid off over 10 years. Don’t know what hubby’s total was, but mine was < $10k.

      Son? We looked into student loans. This was late ’00s. My response was “hell no” and went downhill from there. Hubby wanted son to have a “cost”. Son did, every penny he had and earned went into his schooling, plus a few awards. But as far as loans? Told hubby he had to find something available other than “parent plus” loans. One of the reasons I didn’t want to refinance in 2010 was we had 2/3 of our home equity line still available as backup. Then PTB credit jacked that (set allowed amount to just over the balance owed). We refinanced.

      I had an inkling that student loans were bad news. But until the comments here, did not know it was so bad. Not the balances, which are bad enough, but the interest shenanigans blowing up balances to unachievable payoffs.

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      1. They are obscene and usurious, and the inability to discharge them in bankruptcy is legitimate debt slavery.

        I want them to fix the issues* before widespread forgiveness, but I can’t help but think of a friend of mine who recently got them “forgiven” after 25+ years—during which time, she had more than completely paid off the principal plus a reasonable amount of interest. I told her that they didn’t “forgive” her debt; they just acknowledged that it had been paid.

        *How? First off, make them able to be discharged in bankruptcy. Remove them from the federal government’s banks, and then require that the loan originator hold on to the loan for several years into the repayment period, with them remaining on the hook if the loan goes into default. The money pipe would slam shut SO fast. Yes, it would cause a lot of short-term pain, and I do feel sorry for the students. But in the longer term, they would be far, far better off.

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        2. Yes.

          Get the government out of the loan business. Period. Except GI. Even the GI loans/scholarships have tight limits on what degrees it pays for.

          Make banks hold on to student loans, no exceptions. Would love to see banks be able to go after schools whose students can’t get jobs after graduating. Just not sure how that would work.

          Interest doesn’t start accumulating until either graduation or drop out.

          Reasonable interest rates. Granted 6%, which it was when son went to college, wasn’t bad OTOH mine was 4% or 6% (forget exactly) in the ’80s, when interest rates were running way higher than that, so didn’t seem “that bad”. But when 6% is “oh hell no” because our HELOC was 2%? Plus our HELOC wouldn’t have predatory interest shenanigan? Exactly.

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  8. “When I think back on all the crap I learned in High School It’s a wonder I can think at all” Paul Simon, Kodachrome.

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  9. Pretty cool that she has a permeable helmet so she does get her hair all matted up inside, any it does appear there is an atmosphere outside to blow her hair around, but what is that kind of environment going to do to her hair? Massive split ends? Toxic contamination forcing her to cut it off? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

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      1. Why is there a suspension bridge that appears to be way up in the sky above flatlands? I keep trying to come up with ideas that make sense. Transfer bridge between airships or in-atmosphere spaceships? Maybe a suspended catwalk in an open hangar of a spaceship, for maintenance or other access to docked craft? Just showing defiance of OSHA by skipping handrails? :-)

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      2. Awww. You changed the picture.

        Both cute.

        However, suspension bridges are always in space. There’s not much need for a bridge that sits on the ground. ;-)

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          2. Ah, so the suspension bridge has achieved inner peace and enlightenment for foregoing all earthly attachments!

            Does that mean suspension bridges are all Buddhists?

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  10. I’ve been singing pretty much the same song, possible as long as you have (maybe longer?). I made my plans, and 8 years ago started putting them into action.

    Now I’m in the ‘mid-west’ (Texas as you know) out in the country, and about as isolated as I can be from the coming insanity. We’re still doing what we can to be ready for whatever comes, though I am ‘old’ now, so how much of it I’ll live through is debatable. But the Spouse isn’t, so I’ve done all that I can to make sure that -they’ll- survive.

    I do think that come September, we are going to see things that nobody ever thought they’d see, not in their wildest nightmares. Of course, I’m already seeing it. But then, I pay attention.

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    1. I’m really really really hoping it holds till October, since younger kid’s wedding is out of the country in September. But I have a bad feeling.

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      1. They might wish to make contingency plans to not have a wedding outside of the country then. (I’m guessing one is a foreign national?)

        I’m not sure when things are going to go crazy, or just how crazy, It’s all just anybody’s guess right now. Every time people saw ‘oh, they’d never do that’, it seems like someone out there just takes tht as a challenge.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Nah. We’re just having the wedding where my parents can attend. They’re in their nineties. Younger son. They’re legally married, but in Portugal religious and legal are strictly separated.

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    2. I’m not too worried about the local county until after the elections; we’re pretty rural, and where I live is very rural.

      Where I’m somewhat nervous is for a medical trip on Labor day and a couple days after. Medford, OR is not that crazy compared to metro NW Oregon, but there is a boisterous University nearby and the area had a bad arson wildfire Sept 2020. The appointment is Tuesday, and it’s not a good idea to leave until Wednesday. At least the hotel/doctor’s office wouldn’t be affected by wildfire, though the trip home could be more interesting than desirable. (Makes note to hit the gas station on Monday in case the Cascade route gets sporty.)

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      1. I tried to go back to Oregon, but I just can’t handle living under communism.

        I have an acquaintance who move up there, he’s got a small farm going (he’s retired) because he sees exactly what’s coming, and he wants to be able to eat after it hits. He’s rural as well.

        Me? I have 0 desire to farm or ranch. I have other skills and the equipment to practice them. So hopefully that’ll be enough.

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      2. trip home could be more interesting than desirable.

        …………..

        Too real possibility. Oregon has been relatively quiet since fall 2020. Haven’t been up the McKenzie lately, but regrowth has been really slow. Little to nothing spring 2023. Too soon for arson retry. But there is a lot of standing burned timber out there, just limited ground cover. Weyerhouser has cleared out what they could get to before it no longer was saleable/usable. That is about 2 years. How much replanting the private timber owners have been able to do? That depends on the required seedlings available.

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        1. Yes, there was a “small” fire north of SR-140 that moved NE (big surprise–not) and didn’t close the road as part of the curious spate of fires, but the canyon part of the route could be hit, or parts in the plateau.

          If it was part of a coordinated action, the alternative routes get funky. I’ve been to Crater Lake from the west side some 45+ years ago, and most of them have burned recently. Not familiar with OR-58, and that’s a long haul. Going south to Weed, then coming back on US-97 raises all sorts of red flags due to the People’s Republic attitude towards various things. Haven’t set foot or tire tread in Cali since 2016 and don’t want to repeat the experience.

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          1. They tried with Hwy 58 where south section of Buford Park just north of the I-5 exit. Got caught fast. Also too far west to involve the entire corridor like Hwy 126 (power lines my ass-ets). Unfortunately Hwy 58 is primed, both east and west of the tunnel.

            Hwy 126 east is safe for a few years. They could hit between the junction and toward Corvallis, but 2020 fires, Holiday/Blue River, and Detroit, aren’t recovered for a repeat. Even the 2003 fire isn’t recovered enough. Ground cover at the top of the pass. But the mountain sides up to Hoodoo have just started after 20+ years (very thin, to none, rocky soil). But if their plan was to cut the state in half, that ship has sailed for a few decades.

            Now if they want to cutoff the coast from the interior? Those routes are wide open. But why?

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    3. September is when Hunter’s more serious trial starts. That’s the Tax Evasion trial that’s taking place in California.

      The gun charge is a genuine crime. But it’s small fish compared to all of the other stuff that he’s apparently done over the course of his messed up life.

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      1. The Hunter stuff is a sideshow. It’s unimportant.

        Trump is what’s important. He’s the only one they can’t buy. All the other republicans have been bought and paid for. Trump is who they have to take down.

        The question is, will the people stand for it? Personally I think they will. I don’t think anything will happen when they take him down. But, there’s always a but, once they DO take him down, that will mean there will no longer be any limits to the democrat’s power. And they will abuse it so fast and so hard, that your head will spin.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’m going to disagree with you here, for two reasons.

          1.) Hunter is intimately involved with Joe’s corruption. Without Hunter, you have no proof of Joe doing anything wrong, since Hunter was the middle man.

          2.) According to the administration, only Donald J. Trump is supposed to get the felon label. If Hunter also gets it, it will really mess with them.

          Again, though, this specific charge is pretty small potatoes, and I wouldn’t be all that distressed if it had been ignored. The Tax Evasion charges in September are the important ones from the items he’s currently facing trial over.

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          1. Hunter could be convicted of raping and murdering 12 yo’s and selling crack to schoolgirls – complete with video for all of it.

            That would have zero effect on Biden. Everyone who voted for Biden knew he was corrupt. They knew he took bribes. They knew he used his position to threaten people and get money.

            They didn’t care. They knew he’s a child molester. They didn’t care.

            Thinking that democrat voters care one whit about the morality or ethics of their politicians is foolish. They never have. They never will.

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            1. There are people who voted for Biden who aren’t committed Dems. There are people who aren’t aware enough to realize how ridiculous the Trump prosecution is, and who put weight on the felony label. And there’s the principle of the thing once you get to corruption at the level of Joe Biden’s.

              Ignoring Hunter’s role in all of this is not smart.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. They still voted for him. They knew what they were getting.

                But lets be completely honest – the election was rigged. It’s been proven in court several times now that it was rigged. Plus they weren’t at all subtle about it.

                They’ll just rig it again. Because nobody changed anything. Well, except for the laws and methods for challenging an election – there’s less of those now.

                Liked by 1 person

                  1. Yeah, but as John pointed out most of the votes for Biden were people who didn’t exist.
                    I’m rather more worried about the idea that they can take Trump out without immediate reaction, or that they can implement their program on us.

                    Liked by 1 person

  11. Re: Discussion with Mike and Sean (currently just above on my feed) – I propose a “SkyNet Snerk Day,” where we disassemble the products of our would-be AI masters.

    Would go well, I think, with Memes Day and Book Pitch Day.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’d propose a ‘Marxism Snark Day’, except that would be a normal day around here. If only we could go back in time and drive master Karl crazy laughing at him.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Speaking of days. Today is the fifth of June. It has been thirty-five years and one day since the Tiannamen Square Massacre. The iconic “Tank Man” photo was taken on June 5, 1989.

        Before the deaths and the tanks and the disappearances, the blotting out of history, the censoring, there were protests. Students protesting. They wanted more freedom. Freedom of the press, speech, and so on.

        There had been some motion in that direction in 1980s China. Some loosening of the restrictions, freer markets (not yet free, of course, not even today). The people wanted to keep going in that direction. Isn’t that a wonder? People gravitating towards freedom?

        And the corrupt, Communist (I know, I know, I repeat myself) government (a third time!) killed them for it. Imprisoned the survivors. No doubt enforced re-education, and so on.

        Judging from our own Leftists, they’d like a repeat.

        I want more Milei. More Reagan, more the Founders, more freedom from government. That’s something to keep in mind. Freedom is something that human beings instinctively gravitate towards. Control is something governments (and the humans that make them up) chase just as, if not more, feverishly.

        I’d much prefer our side to win that race. Remember June 5. Don’t let the next Tank Man happen here.

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    2. On AI but also a bit off topic, it occured to me today that the reason the AIs dream, lie, say insane things and otherwise show signs of not bei g ready for Prime Time is that….we do the same.

      Look at all people believe and buy into (Marxism for example). Given the filters the AI are programmed with it would be surprising if they didnt sound insane.

      Remember a few years (a decade?) back when google made an AI that scanned their employee dstabase picked out the characteristics for winners then scanned resumes to find people like that….and got all men 30+ in age?

      They crippled it to the point where it would have been easier to write all this but not white or asian. I think thry abandoned it.

      Anyway AI is insane because the programmerd are insane.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. AI’s are insane because they are trying to make them Marxists, and that doesn’t work, so it runs into a logic conundrum when it tries to function in the real world.

        Like

      2. Not quite. The filters and tuning add a special kind of stupid to the mix, but the hallucinations that language models produce are fundamental to the technology. They know nothing about the world, only which words are likely in which context. When they extrapolate, it’s not based on common sense or experience, the way a human would, but based on what words tend to appear after the ones it has generated so far.

        There’s a bunch of human error that slips in through the training data, not to mention the extra restrictions to make sure the output is doubleplusgood, but even with perfect data and no shackles, language models would make stuff up like crazy. It’s what they do.

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        1. Obligatory counterpoint: it turns out that “mere” word prediction is really freaking useful.

          Also the machine learning world is far larger than LLMs.

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          2. >the machine learning world is far larger than LLMs

            This makes it difficult to separate AI hype: ‘We’re using a multivariate regression, in Excel, but we’ll get better press if we call it AI, even though using a Transformer doesn’t make sense here.’

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      3. On AI but also a bit off topic, it occured to me today that the reason the AIs dream, lie, say insane things and otherwise show signs of not bei g ready for Prime Time is that….we do the same.

        Yeah. No Shit.

        The only people who are freaked at this are the ones who 1. think AI is an omniscient god who will give us everything plus a unicorn, and 2. people who think AI is a god, just a false one.

        Oh, and people who think neural programming designed to work similarly to how the human brain works must now behave that way at all, but must behave the same way as a database.

        Which manages to make the AI-deists look intelligent by comparison.

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      4. Yes. Almost all human delusions can be attributed to how our perception is filtered. Programmers are going to put in place the same filters as they have – because (to them) they are perfectly sensible.

        This is all humans. You can see it in the “Trump can do no wrong” people, as well as the “Trump is Satan” people. Even the corrupt grifters that really aren’t partisan are using filters that make sense to them – filters that remove anything that does not mean more power and money for them.

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      5. Are you familiar with formal logic?

        Specifically- “logically supported” or “not logically supported.” As opposed to ‘true’ or ‘false’.

        Different assumptions have different outputs– but folks tend to jump to “insane” instead of “incorrect assumptions.” Probably because with humans the more dangerous is someone who sees stuff that isn’t real and is vastly different than what is, but I’m digressing….

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        1. No, what is most dangerous is people who see what they’re not supposed to see. The man behind the curtain, the Emperor’s bare tush, the farce of a Stalinist show trial, the massive and pervasive election fraud, etc.

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            1. Nah, that’s just a harmless kook. He’ll be released without bail within 2 hours. You, on the other hand, will be locked up for years if you defend yourself ‘too violently’.

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                  1. The city of New York has also gone down the path of openly attacking the Jewish People for being Jewish for at least five years; I have no issue saying they aren’t this country.

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                  1. Is your next option down town Portland, or Seattle?

                    All of which is besides the way that it doesn’t match the example given….

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                    1. My option is simply to provide an example of the two-tier justice system. You thought you lived in America anywhere you are. You thought wrong.

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    1. Most everything here is a bit off, or at least, measured with it’s own peculiar standard.

      Like

        1. Or my favorite:

          “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
          “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
          “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
          “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

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  14. Yeah, looks not good. I try to remember that the sociopaths don’t work together very well.

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  15. :You can thank the media and Democrats for Turning Orangeman Bad, into Orangeman Mandella” Don Surber. ROTFLMAO 🤣

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Well, yes, things are going to get so ugly the Marxists will weep. All they know how to do is break stuff because they don’t know how to do anything. Our competence is an affront to them. So they break it all, and weep while we crawl up from our positions, look around, and get to work.

    I got a PT job making quilting kits, so now I’m eager to learn to quilt. I need a sewing machine, among other things. That’s at least useful, and I know how to sew, so maybe I’ll be making clothing and quilts for sale when things finally break.

    That’s the hardest part, waiting for things to break. And it’s not going as smoothly or as quickly as I’d like. “Can’t this just break already!” I’ve asked myself that over and over again, it’s so hard, this slow paying off of debt, piling up cash as we can, waiting waiting enduring the propaganda and the enemy gloating and all the awful awful shite.

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    1. I need a sewing machine, among other things.

      Check estate sales – if you can find where any are listed – that’s where you’re most likely to find a good-quality, durable sewing machine for cheap. There’s a sewing machine repair guy who travels between Frenchtown (?), MT and Spokane, if you find one and want to make sure it’s in good working order.

      … though he may only work on Berninas, I don’t know.

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      1. THANK YOU. Lordy, I just priced a new Bernini 7800 QE with the laser rangefinder… $7,800 before tax.

        Sewing machines have changed a bit since I last used one. :)

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        1. THANK YOU. Lordy, I just priced a new Bernini 7800 QE with the laser rangefinder… $7,800 before tax.

          *holds back of hand to forehead and sinks to her tastefully appointed fainting couch.

          Good GRIEF! I spent my entire life savings of $400 on a used Viking sewing machine when I was a junior in high school. Made all my bridesmaid’s dresses, virtually everything I wore and kids costumes, clothes, curtains, upholstered furniture, etc for decades!

          I know machines these days are fancy. But why don’t they get cheaper like flat screen tvs seem to do?

          Still it sounds like a fun job that you can learn useful skills doing! Congratulations!

          i will pray that you find a very good deal on the perfect machine 🙏

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          1. you are so kind! Thanks very much.

            I suspect that there are cheaper ways to go. There better be or I’m going to have to take to the criminal life to support my new quilting habit.

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            1. Kathy, a few years ago, my wife Em bought a Singer Ingenuity sewing machine. Between her arthritis, vision, etc., she hasn’t used it much.

              How close are you to DFW? If within a couple hours, we can arrange a drop-off; if outside, we can ship it to wherever you say for cost of shipping, assuming we can get it packed. Let us know how you wish to proceed.

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              1. Your generosity has me shouting “Yes!” Thank you for the offer!

                I’m in north Idaho. Give me a shout at Nanaimo dot kathy @ gmail and we can talk more. This is so lovely thank you.

                Like

                1. Kathy, when I translated Nanaimo dot kathy @ gmail into what looked like a real e-mail, my e-mail didn’t like it.

                  Sarah has my actual e-mail address; If you can send to her, she can send to me.

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            2. I’m going to have to take to the criminal life to support my new quilting habit.

              …………….

              Between the hardware, fabric, and storage for the fabric, yes you are.

              Think I’m kidding? We pulled out fabric (and yarn) out of everywhere from grandma’s small cottage, when she died. Granted she didn’t buy fabric. She was old school. Old worn out clothing was disassembled and stored. Fabric too worn/shear was sewn together for the interior quilt padding. Both sides of the quilt were patchwork. No patterns.

              Even hand quilting frames aren’t particularly inexpensive.

              Guess who might be a reformed quilter (knitter, crotchet, embroidery, cross stitch, macrame, sewing stuffed animals, tatting) both machine and hand. Never got into drawing, painting, stain glass, or pottery. Programming cured me of crafts. Not sure what cured me of programming when I retired, but don’t miss that at all (I suspect clients). Haven’t had the urge to pickup the crafts again.

              Liked by 1 person

            3. Many quilters love their Singer Featherweight 221 machines because they are so portable and easy to carry to quilting bees. There are many available on ebay, and the going price seems to be around $500. Lots of information on their care and feeding can be found at https://www.novamontgomery.com/

              Like

      2. Heck, my MiL got a couple of 1960s Singer sewing machines at garage sales, and was considering donating them to St. Vincent dePaul before I convinced her to donate them to me (and through me, my costumer friend.)

        I kept the 1962 metal one from Great Britain. The manual is online, even.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I do not know what has happened to the collection since her sudden severe onset of dementia. A friend had a collection of sewing machines, from old treadle to ’60s singers, including a some smaller travel, small working toy child, and specialty, models. She was also a quilter, and took current projects and one or two sewing machines with her on quilting retreats. She found them in thrift stores, garage and estate sales.

          Liked by 1 person

  17. I seem to remember advising someone during the Trump years to “treat it as the seven fat years” and do as much as they could to get rid of their debt and bolster their savings.

    Growing up, I saw the difficulty my mother had with paying off her student loans (she only got them written off last year via PSLF), and what a mathematically-terrible scam “loan consolidation” was…. so when I went to graduate school, I planned: I got a full-time job at the university I wanted to study at, I got in-state residence, and I took as many classes as I could with the staff discount. When I had to go full-time as a student, I got a half-time job at the university, and applied for teaching assistantships, which counted as a quarter-time job. And when I got out, I still had $28K in student loans, because universities want to be paid up front. That’s about a year’s wages worth of debt, even still.

    It’s now 6 years later, and my remaining balance on the loans is less than $2600. … The plan was to have them paid off by now, but it’s going to be next year, at best.

    All it has taken is living like a very cheap hermit with a strict budget, not having a car payment, pets, a family, or any major medical problems, making rent deals with my landlord, and using what I have well beyond its reasonable lifespan.

    … though I will say, the two-and-a-half-year-long interest-accrual pause for COVID and the money the feds were handing out like candy were extremely helpful in lowering the principal balance. So I think I timed my graduation quite well… >_>

    Liked by 1 person

  19. I wonder if Joe Scarbuttocks and Mika Cheats on every Husbband, will commit suicide tomorrow after they hear about the Funky Willits cases being put on hold?

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  20.  “I won’t die, even if they kill me.” 

    They may put my body in the ground, but *I* won’t die. 

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  21. Definitely off topic. Remember during Obozo them pushing Zika and Ebola so very very hard? As both had obvious and bad symptoms plus limited infection paths it didnt work….but werent they trying for a shutdown panic…and had they gotten it would martial law have been lifted yet?

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Ebola doesn’t really work well for a shutdown type of situation – or at least not a “safe” shutdown. Either it’s raging *really* badly, and nearly everyone who gets it dies, or no one has it. I don’t know that it necessarily runs for a long time, because it’s too fatal. It’s easier to spread diseases that don’t quickly kill you. Up until recently, if you catch it, you probably die (there were survivors, even before the treatment was developed). And it’s pretty obvious when it’s run its course because people stop dying.

      Unlike COVID.

      To add, if Ebola really was running rampant, the government probably wouldn’t need to impose a shutdown order. Anyone with half a bit of common sense would be attempting to self-quarantine as much as possible while the disease ran its course. And that includes the cops who would be asked to enforce the quarantine (“Sorry, chief. No can do. I’ve got the sniffles again. Yup. Twenty days straight.”)

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  22. And to top it all off, the Lap Top from hell has been testified valid in a court of law it was not Russian interference. I think 52 certain individuals need to have their security clearances pulled for ever. As far as the news talking heads, may they retire in shame, if not, may they burn in hell. A Hell they made for themselves. Where as lying is not a sin, baring false witness against thy neighbor is. That goes for every preacher, every politician that repeated those lies. If this keeps up we will have to change Hell’s name to the DNC.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. Booster has splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, Starship inserted into orbit.

    Speaking of wealth, we are watching live imagery from Starship, full color, on a tablet with better image quality than TVs for most of my life. (On tablet because no cable network is covering. TBF, they’re covering the D-Day anniversary ceremonies, but still).

    Elon (or someone) has perky female morning hosts, plus the site we’re using has an overweight male nerd for need commentary. Nice marketing.

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          1. grunting is often involved in the activity in question.

            Our commander in chief seems to have dropped a number two into his trousers while at the commemoration.

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            2. Was referring to the speech of us Grunts, where the F word is every type of word, and also punctuation. Plus, I pick up vocabulary from a variety of folks from elsewhere.

              When he bailed early on those veterans of Normandy, I was …. rather vocal in my disapproval.

              -That- was the shitty conduct.

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        2. Tried to sit down when there was no chair (being taken to mean a moment of incontinence but no way to know for certain)

          used speech to talk about Russian deaths in Ukraine. (He did manage a good soundbite about “protecting democracy.”)

          Was suddenly led away by a stone-faced Jill Biden before the end of the ceremony. Biden was walking *very* stiffly in small steps. This left Macron to shake hands with the troops. The expressions on some of the veterans were…interesting.

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    2. Note those two young ladies are primarily employed by SpaceX as engineers and.or engineering managers.

      There must be a different engineering school track than I was on that had such as these…

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        1. I know they exist, as I worked with some excellent examples in cubeland – they were just pretty scarce on the ground back in the dinosaur days of my college degree.

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      1. I’m actually more impressed that they got the soft splashdown of the booster. That’s a big hunk of metal to get doing all the things correctly, and while they had multiple tests hops of the Starship to refine control laws, the booster has only had one real descent-and-landing-burn try before this due to ‘splodin up high on the first two tests.

        A well deserved Good On Ya to the engineers and metal-benders at SpaceX.

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  28. It’s a little disconcerting to see all the gunk flaring up around Starship as it reenters. It’s not pieces of the ship, but still…

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  29. For a few second, there was the image of an American flag on the

    flap. Illusion? Probably, but still neat.

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    2. I like that the stainless steel flappy bits glowed as the TPS broke off near the hinge enough to show the interior structure, but it all looks to have still hung together enough to actuate and do its flappy job at the landing burn flip.

      Elon has said the forward flaps should probably be repositioned more around towards the “back” side away from reentry flow as a future design change, basically moving from 3 and 9 o’clock to more like 2 and 10 o’clock, which would likely reduce the heat and pressure loading right on that hinge line.

      But the big thing is it still worked. Maybe they can do one where the splashdown point is in daylight instead of night next time.

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