The Other Side of Midnight

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Yesterday I had friends over, for the first time since the elections. Actually, for the first time since we went to Portugal, a month that just melds in my life in illness and anxiety, in a soup of anxiety and grave illness, kind of an encapsulation of the last four years in a very short time.

Anyway, as we were sitting around the table, after a meal slightly hampered by my oven having gone out in our absence (we just got it finally repaired this morning) talking and drinking port wine, this sentence — heaven knows from where — ran through my head “It’s so nice to meet here on the other side of midnight.”

And other than my sense of relief and contentment I had no idea what it meant, until I thought further, on how for years — decades — now it felt like we were being herded down an increasingly narrow and dark path towards a future that more closely resembled 1984 than anything in the 21st century. And now? well, we’ll win some and we’ll lose some. It’s the nature of the beast, but the fact we defeated what looked like a complete lockdown on fraud that wouldn’t allow us to change anything… well. Over the horizon, far away, there is a hint of light. May it be a new day and maybe it be amazing.

It ties in, I think with this post by Richard Fernandez, who often seems to be getting dispatches from the same unfathomable, and not very clear source:

https://x.com/wretchardthecat/status/1856508534487429363

His tweet, unclear to me at first, as unclear as that phrase — quote? — running through my head, was solidified in the comments as meaning now things will change.

And I think he’s right on that.

Let me clarify: I feel like the 20th century — that dark age of fighting between totalitarian ideas — has been unnaturally prolonged, partly because the totalitarianism we call left (objectively they’re both left), aka the international one, dominated every cultural institution and news reporting for so long that it could impose on us a narrative loop, in which “next time will be different” and somehow get to that magical land where the state withers away and everyone is equal and living costs nothing.

In fact, every one of its recursive loops, like heartburn on a scarred esophagus, got us closer and closer to the vision of the prophets George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. And the devotees of the cult were so blinkered they often seemed to think that was the utopia. And they were willing to do anything to get there. Mostly lie and cheat and steal. All of them in horrifying amounts.

So, to explain how we got there, the clashing totalitarianisms of the 20th century were the culmination of the philosophical flowering of the industrial revolution. Which yes fed and clothed the world, but brought with it the idea that bigger was better, centralized was less wasteful, and that the world ran more justly when ruled by “experts.” Both fascism and communism heralded themselves as “scientific” and rule by the “best” people and ultimately both thought the best were intellectuals and academics.

Since the eighteenth century centralization has been driven more and more, big government and experts given more power, etc. It was, after all, the way of the future, which — in the lefty view — would eventually culminate in a world government over a happy hive of human bees, none wanting more or different.

… The height of this was the seventies, when most people subscribed to that vision of the future, and saw it as inevitable.

Along the line, though, information contrary to the flow broke in. And America, the ultimate disrupter, elected Reagan who I suspect will be viewed as really tame and almost establishment in the future, but trust me, children, was a total break at the time. And showed us there was another way.

Other brilliant people — Rush Limbaugh — found a way to break the left’s hold on the culture with means of communication they didn’t see.

And then, perhaps in retaliation for being balked of space, the geeks created the internet and my generation — largely those born mid to late sixties — took to it like robot ducks to electronic water, even those of us who weren’t particularly techie.

There was a flowering in the US — the rest of the world doesn’t have it anywhere like us — of alternate opinion blogs and social media….

And we just saw the credibility of the old media crash and burn, leading to the change in governance which in turn — with some issues, mind because those are also there — has a chance, a bare chance, of turning into a new direction for the world.

I’m hopeful because as I’ve been saying for ages, the new tech leads to a world more suited to the vision of the founding fathers than anything since this nation was an agrarian backwater: a world of small and localized industry, where communication is easy and paradoxically worldwide, where an individual can not only create and make himself very wealthy on little investment, but also be heard and have his opinions disseminated with no gatekeeping and little expense.

It is a world that, freed of governmental shackles and bureaucratic fences, can and almost inevitably will, lead us to the stars, and…. well, and to a world unrecognizeable by anyone reading this blog, but likely with more liberty and justice for all than our poor minds can foresee.

Oh, there are stumbling stones on the way. And — sorry Elon — I wouldn’t buy your ticket to Mars just yet. But–

But it is possible. Before, particularly the last four years, it hasn’t seemed possible at all. all over the world — except Argentina, blessed Argentina — the forces of the twentieth century; the forces of “top down” “experts” were victorious, and the boots of the oligarchs stomped on the neck of those of us who just wanted to be left alone.

Now, the boot has lifted. We’re looking around, and we think there just might be a future. The future we intuited was being stopped by the forces that wanted to kill it.

There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip. There’s shoals between us and the great shores of prosperity now barely glimpsed over the far horizon.

I’m sixty two, from a long lived line but prone to very weird wobbles in my health. I probably won’t see the end of this. Most of us probably won’t.

But over that far distance our eyes won’t pierce, the day of humanity’s future is dawning.

And it is glorious in the eyes of our mind.

110 thoughts on “The Other Side of Midnight”

  1. The Reader believes the Churchill quote best summarizes our situation. “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The Reader hopes and prays that November 6th was the end of the beginning in the long march against cultural tyranny.

    Liked by 4 people

  2. We’ll never live in a perfect world (until Christ returns) but for all the kooks still running around it does seem like things are moving to the better.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. Along the line, though, information contrary to the flow broke in. And America, the ultimate disrupter, elected Reagan who I suspect will be viewed as really tame and almost establishment in the future, but trust me, children, was a total break at the time. And showed us there was another way.

    He is *now*.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I saw an article, yesterday?, where the author was saying we’re never going to live on Mars. That Musk is squandering his wealth with this pipe dream of his because it can never happen. Musk isn’t doing anything new, he’s just doing things more efficiently, blah, blah, blah.

    What kept going through my head was, we rarely ever do anything truly new. We build off other’s ideas that were only partially formed, until one day there’s enough mass to this “new” thought that people begin to say, “Hey, that might actually make sense.” Everything is based on something else to some degree. Musk is taking what other’s have learned, and showing improvements on them to the extent that things are actually being built and becoming useful instead of just far off “someday” thought experiments. SpaceX may not be the company that puts a permanent human colony on Mars, but it’s paving the way for others to do so if they can’t do it themselves.

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    1. “And all the best scientists say that things heavier than air cannot fly.”

      Badly paraphrasing RAH: When it’s time to railroad, you can railroad.

      Liked by 3 people

    2. What a dumb thing for the person to complain about. I personally do not want to live on Mars (1), but honestly, as long as Musk isn’t hurting other people he should do what he likes with his money, and will have a net-positive effect on employment regardless.

      (1)or more specifically, on the Mars that NASA has told me about, which I have no particular reason to believe in the existence of, beyond “faking it would make for a very difficult coverup.” If Musk got some autonomous lander over there and discovered that ERBurroughs knew more about Mars than NASA did, I might consider it. (Elon, this is NOT a suggestion for a “diamonds planted on the moon” type manipulation.)

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Exactly. And I’d say that doing it more efficiently IS new.

      You’ve got to crawl before you learn to walk and walk before you can run. Before we can get out into the solar system, we have to get really good at getting a *lot* of material up into orbit. Right now, Elon Musk is moving us through those wobbly first steps, developing the strength and coordination needed to reach the next stage where we can run. Odds are he (and we) won’t see anyone living on Mars. But SOMEONE will.

      The first steps on the moon occurred over 60 years ago. For just about half of the time since, we basically stopped trying to get even that far again, let alone go any further, and the US even lost the capability of launching anything into orbit at all for a while. Juxtaposed against that, Musk’s SpaceX has made great strides in a very short time, comparable to the legendary push that got us to the moon.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Musk rrecently said, and I paraphrase, “launching from earth requires huge amounts of propellant to escape earth’s gravity well. Launching from the moon or Mars or traveling between them requires very little ib comparison.”

        Whether done on the moon, Mars, comets, or astroids, mining raw materials and manufacturing the components necessary to construct an extra terrestrial habitat seemingly must be done outside earth’s gravity well; that is to say, space mining and manufacturing.

        0Without a new means of propulsion being developed, moving the thousands of tons on material necessary to construct a habitat suitable for permanent occupation will be prohibitly expensive. Even for Musk.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “If God wanted us to fly He would have given us wings.”

          And the official who felt we didn’t neeed a patent office because everything possible had been invented.

          This guy has plenty of company, and they were all wrong.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Mid 19th century physicist saying that our understanding of physical theory was complete and all that was left to do was add a couple of digits to the various physical constants.

            Then a couple of guys named Michelson and Morley…

            Liked by 2 people

            1. I have a college level textbook published in 1912, used by my grandmother’s brother at UC Berkeley. Very complete. “College Physics”, by Kimball.

              One interesting item. No mention of Einstein. 7years after his year of production in 1905, No mention.

              They knew about the nucleus of the atom, but did not know about the neutron. A good thing. So much they didn’t know. What is it we don’t know? We have now proved we don’t know what 95 % of the universe is made of. At least now we know we don’t know.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. Remember when Einstein got his Nobel, they didn’t mention relativity, and only brushed on the photoelectric effect. What they went on about was his work on Brownian motion.

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                1. I thought that sounded incorrect based on what I read about 40 years ago, so I checked. This…

                  https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1921/einstein/facts/

                  …says it was mainly for the photoelectric effect, which was what I thought I remembered.

                  I did a bit more digging…If you replace “/1921/einstein/facts” with “/1926/perrin/facts/” in the above URL (getting around WP(which DE) rules about links) it shows that Perrin won the Nobel for his work on Brownian motion, based on Einstein’s theoretical work.

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                  1. Not according to Nobel Prize committee, he didn’t:

                    https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/all/

                    Einstein won exactly one Nobel, “for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.”

                    As I said, the Nobel for Brownian motion was awarded to Perrin in 1926, for his experimental work based on Einstein’s theoretical work; Einstein did not share that prize.

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      2. Before Musk and NASA and Von Braun, Robert Goddard as a boy dreamed that he would build a ship that would voyage to Mars. None of his rockets never remotely achieved orbit, but he developed the basic principles of liquid fueled rocketry.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Way back in the 70’s I read a book compiled from Robert Goddard’s lab journals. Fascinating reading, and as a teenage boy I could really appreciate all the fires and explosions. :-D

          Still, it was just as satisfying to read about the successful flights. He’d have 4 or 5 tests end in KABOOM before finally getting one to go WHOOSH!

          Liked by 1 person

        2. Yes, and the New York Times, with its usual flair for accurate reporting and non-partisanship, excoriated Goddard for his stupidity – because, you see, a rocket cannot possibly fly in a vacuum where there is nothing for it to push against.

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    4. “Them America’s are dangerous. Waste of money to sale away over there to build a future. Send off the never do wells, the poor, the criminal, let them languish on the shores of death.” (if not a quote should have been, in the 1600). How many colony footprints languished and died (without the assistance of the natives), before one took? Look at us now. They came because they were poor and had no prospects. They were pushed out, the criminals. What it took was the freedom to try to survive and thrive. And did they! We are the product.

      Musk himself may not make it to Mars. But someone will. Someone who built on what Musk and his teams have pioneered.

      Liked by 1 person

    5. Something else makes what Elon is doing important. His ships will provide protection from the most dangerous threat to civilization. A comet or asteroid hitting earth.

      Now if we learn that Swift-Tuttle, or similar was going to hit earth, nothing we could do to prevent it. Once Starship is operational, we would be able to load nukes on multiple ships, and blow up said threat. That is a much better reason to let him move as fast as possible.

      We do not know all the possible impactors. That is why Elon needs support.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. At a very high level this is true, only the massive cheap lift capability represented by Starship makes a practical impactor redirection program even possible.

        But note the effects of nuclear weapons in space are not as straightforward as one might imagine.

        Much of the effects seen when a nuclear weapon is detonated here is the result of interactions with the atmosphere – specifically the light flash, heat pulse and the various blast effects are from absorption and re-emission, the photons stepping down in frequency each time, moving into the visible and IR light frequencies. This also causers the blast wave, the instantaneous heating of the air causing it to expand supersonically outward, and the EMP effects.

        A nuke going off in deep space would haver no such atmosphere with which to interact. The detonation would basically generate a massive pulse of very high energy gamma and x-rays, so an unlucky nearby viewer might not even see it go off. If the device was near to an asteroid the wavefront of gamma and x-rays would ultimately interact with that surface, if close enough vaporizing some of the surface and thus generating a light and heat pulse at some level, which would generate some thrust. But there would be nothing but the fragmented radioactive debris from the device and the bits of the delivery vehicle to be flung about in any way, so no blast effects.

        I would want to see some experimentation, as it is not clear to me if or how much a nuke could change an orbit. The math would likely be tricky, dependent on surface composition and how close the device is when it goes off.

        Pure kinetics at orbital velocities, as with the DART impact in September 2022, could be enough to generate a miss, especially if applied early enough. And given space infrastructure and resource use, a much more massive kinetic impactor would be practical, which would generate more net force to shift an orbit (thank you, Dr. Posey, for pounding into my thick freshman skull Fnet=MA: Force (net) is equal to Mass times Acceleration).

        How much more force would the interactions with those energetic photons in gamma and x-ray frequencies impart to an asteroid? What is the difference if it’s nickel-iron or carbonaceous chondrite? How about those barely-holding-together pile of rubble objects – what would work best for them? Could it be done just by attaching a solar sail to one end or the other And letting solar flux change its orbit with no impacting or big badda boom?

        And what about comets?

        If humans are operating out there in sufficient numbers to be able to identify impact threats and apply nudges early, via whatever method is best suited, that’s the ideal. Which goes right back to making humans an interplanetary species, operating routinely in the deep dark.

        And that also raises the obvious downside: If tech exists to nudge an impactor to a near miss, the exact same tech can nudge a near miss to be an impactor.

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          1. Sure, but it needs something to vaporize. In a clean vacuum it’s just gamma and x-rays and a little radioactive melted very dispersed debris from the device.

            If you are proposing a delayed-fusing device for asteroids, letting it burrow in before it goes off, that could do something, again depending on the surface. Again, though, there’s no one-size-nuke-fits-all, and it really is begging for experimentation, which they will never do.

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    7. I see so much criticism of Musk, much of it claiming that it isn’t really Musk that matters in his companies. Instead, it’s all of the engineers working for him, and those engineers often think that Musk himself is impeding the work. Or so Musk’s critics say.

      The fact that several highly successful companies all have one thing in common, and that thing is Elon Musk, is ignored.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. 300 million people had the exact same opportunities Musk had. If he’s nothing special, why aren’t all of them tech billionaires? Same lame-ass schtick 0bama peddles. “You didn’t build that.” Like it doesn’t count unless you built it all by yourself in a cave in the desert. What a dumbass.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. maybe by pure coincidence he got more of the engineers with stronger magical powers

          (or, maybe people who think that engineers and machines are magic should _not_ have been trying to manage the technological future of a complicated society.)

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        3. Consider that when William S. Knudsen left Ford to go to General Motors, he told his fellow employees that he wanted GM to sell a car for every car Ford sold. They exceeded it during his tenure.

          When it’s the employees, not the employer, you get stories like that.

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      3. see also, “Edison just ripped off his employees”.

        Okay, some of the very successful old companies also have a problem that they are a bit of a personality cult for the founder. Lots of organizations have cults, and the cults can be wrong, without central elements of the cult being wrong.

        Founders actually can matter, hugely.

        Also, someone who thinks that the lowest level engineers can do every single part of a complicated program or project, without any value added elsewhere, does not understand engineering and complex projects.

        This is not a comment about lack of seniority. It is a comment about communication, and about intangibles. If a project is big, then it needs more man hours than a single person can provide on a desired schedule. If a project is complex, then it has more areas of required expertise than a single person can provide with a reasonable background of experience. In either case, you need to be able to communicate various things between the people doing the work. Look, if this stuff could be done simply by engineers sitting in solitude working in complete independence, and no meetings, engineers would do it that way at least some of the time, maybe all the time.

        It also does not involve a ‘leader’ sitting in a big chair, facing south, and decreeing what the spear carrying engineers will do.

        Based on tribal knowledge, a decision is made ‘we shall try to make such and such machine, to these specifications and these goals’. Using experience, textbooks, scientific papers, and or internal documentation, the basic parameters are roughly estimated. You may hand those numbers off to specialists, who work them over, and hand you refiend, or something, and eventually you prepared detailed drawings. (If going full formal, and not doing the oft preferred ‘redneck’ style.) You build your prototype, test how it works, measure, and you use those observations and measurements to adjust that design.

        It takes senior engineers who are actively engaged, and junior engineers who are attentive and bring things to discussion, to avoid problems when doing things a little bit new or out of the routine. IE, this why we have endless meeting hell, no matter how much people hate meeting hell, and want to spend more tiem with their machines.

        Now, a CEO, especially of multiple companies that do complex designs, can’t be down in the scrum with the most junior engineers on all of these.

        CEOs often do not actually matter positively where engineers are concerned.

        But, senior leadership that is insane enough will eventually be felt in the technological outcomes of junior engineers at that organization.

        There is an inference that Musk is at least good at managing and recruiting the more senior technical people. He may also be effective at communicating technical visions.

        Bottom line, he is not that insane by the standards of machine obsessives. The people who complain, from the outside and not understanding differences between machines, are the ones who are insane by the standards of machine obsessives. The people who only now have a problem with something that Musk does, in general, are people who by inclination are contrary to the development of machines.

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  5. We are meeting on the other side of midnight
    Though the dawn’s still far away
    We are looking for the future bright,
    For naught can stop the day.

    We are turning to our labors
    This battle now is won
    We are finding what God favors
    The work has just begun.

    Though the storms still may threaten
    Though there will be heavy blows
    The future looks to heaven
    What e’re we think we know.

    Heavy chains fall from hearts so burdened
    And bright hope lights their way
    Though few things yet are certain
    The morning comes to stay.

    Do not fear the morning
    The light will be our guide
    And the future now abourning
    We forge what it provides.

    Liked by 3 people

  6. I’m 74 and worked in the Computer industry since 1974. Saw, though only slightly participated in the hippie world of the 60’s where we questioned everything and expected nothing to now where the yoots don’t really question anything and expect everything to be handed to them. I teach full time at a stem college and the majority of students have no interest in anything but a narrow, this is the job I want. Many/most don’t read, books especially and what they do read they really don’t comprehend and don’t know how to apply it to anything that is not directly connected. BUT, I see Musk and the people he got together and watch them land a rocket onto a ship so it can be reused to catching one with a claw and I am encouraged that there are still people out there who think outside the box and whose imagination will advance us.

    So I have hope that the future will be bright, I most likely won’t see most of it but hopefully my daughter will and who will a part of it I think.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Don’t misjudge the kids. They’re not showing you what they are. Most of them haven’t had everything handed to them. In fact participation trophies were a thing of MY generation, not theirs. They are expected to build a resume from kindergarten.
      And they’re broken. It’s not that they don’t question anything. We know from the polls that even counting only those who dare admit it, they’re half on our side. And it’s more than likely a majority.
      They don’t show you who they are. They’ve been cancelled and beaten by the woke from their first breath.
      Give them a chance. The kids are bruised but he kids are ALL RIGHT!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. “Don’t misjudge the kids.”

        No kidding. Not just for the reasons outlined. Reality check, exit polls showed that 46% of the 18 – 29 year old (“youth vote”) regardless of other demographic, admitted to voting for President Trump. Let me repeat that: Admitted The 46% does not include those who declined to answer or flat out lied to the exit polls.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. “Swear allegiance to the flag, whatever flag they offer / never hint at what you really feel…” Not, I suspect, what the artists had in mind, but there’s a pattern of mistaking which side is which with them. And it does fit.

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      2. Indeed. For all their school years, it’s never been safe to utter a non-approved opinion. I can’t imagine the horror of going through the public schools and 4 years or more of University today.

        Why would they say what they actually believe, when their whole life experience is that even saying things that are obviously true (like there are only two sexes, or even using the word sex instead of the non-biological, grammatical term gender)?

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  7. I may not be your oldest reader, I just turned 88, and I hope I live long enough to see how well this turns out, at least in the short run. Don’t sell yourself short because of health issues. My younger brother had type 1 diabetes starting at age 21 and never expected to live past 50, he died 2 years ago at age 81. God bless him, he was a liberal through and through, but the sweetest man you would ever want to know.

    I have hopes this is turned around and the path to tyranny is paved over with beautiful wild flowers. However, I have numerous young members of my extended family who although raised conservative went to university and are now among the liberals, some of them the evil liberals, now in their 30’s, 40’s 50’s and 60’s. I question how we will end all that brainwashing.

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  8. I may not be your oldest reader, I just turned 88, and I hope I live long enough to see how well this turns out, at least in the short run. Don’t sell yourself short because of health issues. My younger brother had type 1 diabetes starting at age 21 and never expected to live past 50, he died 2 years ago at age 81. God bless him, he was a liberal through and through, but the sweetest man you would ever want to know.

    I have hopes this is turned around and the path to tyranny is paved over with beautiful wild flowers. However, I have numerous young members of my extended family who although raised conservative went to university and are now among the liberals, some of them the evil liberals, now in their 30’s, 40’s 50’s and 60’s. I question how we will end all that brainwashing.

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      1. What?? Who is this? (I can’t remember details back that far, but I think following the Sad Puppies thing in 2013/14 and exploring adjacent bloggers & authors was how I found out this place existed.) Would love to know.

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            2. There was a post about it on X. I hesitate to go quite as far as our hostess. But Wu is clearly concerned and alarmed by many of the things that are part and parcel of the American leftist culture.

              Of course, merely admitting as much in public – particularly for someone as heavily involved in much of the stuff as Wu has been – is social suicide. Cancel culture might end up pushing Wu even further than was originally the case.

              Liked by 2 people

          2. Interesting! I read a short article about it from Bari Weiss and am listening to her on Triggernometry right now, and she’s hitting some of the same points that Bill Maher does. I wouldn’t call her one of us…she’s still a progressive…but she is at least on the side of sanity, and that IS our side.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. I was listening to the same thing. I get the feeling that she still thinks it was bad messaging rather than bad ideas. Then again, I was reading a Nate Silver article where he talks about the left requiring complete agreement all the way down whilst the right is more likely to meet you half way, so maybe we should encourage her.

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              1. I listened to it yesterday, also watched the last time she was on. It is amazing to me that someone can recognize truth while at the same time not recognizing truth, a pretty conflicted individual. I get it that libs have their own truths but still can’t comprehend the brains that do it.

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            2. In the Triggernometry interview she’s still going on about DJT being a “threat to our democracy” as if that is so clearly obvious that it needs no actual supporting evidence (“mean tweets”, I should note, does not suffice), but very clear in the impact of the Dems going so far away from everyday reality that they are not even within subspace hailing distance of the working class normies, struggling with $7 butter and $9 eggs and worried about their kids.

              On the trans issue she notes the difference in public impact between “I am an adult, I decided what I am doing fully informed, and I want to be left alone” and “We’re going to indoctrinate your kindergarten kids”.

              And she bemoans the absence of Dem self reflection, agreeing that without this the Dems could be out of power for 20 years.

              I definitely agree with this last, as the main response I’ve seen is to make a video of yourself yelling and crying, cutting off all your hair, and, of course most rationally, to blame George Clooney.

              The interview was worth the time I spent listening to it.

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          3. Isn’t “Brianna Wu” one of the guys that was heavily involved in Gamer Gate?

            Or am I mistaking him for someone else?

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  10. What Musk is doing, long term, is giving humanity another frontier, an outlet through which nonconformists and Karen-targets can escape the ever-encroaching totalitarian do-gooders. This is why all the best Karens suddenly hate him and want him destroyed. He’s giving a way for their trapped victims to escape their power.

    That release valve is necessary, and the lack of it is a big part of why things have gone so crazy in these Crazy Years.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. Yeah, the lunitics truly are running the asylum. My parents were extremely protective of me but I still walked 3 miles to my cousin’s house, home from school about 6 miles, got a. 22 rifle for my 7th Christmas, etc,, etc. And that was mile compared to the freedom some of my friends had.

        Today that would, well, be highly frowned upon. I feel badly for a lot, maybe most of today’s kids. No free play, no chance to grow.

        Liked by 3 people

        2. Heck, I was part of a roaming pack of grade schoolers that traveled all over the place, through gullies and back yards, to a park, to another park, up into trees … for hours at a go. In Texas, it was a bit harder but “I’m going Out,” was sufficient. I’d go biking 6 miles away, or walk a couple miles, and so on. No phone, no adult in tow.

          ‘Course, I’d also a fight like a cornered cat, or run like the wind if someone I didn’t know even came close, so there was that.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. We were more restricted on where we could go, but “get out of the house” was a theme. Could go to the school play yard only with permission. Otherwise we biked all over the neighborhood unaccompanied.

            Hubby, and all the kids in his neighborhood were told “get out, be home by dinner”. They’d have pickup baseball games at the school, ride bikes everywhere, make up games.

            Key to both were other school aged kids in the neighborhoods. That is what our son lacked when he was in grade school. No kids in the neighborhood period, let alone any his age, and the grade school is visible from the house (still that way, although houses are starting to turn over as grandma and grandpa house is sold. Neighbors house just sold but to a young couple, no kids.)

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          2. Rough guess was that the K-2 elementary school was a half mile away. Usually walked with a neighbor kid. $DETROIT_SUBURB was a booming neighborhood and a few dozen kids lived in the immediate vicinity. We were expected to show up for lunch/dinner, but beyond that it was the Mom’s Surveillance Network keeping a loose eye. Minor and major disasters got dealt with as appropriate. Definitely not helicopter supervision. (Note: late 1950s.)

            Third-6th was a block away, as was Jr. HS. I was a latchkey kid at that time; Mom was part time secretary for that period for a couple of places. I was either at a friend’s place, home, or “elsewhere”. Might have had some chores, but that was it. Summer, wherever I was willing to bike to was acceptable. Generally didn’t carry food, so I’d be back for meals.

            Was more of a loner (one or two friends at that time) from 3rd until HS. Got into more stuff in HS and more friends–more geeks available in the large HS, much more than elementary and Jr. HS. (Town demographics put us towards the bottom of the economic pecking order, while the HS drew from a wider spread. Far more Odds in HS than before.)

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  11. Marx’s basic assumption, the one that makes the whole thing go, is that wages will always be reduced to subsistence. This is bowdlerized Adam Smith. Smith does in fact conclude that wages, in a fixed or declining economy, will tend toward subsistence. Smith also points out that the exception to this is when an economy is growing. Smith notes how wages for working men in what were then the 13 colonies were significantly higher than in England despite food and shelter being significantly cheaper, thus, real wages in the growing colonies were much higher than in england. As the world’s economy grew, so did real worker’s wages and they’ve stagnated as growth narrowed and slowed down.

    This is why Musk’s desire to go to the stars is so important. Growth on earth is slowing, we need to go to the asteroids, and the other planets and then to the stars because only then will real wages for working people continue to increase and why I hope his clean up of the US a bureaucracy doesn’t distract him too much. The starts are more important.

    Per Ardua ad Astra

    in other news. Gaetz as AG and Gabbard at ONI. Putting victims in charge of their victimizer is rough justice. Let’s see more of it.

    Liked by 2 people

    2. Over at PJ Media, Matt Margolis thinks he’ll either have a hard time getting confirmed or refused. OTOH, MM was pretty black-pilled throughout Kamala’s Kampaign of Strength Through Joy (which still sounds better in the original German). Kraft durch Freude for the loss. [VBEG]

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      1. Trump did get the senate leadership to agree to recess appointments — heh heh heh. They’d have to undo something already done. Much harder that. For myself, Gaetz seems to be alarming all the right people. DOJ in particular has to be punished for what they’ve done. Cashier the lot of them, prosecute those you can, publish and shame the rest.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. CTH has an interesting take. If they thumbs-down Gaetz for AG, then guess who could be Rubio’s replacement? I think DeSantis would go along with that…

        That and the recess appointments. This January/February is going to be lit!

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  13. Because Kipling.

    At two o’clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,

    You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.

    And the trees in the shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,

    And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done.

    So do the cows in the field. They graze for an hour and lie down,

    Dozing and chewing the cud; or a bird in the ivy wakes,

    Chirrups one note and is still, and the restless Wind strays on,

    Fidgeting far down the road, till, softly, the darkness breaks.

    https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_dawnwind.htm

    Liked by 1 person

  15. So, I’m sitting up at the rehab center (wife is still only doing so-so) and we run the Fox news on her room TV as sort of ‘white noise’. While she is taking a nap I note the people that are being put up for the Trump cabinet and am, so far, impressed. If nothing else these appointments will send a message and shake up the status quo.

    I’m feeling much better about the future and figure the grandkids will get to tell tails to their grandkids all about the “big change” they lived through and why the weekly mail run to Mars is so special. It may not be fully dawn yet but the clock has ticked past midnight and we are indeed heading to sunrise and morning.

    Liked by 1 person

  18. From the mind of an electronic music/retro guy named Daldo: Pride and Prejudice Dino Time.

    The conceit is that he wrote musical numbers for a Christian film production in 1998, but it’s actually new work.

    The odd thing is that it’s actually a pretty good adaptation/fanfic/musical/filk.

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  19. off topic, but watch China. Things are going on there. I remember writing here that the great shame of Jo Bi Den being in power was that the CCP needed one good shove and Trump was the one willing to give it a go. Well, he’s back and that fact has not gone unnoticed.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I saw a recent Epoch Times story claiming multiple provincial governors have been offed. Now the automotive mass killing (proving, once again, you don’t need an awful, evil gun to kill 35 or so people at one time). The story claimed the 62-year-old perp was in a coma due to a “self-inflicted blow,” but I wonder if the cops didn’t help it along a bit.

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  20. I believe we live in a time where EVERYDAY is a new slightly different world … for decades it seemed the world got a little darker each day … but since 2016 it appeared that the light held the line … it wasn’t getting darker but also not much lighter … since 2020, even with the Biden fraud win it seemed like the darkness couldn’t make any headway … since Nov 6th it feels like the dawn of each day is a little brighter …

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Yep, Trump and Musk have turned the sad puppies happy. I look forward to them romping through government knocking things over and tearing the stuffing out of the carpetbags.

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      2. Blue collar (the ones who roll up their sleeves and get things done) vs. white collar (the ones who ‘make policy’s and shuffle paper)?

        Liked by 2 people

  23. Glancing at Instapundit, I just saw two images side by side: captures of AOC’s brief online bio. The old one gives her title as “representative” and her pronouns as “she/her.” The new one, apparently just now posted, gives her title as “congresswoman” and doesn’t specify her pronouns! I take this on one hand to be evidence that her real identity is defined by her ambitions, and on the other that she’s reassessed what self-definition actually serves those ambitions . . .

    Liked by 1 person

  24. I had the feeling Trump would win but the prospect of fraud worried me. Wed morning I didn’t click on anything with news headlines for a couple of hours because I didn’t want to start my day with Kamala Harris’s smug face staring back at me while the media-government complex did a victory dance on the corpse of the country. And then I finally looked.

    I wish I had looked sooner.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. I was reminded of the issue of the “Ayn Rand Letter” that came out after the Nixon-McGovern election, when her first response was “Good morning!” It’s dated November 20, 1972 and is worth re-reading for the many things in it that echo our current political situation.

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  26. Pingback: Current Events 11-15-2024 – HUCKSWORLD.com

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