Uncharted Wilderness

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Most of the time we look at a landscape, particularly if we live in it, and we know exactly where the road or the walking path is. We know that if we set off from here, we’ll walk that way, and…

And then there’s snow storms in Colorado, where I lived most of my adult life.

Colorado is not, as most people who know it only from TV think, a place where it snows early in Fall, and it stays covered up till next Spring. That’s more a thing of Ohio or Pennsylvania. I mean, there are places in Colorado — the high ranges — where it’s definitely like that, but that’s not most of it. Most of it, you have sun and snow, and days that are completely dry, and then days you are buried. There is no guarantee what type of day you’ll have. Some days you’ll wake up to a beautiful sunny day, then find yourself buried in snow by nightfall. Once in Manitou Springs, it was sunny in front of our house, and snowing in the back.

And then there were the sudden snowstorms that covered everything. Once or twice they caught us on the road, and even WHERE the road was became a matter of opinion. Obvious (and dangerous) if one side goes down a deep ravine, but the other side? Yeah, you’re on your own. It’s uncharted flat white.

We find ourselves kind of like that in our current political landscape.

You see, there has been a storm, a bad one, and it flattened everything. But in its wake, we are left in a changed landscape, where the usual sign posts don’t apply — except for the ravines, of course. Those are still there and hellofdangerous.

I probably don’t need to elaborate for this audience, but the storm was the stolen election, and its threat that we’d never again be free to choose our path, that — from now on — we were in the hands of the international oligarchs, and that at most we could carve our tiny little paces of semi-freedom, but we’d never be a free PEOPLE — or by extension, a free species (most of the species is. The West even is iffy. The US remains the last, best hope of mankind) — again.

Yes, I know, I expected differently. Because like with the Diamond Princess and the Covidiocy, I did the math. They can’t win. it’s impossible.

But even I expected a long period of darkness, or a blood bath in the way to our being free again. I prayed otherwise, but….

Well, on election day we got our miracle, a culmination of at least two previous miracles. And here we are.

And everything has changed. The problem is that the if you really look at it, the storm has been a succession of storms, starting about 100 years ago. And throughout it, it looked like there would be only one road, and only one way to move, and it would all end up in a prolonged darkness, which the sun of freedom might never penetrate.

But these things are never as they look, and beneath the snow cover, things were moving and the landscape was changing.

To be precise, the industry was changing, from one where large and central had all the benefits of being more economic and more profitable, to one where — not fully yet, but we can see it from here — distributed everything, and largely automated factories with minimal human labor are the future. And what a future it is. The same tech allows distributed communication, and it allows information to travel from those who have it to those who need it in almost no time. (Seriously. I once fixed my vaccum in no time by looking at a few you tube videos. You can also learn just about anything from those. From practical skills to languages, to history, to–). Even though there’s some resistance (including from Musk, sigh. It’s his reflexive liberal. It’s not fair to work from home, since not everyone can. Poppycock.) obviously distributed, from home, from your small town, a bit from everywhere working (and living) is the future. And it is a future that also allows women to work/pursue an avocation while looking after their own kids. This is leading to revolutions in teaching and in… well, just about everything else.

The world simply isn’t the same as when civilization started getting frosted over, and we assumed the future was the world of 1984 or Brave New World, and the most we could do was delay it a bit.

Paradoxically while that world seemed to be driving to a super state across the world (which FYI is inevitable tyranny) the fact we can communicate effortlessly across borders and across the world, perhaps by making us aware of cultural differences is fueling a drive towards nationalism. Which, contrary to what you’ve been taught in school is not fueling a drive for war, or Hitler like racial purges or whatever the crazy. WWI was caused by INTERNATIONALISM, i.e. by the royal families of Europe getting ambitious and trying to establish multi-continental empires. Being governed small and closer to home is always better for freedom. If those in power know you can come to their house and isekai protest them (like truck con protest them) they tend to behave a bit better. (Or, put up barricades if they’re Jarred Polis, whose conscience must be the deepest dark dingiest hell on Earth.)

Anyway, in this new world, a few things become not clear. Like, sure, RFK is still a commie (well, his dad was one TBF) but is he a bad person to be in charge of the FDA? Consider what the FDA is and what it’s been up to. What we know for absolute sure it has done is bad enough. I’m sure there’s stuff we don’t even know about. As long as he doesn’t try to fill it up with stranger and more strict requirements for… everything, why should we mind?

Tulsi Gabbard is still at the very least commie-adjacent, but she was victimized by the security apparatus by being put on a no fly list. Sure she might just reverse the polarity of the abuses. But she might also have seen the elephant and, in the light of the new day, seek to put the brakes on the overstepping. It’s worth a try.

Things like tariffs…. well, I ain’t no fan of them, but you know? The president has to at least be able to threaten them convincingly, so I’m willing to leave his elbow free. And I don’t know. I don’t like tariffs, but I hate taxes, particularly since they eat months of my husband’s time in calculating what all my strange little businesses owe. Maybe, just maybe we can swap them for tariffs, or come up with a yet more creative solution to finance the essential functions of government.

I’m open to what might come. I mean, today DOGE announced it’s hiring, but the job won’t be paid. Using American culture of voluntarism to cut the wasteful state? It’s amazing. It’s the most American thing ever. And think of all our retirees who just found a fun project for their golden years. (If I didn’t have books to write, I’d be volunteering myself. And if we had more money, my husband (and younger kid) would already be applying. Since they’re math geniuses, they probably could help.)

Meanwhile, yes, of course, the ravine stays. I will be watching very carefully and squawk at everything and anything that trespasses on the essential rules: The state should be small (we can start with smaller) and afraid of its people, not the people afraid of their state. And DON’T HURT PEOPLE AND DON’T TAKE THEIR STUFF.

Those are ravines indeed, and we’ve been driving with a wheel over that abyss for far too long. We might not know where the road is, but let’s get the heck out of the dangerous spot.

The rest? The rest is wide open.

Where a dark and dreary road the entire world was pushed into used to be, there is now a trackless wilderness. Into which we can cut paths, alleys, roads, delightful little gardens, and probably fly over it, or tunnel under too.

What is dawning is a day of great experimentation free of the “certainties” of the 20th century which, if we’re all lucky, is now dead and will soon be buried.

Let’s try to make stuff better. Some of it will even succeed. And let’s stop doing the stuff we already know doesn’t work. No, it won’t be different this time. Let 100 million eggs with no omelets be waste enough. Don’t add to it.

Go and create and figure out ways to do things: cheaper, better, with less hurting people and taking their stuff.

And take a deep breath of the crisp, cool air of the new world.

What a time to be alive.

146 thoughts on “Uncharted Wilderness”

  1. Going out into uncharted wilderness can be scary but that always been a “fact of life”.

    The Future has always been uncharted wilderness (or the undiscovered country as one Star Trek movie called it).

    The biggest “mistake” of our enemies has been their conceit that they could easily map out a road to a Glorious Future as well as their belief that their Glorious Future was inevitable.

    Humans can “plan for the future” but must always be aware of “Murphy’s Law”. (IE What can go wrong will go wrong.)

    I don’t see humans as “helpless victims” of the Future but too many people imagine that they can control what the Future will.

    Of course, they can’t really control the Future but attempt to do so by controlling other people.

    Hopefully, what Future will come will be created by Free People not by the would-be Slave-Masters.

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    1. Imagine how tired Australopithecus Bob was of his mother-in-law that he was able to convince his wife to pick up the kids and walk all the way out of the only continent that had anything resembling humans.

      A while later it was H. heidelbergensis Fred who did the same thing, though apparently it was his wife Susan who was sick of her mother-in-law there. Then again with the H. Sapiens Bob and Sally family, who simultaneously had it up to here with both their respective mothers-in-law.

      In each case they picked up the kids and their best sharpened rocks and walked into the unknown wilderness.

      It’s scary, but sometimes you have to do scary things. It’s in our blood.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. I think it was General Eisenhower who said, “Planning is essential. Plans are useless.” Try to prepare for whatever might happen, but remember that the other side also gets a vote and can thoroughly mess up your plans without even trying.

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  2. Look, the people whom you’d like to contain in a box labelled “break glass in case of…” are rarely stable, sane, and comfortable to be around.

    But when a “case of…” comes around, they’re often far more effective than the dude who everyone likes and doesn’t make waves.

    Given that we have been in the Fuck Around of times, I’m going to sit back and watch with glee as Trump lets loose the dogs of war as we enter the Find Out of times.

    Like any bell curve, a few of them will fail completely. Some of them will make decent headway. And a few will succeed beyond our wildest dreams.

    It’s a great time to be alive, and Hope is a potent thing.

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    1. Printer-kun can’t notify anybody if it’s not connected to the internet. Or, build your own printer that’s not a snitch.

      Didn’t they try ‘smart’ refrigerators that didn’t let you eat what you’re ‘not supposed’ to eat?

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        1. And you gonna make ALL the parts and chips? How do you know what’s in that firmware? (Don’t forget the supply cartridges) Yeah, you CAN get around it, but the effort and talent required will shrink the potential pool of users rather dramatically.

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              1. It would have to be based off shape analysis. I’m not sure what metadata is included in the STL files, but so far they have not succeeded in being able to include copywrite information in the files. And, too many of them are being made by people who don’t want stuff tracked.

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              2. Right now, it depends on the engine and what it is trained to process. Usually it’s a shifting mix of both. Shape analysis can be spoofed, as someone pointed out below, but the overriding bias is going to be denial of permission; there are no well funded groups of Sandy Hook parents waiting to sue you for denying permission that leads to a “tragedy”.

                You will have to break the underlying culture of safetyism, and a legal system that encourages repeated litigation, to change that.

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            2. Haven’t looked at the 80% lowers, but I’m guessing a careful run with a mill-drill (it used to be a third the price of a used Bridgeport) would do the job. Village Press (Home Shop Machinist) offered a book from a series of articles on how to make a single shot rifle action from scratch. Haven’t subscribed for a few years, but it was in print around 2021.

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              1. There was a blog with a photo set for “Mujahedeen AR lower”. It showed an 80% lower being finished with a hand drill, file, and (I think) a chisel.

                The old Weaponeer forum had a long thread about building a lower from a pine board with a knife and a drill, and another for doing one from several Dollar General plastic cutting boards laminated together.

                “Jack Squat’s Flat Spot” used to sell a pile of laser-cut sheet steel bits you could MIG or braze together to make an AR lower.

                All of those sites seem to be offline at the moment, but they showed it was possible to build a lower out of almost anything.

                Remember, an AR lower is just a bracket to hold the magazine and trigger bits in the proper relation to each other. There’s almost no load on it, which is why there are commercial receivers made out of plastic.

                All of the precision, pressure-bearing bits of an AR are in the upper, which is entirely unregulated. In the USA, anyway.

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                1. Also note an AK upper, the restricted part, has been successfully made from an old shovel blade, using hand tools and a drill. It’s basically a flat piece of steel with some holes drilled in it folded into a u-shape. Definitely not as high tech as an AR lower.

                  The entire effort is a futile attack on what for bad guys is basically a convenience option, as bad actors can always get parts or even entire weapons walked in over our open borders. If they can’t stop tons of drugs, they obviously can’t stop tons of metal weapon parts – in fact, it is objectively easier to smuggle those in on trucks through border crossings, as there’s no such thing as weapons-parts sniffing dogs.

                  They’d be better off shifting the “ghost gun” funding back to the gang task forces that have been mostly defunded within local LE.

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                  1. “there’s no such thing as weapons-parts sniffing dogs.“

                    Correct. The dogs are taught to detect the scent of firearm cleaning oil and contents of gun powder. While iron has its own scent, iron is used in everything, too many false positives. The firearm cleaning oil has even tripped up dogs in airports having them alert on wheelchairs. Wheelchair cleaners often use gun cleaning oil on the wheel joints.

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                    1. A shipment of parts would smell like…machined metal parts. Machining oil and steel or aluminum. Or if the shipment came from the anglosphere, aluminium.

                      Which also describes all of the auto parts going back and forth to or from any remaining Mexican production plants for US automakers.

                      If they’ve been built and fired, firearms would have those specific weapons lube smells plus burned gunpowder traces, but a crate of aluminum or steel receivers? Just metal and machining oil.

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          2. Do you realize just how basic the chips are? You can’t block that without burning down the entire planetary economy.

            As for the firmware, anyone serious is running open source firmware. Including most of the commercial machines.

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        2. If I were going to print firearms parts (don’t have a 3D printer, and haven’t any enthusiasm for one. Yet.), I’d stay away from Printers-r-us(TM). There are printers that are happy to run off a stand-alone computer, and the sufficiently motivated can design their own parts. Or find designs and borrow portions. (I assume a full set of designs can be found on a site controlled by the ATF, but I’m paranoid that way.) One guy doing his own 3D print designs (for various things; no firearms, though he was looking at a way to satisfy NY law on magazine capacity with a printed blockout) is at https://softsolder.com/ . (He also uses a laser engraver, but he writes about the various tech gear he has and I’m pretty sure it all counts as a business expense. At least partially.)

          I suspect it’ll end up being “you can’t stop the signal”. I’m recalling the DVD decryption software that the producers were bound and determined to stop. When it came to a trial in San Jose, somebody made T-shirts with the de-CSS source code printed on the shirt. (Not a complex piece of software, so “hard” copy was sufficient.) Yeah, Thugs-r-us will do their thing, but they won’t be able to get everybody.

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          1. I’m on my 10th printer and I love them, Most of them are made in China, and so far none require an internet connection to work. They mostly have the internet stuff so you can hook them up to your router. And even then most of them are wireless.

            If they ever get to the point were you must have them internet hooked up like so many stupid 2d printers I will scream.

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            1. Some Hewlett-Packard inkjet printers can’t be installed and configured without a live internet connection. You can download and run the driver CD, but installation will fail unless you can “update” the install before using it.

              Not to mention most of them have built-in web servers for “wireless printing”, and chat periodically with the HP mothership.

              “It’s security, Jim, but not as we know it.”

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              1. Despite (or because–depends) my working for HP/Agilent for 22 years, there are very good reasons why my printer is a Brother, and the non-retired computers in the household are Dells. (The Y2K vintage Sony is in the “to be de-disked and recycled” state.)

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              2. Isn’t HP infamous for having their actual ink cartridges expire after a certain period of time, they just quit working no matter how full they are? That’s one reason I have an Epson Ecotank. It’s still Internet-intrusive, but at least I can let it sit for a few months and not have the ink cartridges fail. A little print-head cleaning and it’s ready to rock. I’m literally still using the original load of ink from when I bought it and I’ve had it 2+ years.

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                1. Nor that one can tell short of taking the cartridge apart (which I am so not doing). Experience I have with HP printers is the cartridges disappear off the market, except for refilled ones. Somehow those aren’t good enough. Yep, our last HP printer is sitting upstairs ready to get dump, er, donated to Goodwill. The smaller Epson Eco Printer will work for us great (got it for $99 at Costco, two sets of ink fill, barely touched the ink).

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                2. HP cartridges have some sort of chip with a date on it. But, if you look on the internet you can find ways to disable it. (supposedly you could drill a little hole and kill the chip)

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          1. And of course 99% of the people using 3D are using exactly those types of printers. You are assuming your level of expertise is the norm.

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            1. No I’m assuming that I know a lot about this world.

              You are coming in telling everyone and expecting them to believe things which don’t even make sense from a general technical understanding, let alone knowing anything about the 3dp world.

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    2. Most of the more modern more automated printers have both a “send your print job through the cloud” as well as “send direct over local network” and “read from SD card”. Those latter, being purely local, are harder to effectively examine for naughty bits given the processing power of printer controllers, unless the parts are called “gun part one” or “shooty part two”.

      But even looking at just the cloud transmitted stuff, given all the Star Wars Blaster replicas, HALO weapons, and anime firearms and similar available as 3d printable kits, I would not want to be the programmer tasked with coding something to find real naughty parts in the sea of replica movie naughty prop parts.

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      1. Again, it won’t be impossible; just more difficult than it might seem. And again, the first line of attack is likely to be no connectee no workee.

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          1. For you, yes. How many people in the next generation have those tools and skills? How many in OUR generation retain body and mind to use what we have? It’s all about the incrementalism.

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            1. It’s going to be a back and forth. Somebody figures out how to make a printer work without ratting the owner out, and TPTB figure out how to close that loophole. Meanwhile, another loophole is discovered/created, and rinse and repeat.

              Meanwhile, some other geeks are figuring out another way to make contraband devices that don’t use 3D printers, or (more likely in the short term) make devices that the printers don’t recognize as parts of contraband things.

              For amusement sake, look up the Liberty pistol and check out the names used for the various parts of it. Wiki has the details, and I got quite the chuckle.

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              1. Probably. Of course, my 35 years in IT has been pretty much implementing for salesweasels who overpromised and underdelivered, and management whose basic assumption is that everything will go as planned the first time. I hope you’re right….. but I doubt it.

                Start with defining “effective”. If their sabotage cuts the number of possible suppliers in half while doubling the time required, is that effective enough?

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                1. Dude; the bright kids who spent the last 50 years mining value out of pure computing?

                  They are all going matter manipulation now. I’m one of them.

                  Probably. Of course, my 35 years in IT has been pretty much implementing for salesweasels who overpromised and underdelivered, and management whose basic assumption is that everything will go as planned the first time.

                  Who, exactly, do you think our enemies are but them?

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            3. Incrementalism assumes 1. time, and 2. that over that time your preferred system is going to win out.

              Printers violate both of those. The hobbyists are solidly in the front seat on this, and have become *more* dominant over time, not less.

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      2. /I would not want to be the programmer tasked with coding something to find real naughty parts in the sea of replica movie naughty prop parts.

        Especially given that Star Wars blasters are literally WW1 and WW2 guns with gribbly bits added.

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    3. So the hardcoded “notify the authorities” channel somehow won’t be flooded with billions, trillions of spam reports?

      And nobody will possibly hack or patch the code installed on these printers so those “audit” files get mysteriously corrupted? Heck, I very am far from current on such and I can think of five ways off the top of my head to cause such files to be made intact-looking yet unreadable.

      Are these software developers living in the same universe as me?

      This is just press release virtue signaling and .gov grant chasing by those universities mentioned.

      It. Will. Never. Work.

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      1. “So the hardcoded “notify the authorities” channel somehow won’t be flooded with billions, trillions of spam reports?”

        Oh, absolutely they will. Of course, all the ones that aren’t encrypted with the individual key issued to each printer will hit the bit bucket.

        “And nobody will possibly hack or patch the code installed on these printers so those “audit” files get mysteriously corrupted? Heck, I very am far from current on such and I can think of five ways off the top of my head to cause such files to be made intact-looking yet unreadable.”

        Again, the individual encryption key will sign the message, so they’ll know which printer sent it. You think they’re bad about wanting the warranty cards filled out NOW? 😏

        And if it decrypts to something unintelligible? Then the release key is never sent back to unlock it. Your best bet is locating someone on the inside to give you the public key / private key that will decrypt the message, or insert your printer’s private key into a whitelist.

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        1. I am not anything close to an IT expert – my last cubical-land job was in technical marketing for gosh sakes – but even I could set up a local airgapped Ethernet network that has a raspberry pi that says it is whatever rat-fink-upload IP address I need it to say it is, or alternately, whatever mapped name address required thanks to a local dns, that with a tiny bit of experimenting and scripting, acknowledges correctly and then directs all incoming rat-me-out files to /dev/null. So my unmodified commercial printer could think it’s ratting me out all day long when it’s just sending its reports to literally nowhere.

          And that’s a totally hack lazy way to solve that problem.

          This stuff only works if it’s secret. Once the tech community knows, it’s going to be worked around and neutralized.

          And the great-idea-fairy bozos up top put out a press release describing their new rat-fink software.

          This will only ever be incorporated in corporate-owned 3d printers to discourage after-hours employee use to make fun stuff.

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          1. The local ethernet IP spoof sounds like the best way to deal with it, and has the advantage that it’s a one-time fix, with only minor tweaking required for a newer printer to be “rat-fink-proofed”. Let it report once with a packet sniffer in the loop and all the required info should be available. Unless it’s a rotating cipher, which seems like it would be a bit much for a dynamic system of multiple-million clients, unlike the ones used for garage-door openers. I’ve been out of the EE business for almost 20 years, but some problems, and their solutions, never really change.

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            1. Well, the best way would be to hack the printer code and comment out the entire ratfink subroutine guts, just leaving the header stuff to cheerfully report back “Ratfinking Complete!”, but the lazy way works too.

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              1. Either one requires some effort; either one should work. The main advantage I see for the “lazy” way is the lack of need to hack each printer; just record the packets and spoof.

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      2. Meanwhile those same authorities let a pair of illegal immigrants with cartel gang tattoos who had a loaded AR-15 as they assaulted a cop, go free (the Socialist State and City of New York of course).

        https://nypost.com/2024/11/15/us-news/migrant-with-loaded-ar-15-suspected-mexican-cartel-member-freed-from-jail-after-alleged-assault-on-cops/

        The Democrats/left (but I repeat myself) only have a problem with guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. They have no problem with criminal gangs having guns, even when they are guns that 1) they want to ban outright, and 2) the people who have them are barred from existing gun laws from having them, i,e,. illegal aliens.

        It’s as if the goal is to create violence and chaos in the streets where citizens are prey in order to obtain political power……oh wait…

        Liked by 1 person

    4. The good news is that if this starts to become a wide-spread thing, the more popular models will have cracked versions of the software released that turn off this “feature”.

      Those cracks will probably also need to turn off the auto-updates for the printer software or firmware.

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      1. Aye. Though I have to admit that there has to be a better way to come up with a DIY firearm than using a 3D printer.

        OTOH, there are all kinds of things that could be printed that TPTB might not want us to make…

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        1. There are desktop computer controlled mills. The most recent “problematic” use case for those re firearms were “80% receiver” designs that were pre-machined sufficiently short of a working part that they did not qualify as a weapon receiver legally. But demonization and legal attacks against those has predictably led to “0% receiver” designs where the starting point is an undifferentiated block of metal, which just takes a bit longer to remove all the non-end-state bits.

          When I was in college I was told that once upon a time machinists in German technical schools got a set of metal files and a block of steel, along with blueprints for something like a bench vise, and to graduate from their program they had to present their finished vise, made only with those files. Yes, slow, but anything can pretty much be made by hand., even complex things like screw threads. Add a few bits of technology and an experienced machinist can make literally anything. And with CAM moving to benchtops it becomes an effort to restrict knowledge and availability of CAM files, which arguably runs into freedom of speech – what is the difference between a book in electronic form that lists the machining commands needed and a file of machining commands?

          So again it’s a fruitless endeavor if one presumes US law and Constitutional protections actually apply.

          But that never stops them from so endeavoring.

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          1. Reliable to the point where multiple rounds can be shot without the barrel going toes up. Perhaps the ability to use a rifled barrel from XYZ’s supply of barrels (I’m not sure I’d like a light pistol in .45 ACP).

            I’d think more of a hybrid; metal where it does good, printed plastic (or sintered metal) for other parts. Musing: has anybody come up with a consumable that would be suited for lost wax casting? Tiny batch foundry might be a way to go.

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            1. 3dp guns were way ahead of this several years ago. Electrochemical machining can be used to turn any hydraulic pipe into a rifled and chambered barrel.

              But since you specified the ability to use already existing commercially available pressure-parts like barrels, printed guns have been a solved problem for even longer than that.

              And now you can glimpse why 3dp-2a people have a temptation to irritability: because they are constantly beset with “but what about [objection I though of 2 seconds ago]?! No one could have thought of that!!!!1!”.

              And invariably the brilliant and insightful objection was either solved years ago, or is under active development.

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              1. Ah, the joys and pitfalls of not following the updates. I recall seeing articles about early (1st generation?) printed firearms, and they were a bit spooky. I’ve seen (from writeups) what printers can do, but haven’t followed the combination of printing and firearms after that first exposure. (Didn’t somebody try a printed plastic barrel? Er, please shoot it remotely.)

                Going back a few decades, “lost foam” casting was a thing*. You didn’t need an investment painted on the to-be-lost substrate, with foundry sand doing the job. I wonder if some of the print media plastics could act like the foam.

                ((*)) Vague memory says it was being used for aluminum engine pieces, ranging from engine blocks to cylinder heads. I don’t know if it went into production or got stuck in the laboratory.

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                1. ”Lost plastic casting” where said plastic is 3d printed is already a thing. There are apparently tricky bits, and finishing steps required, but people are already doing it.

                  And there are 3d printing filaments that foam on heating, nominally used to make lightweight 3d printed RC aircraft parts, and the 3d printing slicer software knows how much it expands so as to compensate and generate print files to get the net end shape desired, that would likely work fine for lost-foam casting.

                  Lots of smart people with a lot of odd prior expertise are doing stuff with 3d printers.

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                  1. Sounds very good. I think I have too many projects on my plate (unless I live another 50 years–not at 72), but it’s worth noting and keeping in the “maybe” file.

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  4. I’m guessing you probably had sun and snow in the front yard that day in Manitou Springs, but it’s fun to imagine any cats you had at the time being the cats who really did find the Door Into Summer. :)

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  5. The wilderness might be unfamiliar, but let us recall that 99% of the bullsh1t we complain about with government happened since 1910. Most of it happened after 1970. A healthy percentage is less than 25 years old.

    There was a time, fairly recently, when you could buy a gun at the hardware store and go shoot rats at the town dump. And, you could expect the Nativity scene put up by the town at Christmas to have a Baby Jesus figurine in the little manger. (Yes, dear Lefties, there was. For sure. I remember. Stop screaming.)

    Ask your grandma how free people live. She knows.

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      2. Burroughs talks about this in his book “Days of Rage”. The early domestic terrorists were stunned and delighted with how easy it was to buy dynamite. You can blame them for the difficulty in getting it now.

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        1. No, blame the lazy a$$holes in government. It’s just one more example of the idiot collectivist mantra: “Regulate things, not criminals.”

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  6. just got home from going to an Amish market in Princeton. It’s usually crowded with a fairly eclectic mix of working people, black church ladies, Asians of various persuasions, and the Princeton U crowd including the rich ladies that lunch — it’s quite a prosperous area with a lot of very old money.

    Today the working people were there, the black church ladies were there, the Asians of various persuasions were there, but the Princeton U crowd and the rich ladies that lunch were not there. My list of why I hate those people gets longer and longer.

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    1. There really is no reason not to revoke the tax-exempt status and tax the investment firms masquerading as top tier schools’ endowments.

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      1. The Reader would prefer simply pulling all government money from ‘higher’ education, including research funding. Then we’ll see what survives.

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        1. Ah, but current funding is a tiny trickle compared to the simply immense endowments. Example from out here is Stanford University. Per their latest report the Stanford endowment “merged pool” totaled “$42.8 billion as of June 30, 2024”. And they are reportedly returning an average of 10% annually.

          Cite: https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/10/stanford-university-reports-return-on-investment-portfolio-value-of-endowment

          Harvard’s is $51b, Yale’s is $41b, and so on.

          $50 billion here and $40 billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money.

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            1. And that 10% average* is TAX FREE.

              * The Stanford article whines theirs is “only” 8.4%, noting “Stanford’s performance trailed the 10.1% median return for U.S. college and university endowments for the year, as preliminarily reported by Cambridge Associates.”)

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              1. Endowments mean something if federal money is cutoff. What does it mean if their schools lose their accreditation? … Asking for a friend.

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                1. What is ‘Accreditation’ but another form of credentialism? What happens when the credentials are bestowed (and rescinded) due not to merit, but political compliance? We get what we see all around us today, credentials that are a waste of the paper they’re printed on.

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            1. DING ding ding ding ding! We have a winnah!

              Put them on the hook for a minimum guaranteed income as a result of their degree, escalating each year after graduation, where the University has to pay the student loan payments any year the graduate falls short.

              If their underwater intersectional fungus cultivation bachelor’s degree is worth it, they will never have to pay a dime!

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              1. Except that the graduate can choose which jobs to take. Under this regime, the college can be stuck with the loan because an irresponsible borrower decides to drop everything to “find himself.”

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                  1. They aren’t lending money. The banks lend money to students. You are sticking a third-party with the consequences of other people’s decisions.

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                    1. Don’t students have to be accepted to a college before they can get student loans? And then the college takes the money. They’re direct participants in the whole affair! If they face no consequences for failing to prepare students for, well, LIFE, you get what we see today — worthless credentials and PhD’s serving fast food. Badly.

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                    2. Would be home-owners have to have a house in mind before they get the loan, and then the old owners take the money.

                      By your logic, if the new owners simply refused to pay their mortgages, the old owners should be charged.

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                    3. Banks loan the schools the money. The schools are the gatekeepers of who gets the money. Might make them insure the students actually learn something that make them employable.

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                    4. The banks send the school the money to ensure that it doesn’t get embezzled en route. That doesn’t mean they lend them the money.

                      And nothing can ensure the students learn anything, because the students get a vote.

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                    5. There is so much fraud from the schools. And no, the money is not from the banks. This is what everyone is missing. The money is already gone. it was printed by the government and given the schools.
                      Set the people free.

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    3. I’ve hated them every since I habitually got delayed going down state route 571/Washington Road to get from points South and East to US 206 or destinations in Princeton proper. The students are oblivious to traffic and crosswalks, and so many of the go crossing it can take five minutes to make it the half mile or so through campus. Their supercilious, condescending attitudes just make things worse. Making commuters walk another thousand feet so they could have more parking and on-campus amenities where the train station was was a total jerk move, and Chris Christie helped it happen.

      At least their patronage of Thomas Sweet Shop does help it stay in business so I can get delicious blend-in ice cream each time I come East to visit family. The ice cream itself is very good, but not as good as Graeters or Aglemesis here in Cincinnati, but very good ice cream plus blend-ins are a great combo.

      This does inspire me to make sure I can swing a stop at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord in Lancaster County next trip, and buy Amish goods at the adjacent market.

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      1. I took Paul Robeson Place round the back where the slave quarters used to be from 206 onto 27 and bypassed the worst of it. naming your main bypass after some commie sums PU up for me. You can smell the cringe and the smug. There’s still one good bookstore, used to be three, but they made the toilets gender bender. The men’s room is still a men’s room essentially so the women now have none and the men have two. That’s the whole trans thing in a nutshell, weaponized misogyny.

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      2. Shady Maple is just up the road. I think Millers on Lincoln Highway is better, but Shady Maple is HUGE. Sarah’s comment about snow in PA gave me a laugh; we had that maybe 50 years ago. Northern NY still gets it occasionally, but even the Appalachians in PA don’t get reliably snowed in anymore. Might happen again, though. But driving electric cars won’t have any effect on when that might happen!

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        1. Thanks, I might give Miller’s a try, too. I see it is pretty close to both Dutch Wonderland and the railroad attractions, so very convenient for a fun time stop on the next trip.

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    4. if you decide to order from Holtermann’s Bakery on Staten Island after Woopsie’s outburst, I can recommend the powdered doughnuts. Deep fried goodness. Their NY Crumbcake is excellent too. In fact, everything the make is excellent. They’re the last of the old, local bakeries in that part of SI, and right down the street from where I grew up. they used to deliver our bread and I still stop in for doughnuts when I’m passing by.

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      1. Looks to be about seven miles northeast of a cousin’s place, but probably 15 by road given Raritan Bay is in between. I might have to check it out next trip East, just to spite that harridan from The View.

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        1. do give it a try. It’s not all that inconvenient to get to from NJ. Showing that I’m still utterly unreconstructed, the girls that work there tend to be very pretty. When I was young it was the six M———y sisters, seriatim. Six stunning redheads. Last time I was there it was a blonde, but still very pretty. The wife always laughs at me when so say aim going there, but then she was a stunning redhead too so, ….

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        2. I see that patrons of the bakery are encouraging them to launch a defamation suit against Caryn Elaine Johnson (dba Whoopi Goldberg). If Oberlin College can be clobbered, why not her? Might even pay for new boilers…

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  7. God I hope the economy picks up soon. People do not buy art when they think Civil War 2/WW3 is going to break out any day now because Senile and Ho were in charge.

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    1. While no one knows how things will turn out, I’ll note that it took two years for Reagan to get the economy back on track following his election victory over Carter in 1980.

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      1. As foreseen by the prophet (and no, not The Babylon Bee). Milton Friedman said there would be a year or two of economic pain after Reagan implemented his program, but after that Katy bar the door. This is probably the most accurate forecast by an economist I have ever heard of.

        Trump isn’t facing the same set of economic problems, and his plan is certainly different, so who can say what the response will be and how soon it will come. Well, Friedman could have, but he’s gone. Has anyone asked Thomas Sowell’s opinion?

        Republica restituendae.

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  8. My whole 30+ years of IT has been “net to the job”. Stuff never stays the same. And we need to “Take Advantage of Change.”

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  9. I am just relieved that the organized steal wasn’t sufficient to bury Trump’s lead. And that the vile progs haven’t gone all violent. Yet, anyway. And WP still hates me, so this comment is short, hopefully to avoid spam hell.

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  10. “Once in Manitou Springs, it was sunny in front of our house, and snowing in the back.”

    So, Sarah, you have seen the rain, er, snow coming down on a sunny day….

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      1. Which month won’t it snow in Montana or Wyoming? (Heck even the Cascades or even high pass in Yosemite? In the Cascades generally above the road passes at 5000 feet, only affecting hikers and backpackers, but still snowing.)

        Answer: Hasn’t been invented yet.

        Snow in “summer” may even close passes like Yellowstone Dunraven, Bearthooth, and continental divide passes, and Tuolomne Meadows in Yosemite, even in July and August. Not long. But have seen them close to all vehicle traffic, more often just to RV’s (which gets interesting if you have an RV parked at a campground, you are scheduled to leave, and the road out is closed. (Yes, had happened on scout outings. Meant pulling out the night before, before roads got shutdown to all traffic. Early August.)

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        1. On my first visit to Rocky Mountain National Park, in early July 2008, I woke up one morning and tossed on shorts and a tee shirt to be comfortable in the warm, sunny day. I drove up Trail Ridge Road, and had to toss on a jacket because it was cool and windy as I roamed above tree line. Then the storm blew in late afternoon, and hit me with snow.

          Mid-June 2012 was shirtsleeve weather at Yellowstone, and I still woke up one morning to find my van and campsite covered in a light layer of snow.

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          1. Yes. Yellowstone and Glacier, and to an extent Tetons (if hiking). First two locations, wear layers, because cold in the AM, June – September, mean you are stripping down in PM to cooler clothing. Tetons, pretty much have to be hiking in the mountains themselves. But will start with light clothing for the heat of the valley, and adding layers when rising into the mountains. The over it all layer for us is good rain gear. Works against wind as good as it does against snow and rain, and each piece compresses down for better storage in day packs.

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            1. Mid-September 2021 we left Grand Teton just a a day or two ahead of their first snow of the season. Days were warm but overnight lows were getting down to just above freezing.

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        2. I’ve been told (but have not yet seen) that the Independence Day parade in Flyover Falls has been snowed on. Nothing since 2004… We also haven’t had the 3 foot snowfall that has happened. (I’ve heard credible stories about massive snowfalls in the late 1940s. Apparently, one year $TINY_TOWN had to do snow tunnels “downtown”.

          OTOH, in modern times, we have had snow (briefly) at 4300 feet in September, and October snowfalls happen every couple of years. Now, we’re getting early morning snow, turning into cold rain around sunrise. The ground hasn’t frozen yet (that’s December), so the last few “gotta do” projects are still in the queue.

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          1. When I talk about can snow “all year” in Oregon. It is the Cascades, Willawas, maybe the Steens, well above pass levels. One exception was July 4, 1986, snow on Hwy 242. Very wet 6″ of slushy snow, that came down overnight and was gone by the next afternoon, it was snow.

            Willamette Valley doesn’t get a lot of snow either. Really not most of the I-5 corridor through Oregon except the low passes south of the Drain/Yoncalla exits, until you hit the Siskiyou Pass. Even those don’t get accumulations of snow (just enough to be a PIA irritation). That seems to be changing over the last years. Seeing a lot more days with snow (so much for climate warming). No real accumulation but there is snow. Nothing like the dump that happened 1969. Eugene got just short of 4′. Grandparents in Drain got enough to bury their car (there is old home movie of it that they took).

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            2. Sometimes there’s snow on the tops of the Santa Cruz mountains to the west and the Diablo Range to the east of the Santa Clara Valley, colloquially Silicon Valley (yeah, no matter what The City and County of San Francisco wishes, they are not in it), but it has snowed and stuck exactly once in my memory of growing up here, on February 5th 1976, when the SF Bay Area got 1 to 2 inches.

              Since most people who live here are not from here, very few remember that ever happening. But the incredibly clement weather was a factor in the growth of the valley.

              I overheard someone a few days ago, as we got the first rain of our wet season, repeating their now departed WWII vet father’s oft-repeated story that he stayed here instead of going back to the midwest after the war because you never have to shovel rain.

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              1. Ah, I remember that snowfall. Woke up in my apartment in Sunnyvale, and decided to take a trip up to the mountains. I did not get into a snowball fight, but the trailhead to Castle Rock was the site of a few. :)

                I don’t recall if it was then, or a few years later when I went up Montebello Ridge (above the Ridge Winery vineyard) and was treated to a very clear sight of the Sierras, all snow covered. Lick Observatory had a picture of Half Dome in Yosemite taken from Mount Hamilton; got up to the observatory a few times, via car, motorcycle and once bicycle. (That entailed a nice one-man century ride up to Livermore and back along the spine of the Mission mountains. Some azzholes used the southern portion of that road as a dumpsite, though.)

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                  1. I was in Sunnyvale at the time, elevation not much above sea level. We now live at 4300′ and shortly after Labor Day, tire chains go in the Subarus.

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            3. A woman once found her grandparents’ wedding license by going to the right town and telling them she didn’t know the year but it was the Fourth of July and it snowed.

              The reactions are split between people who are surprised by the snow, and those who are surprised by that being enough to identify the year.

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      2. I wore a winter coat to morning class and lugged it back to the dorm before changing into a lighter shirt.

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    3. On a motorcycle it’s very obvious that weather moves in cells. It’s not all that unusual to get sun, rain, and snow within minutes of each other, along the same stretch of road.

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  11. Now they’re calling Pet Hegseth a ‘white supremacist’ and Tulsi Gabbard a ‘Russian asset’. What Trump should say to all those Leftroids squealing like stuck pigs:

    “It’s time to shovel out the shit, and that ain’t pretty.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. The wiki article on Pete Hegseth calls him a “Christian Nationalist” which basically means that he’s conservative, a Christian and a patriot.

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  13. I am so stinking tired of the black-pilled. Despair is one of the devil’s tools.

    Don’t give me “It won’t work” unless you can add to a constructive conversation and present solutions and/or alternatives. And going out to the wild and wooly internet to find “experts” who agree with you isn’t going to change my mind. It just comes across as “I don’t want this to work because it wasn’t my idea. So there!”

    Saying “you can’t” just makes me more determined to find a way to accomplish whatever it is. These idiots (friends and family, mostly) just know that if I learned more, studied more, prayed more, I would fall in line and join their dark world where everything is destined to fall into doom and gloom.

    No thank you.

    It is incredibly refreshing to see people finally saying “Well, we know it has to be done” and actually finding a way to do it rather than bemoaning the impossibility.

    Last week a good friend actually got angry when I said that Americans will always find a way. This week she’s submitting her resume to DOGE.

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    1. An abrupt reversal, or an opportunistic ploy? Hopefully the former. From what I’ve read online these are volunteer positions; ypur friend knows that, right?

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  14. I love to clean up. I always volunteer for post-Thanksgiving kitchen duty, because it’s such a joy to get the dishes done, the pots sparkling, and counters all wiped down. Other family members (brother, bro-in-law, sister, son) are like me and we laugh and drink our libation of choice and get the work done.

    It’s not morning in America yet. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to cleaning. Lots of baked-on crud to scrub off. It’s going to be so much fun.

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    2. 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.

      Back comes the Wind full strength with a blow like an angel’s wing,
      Gentle but waking the world, as he shouts: “The Sun! The Sun!”
      And the light floods over the fields and the birds begin to sing,
      And the Wind dies down in the grass. It is day and his work is done.

      So when the world is asleep, and there seems no hope of her waking
      Out of some long, bad dream that makes her mutter and moan,
      Suddenly, all men arise to the noise of fetters breaking,
      And every one smiles at his neighbour and tells him his soul is his own!

      Rudyard Kipling

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    2. Shrug. “These old US people didn’t have birth certificates, so they couldn’t have been that old” is pretty ridiculous, because birth certificates were incredibly uncommon for most people until very recently, historically.

      For example, the Fat Electrician has covered several heroic military guys who served in WWII, and who were born at home and therefore had no birth certificate. The normal procedure was either to bring in the family Bible (where dates of birth and death were often recorded), or to bring adult family members who would swear to a person’s age. This did encourage some fakery…but it was usually people swearing that a 15 or 16-year-old was 18, and usually the records were corrected at some point.

      With women, usually they pretended to be younger. I suppose that early marriages might encourage trying to appear older; but after that, the social pressure for women was all the other way. I’d be suspicious that a 110 year old woman was actually 115.

      But anyway, if you could document the rest of a person’s life, I suspect that you could find out a lot. Baptismal records were pretty common for churches that did infant baptism, and you have to be alive to be baptized. Even fairly rural areas often had public school records of some kind. Local newspapers used to give a lot of info, and the US census records included lots of info too.

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  16. i miss Colorado, if my x hadnt been such a useless conniving BIT ch i would still be there and most likely be still building homes. it was great, snow would roll in , be super windy when it stopped then back to cool pristine clear air and a bit o powder here n there. Oh the opportunities missed

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  17. sorry i was off in the weeds there with looking back,

    unfortunately i doubt we are in the clear folks, i have a feeling things will get very heated in the coming weeks and months, as has been stated before, these monsters dont want to give up their power and know that IF they are exposed for what they really are, there will be hell to pay,

    most likely preachin to the choir but pay attention to whats happening, we aint there yet

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