Lies, Truth and Rats a blast from the past from August 2014

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Lies, Truth and Rats a blast from the past from August 2014

This post is late because I have an outdoor not-my-cat who loves me. He brought me something that squeaked for breakfast. He brought it back very fresh. In fact, he brought it back for me to kill. Fortunately I was in the kitchen and he was in the outdoor mudroom thing we call the airlock. I stood in the kitchen, listening to the squeak-thump and wondering if I should intervene, but the chances it was a bunny are minor. Sounded like a rat. And the chances of a desperate rat in the kitchen were really high.

Eventually Greebo (He’s just a big softy) grew disgusted with me and carried of his victim breakfast to enjoy elsewhere.

All of which has absolutely nothing to do with the post this morning. I mean, I could twist myself into pretzels and come up with something, but I’m not going to and instead I’m going to plunge head first into the post.

Imagine everything you’ve ever been told is a lie.

No, seriously. Close your eyes and picture it.

This kind of ah epistemological upheaval is very difficult. I’m telling you this as someone who found out about half of what she knew was a lie. What? Oh, little things – the first flight across the Atlantic was NOT as I’d been taught Sacadura and Cabral. “I regret I have only one life to give for my country” was not said by one of the assassins of Dona Inez de Castro before his execution, no matter how much my history book said so. (It might have been said by him TOO, but I suspect someone just thought it sounded good and stole it.) If you take more than an aspirin at one time, you won’t die. (I remember standing frozen in the kitchen when I’d complained to my host mother of a headache and she said “Just take a couple of aspirin, honey.” I thought “She’s trying to kill me!”) Other things that aren’t true that I “knew” were true: if you take a bath before it’s an hour after you last ate, you won’t die. Oh, and if you wash your hair every day it won’t fall off. Also, the entire street won’t turn and laugh at you if you go out in last year’s fashions. In fact, fashions are different in different countries. (And in the US, different parts of the country.) Things I found about the US, like for instance, it’s not all paved and built over, and Americans don’t ALL live in skyscrapers, was a different thing. You expect to find new things about a country when you go to a new country. You don’t expect to find out new things about how the world works.

Even the aspirin thing? Blew my mind. “Why did my mother tell me I would die if I wouldn’t?”

Of course, the answer is because someone told it to her. (Also mom hates meds. ALL meds. She wouldn’t even take vitamins, because she was sure it would kill her.)

I understand it was much more difficult for people like the inhabitants of the former soviet block to come out and find out that everything was the other way around. In fact, anyone who comes from a repressive and self-aggrandizing society gets a shock when coming to the greater world. For instance I’ve heard of Arabs stunned to find out they DIDN’T win the six day war.

So, why am I talking about this? We are not in a repressive society, or not that kind of repressive society. News leak in around the edges.

Except we sort of are. Our press is not in collusion because they think that the dictator will punish them (unless you mean not inviting them to parties.) But they are in collusion in order to be thought of as “beautiful people” and “good people” and smart.

And it’s amazing how much of that crap you end up buying. I mean, everyone behind the curtain knew their news lied. It was just the AMOUNT of the lies that was unbelievably large. They thought some things would be true. Same with people coming from Arab countries. I bet you if we kidnapped someone from North Korea and exposed him/her to the real world, they’d be shocked at how little their great leader occupies our consciousness day to day. Because that’s probably the part they believe. That he looms large in enmity or alliance in the west. In fact, I’ve read stories of transplanted Arabs and the part they didn’t anticipate was how little people in the west think about Islam and Muslims day to day. How their neighbors were neither resenting them, impressed nor spying on them due to their origin/religion. (Most of the time the neighbors think they’re South American :-P)

I don’t know how much we’d get “The truth” when transplanted to another country, but I’ve noticed that British newspapers (even sometimes the Guardian) sound terribly “right wing” to me. I know they’re not. It’s just compared to our press.

But American media looms so large in the world we tend to drag the rest of it at least partially with us into madness.

Still, I wonder what when we emerge from this mess – we will, though it will take a while and feel like we’re swallowing live frogs. (I’m almost sure Greebo didn’t bring me a frog.) – will be completely upside down from what we imagine.

This is relevant for what we talked about yesterday. Because I read a lot I knew of the horrors uncovered in communist countries after the fall. It shocked me – still does – that people not only still go around, proudly proclaiming themselves communists, but also that the schools are still teaching communism as the better/more moral alternative and always coming up with false equivalence soviet-style “we have homeless too.”

But what you have to remember is that MOST people didn’t sign up for the epistemological upheaval. And most humans are REALLY bad at that sort of thing. REALLY REALLY REALLY bad. As in, most can’t, not after adolescence. And some not then.

Even when I was an exchange student – a self selected group – I was one of the very few ones who socialized/had my best friends outside my linguistic group (British and Japanese, actually.) Most people would go to their linguistic group or the next one. Portuguese would preferentially associate with other Portuguese, then Brazilians, then Spanish, then Spanish colonies, and so on.

I mean, even while they were in the US. This is because that spare-time association allowed them to reaffirm at least some of their world view and to say “Americans think this, but—”

I chose to go off without this protection because I wanted to know what was true/true and what was agreed-upon true.

BUT I’m abnormal. I run towards that which scares me. (Not a survival skill.) [Okay, unless what scares me is the possibility of allowing a rat in the kitchen. And that’s not so much scares me as “ewwwww”]

For most people maintaining the imagined integrity of their world is worth being wrong. Even being wrong in significant ways.

Because of Soviet Agit Prop, the “communist” view was “popular” and “cool” in the west since the seventies and counterculture, at least. (It was popular in intellectual circles before that.) It’s probably hard for you young kids to picture, but even stalwarts on the right assumed that communism was somehow more “moral” even when it failed. They disapproved of their curtailing of freedoms, etc, but it was ASSUMED it would have better results than capitalism, if allowed to continue long enough. The right merely objected to the cost in human capital.

If this was true on the right, imagine on the left. Do you wonder that the journalists didn’t report the true horrors or reported them with exculpation. “If it weren’t for embargos against Cuba, it would be a paradise” is still believed. And as for Russia… Well, truth be told if we hadn’t sent them wheat they would have starved, but instead you’ll hear about how our insane capitalist arms race kept THEM poor.

But more importantly, once the exculpation and the nine days wonder was over, and the snide laments about the good guys losing, it was back to acting as though communism had never fallen. In fact, over time, that has mutated to a denial that all the times communism has been tried, it was in fact communism, and an insistence it’s “never been tried.” This is combined with eructation about Marx still being “right” – mostly they insist he’s right about things like literary criticism (and no, even there Marxism isn’t of any use. It’s like trying to measure elephants in light waves. It’s just that most people don’t care enough about these niches to go and show them they’re wrong, so they can protect their epistemological certainty wrapped around themselves like a blanket.)

This is typical of people under stress and whose world view is under attack to such an extent they can’t cope. They erase whatever challenged it and place it outside the discussion, and go back to repeating the cherished platitudes.

You can see the embryonic effect of this in a kid who has done something disastrous that threatens his view of himself. “I didn’t break the dish. Aliens flew through the window and broke it.” Is the first defense. The next is to pretend it never happened.

You can also see it in the white house, as our red-diaper baby president stumbles around breaking things, but can’t process it, because it would mean upending everything he’s been taught and his vision of him as “smart” for believing these things. He’s a normal human or possibly a normal incurious human. He didn’t sign up for this kind of upheaval. So he keeps stumbling around, pretending he didn’t do things, pretending things are different. Hence the insistence that removal of troops from Iraq was the former administration’s fault despite recordings of him bragging about doing it.

The problem is this: due to effects of a super-abundant society where people are not close to the bone – in fact are so far from the bone they haven’t seen bone in years – and the dominance of the press and academia by the far left, people’s view of reality is at least as skewed as that of people behind the iron curtain in the bad old days.

This corrupts everything, even those of us who are awake. What sounds right and plausible is twisted 25 degrees from reality. Western society is a giant bubble and a loud enough bubble that even people outside the bubble believe it. And a lot of the things propagated by the bubble are antithetical to the west and fossilized old communist propaganda, because the denial-reaction of our “elites” has enshrined that as “smart” and “cool.”

Will it take a crash to correct?

I don’t know. I think a crash might be inevitable, but whether it would correct it or not, I don’t know. The magnitude of the crash that would correct it scares the heck out of me and might not be possible, due to see how far from the bone we are.

I think what will correct over time is that technology is changing too fast for centralized anything. They’re losing the plot in each field it hits. And because of their mismanagement (Centralized is always more inefficient) the fields it’s hitting first are the ones they most control: media, entertainment, education.

We can hear that epistemological “reset” in the voices of the publishing industry’s execs as they say over and over again that their houses are better for authors because covers and editing and publicity, as though saying it made it true.

It’s possible things will right themselves as the generation that is most heartily promoting its epistemological error passes from this world. (Not long before I do, so I can’t verify that.) Kind of like the generation of the desert had to pass before the promised land could be entered.

Or it’s possible it will happen faster, as technology will change very fast. At least it seems to be on a track of not so much rapid change but “rapid change that makes a difference to normal human beings in every day life.”

It’s unlikely to stop.

And they simply can’t adapt.

This is going to make the times ahead as interesting as those thumps and squeaks from the mud room. (See, I told you I could tie it back!)

But we are at least semi-awake. So, whether we’re flexible or not (and a lot of us are, being Odd) the shock will be lesser to us.

In the end, we win they lose.

84 thoughts on “Lies, Truth and Rats a blast from the past from August 2014”

    1. If it doesn’t, it needs to. When I get to the Pearly Gates…assuming I’m lucky enough or they’ve relaxed the criteria since I was a youth in Sunday School…there had better be a certain big, goofy doggo and at least a couple other four-footed frens waiting to greet me, or I ain’t going in.

      Liked by 1 person

      2. Same.

        I expect a minimum of four dogs, and 13 cats, and counting (currently have 5 cats, and one dog). If I go first, expect them to be there to escort me. Then I send them to escort hubby. Together we will send them (most of the cats were alive to great him as an infant) to escort son, and his significant other (if), etc.

        It isn’t heaven without the babies.

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      3. Not quite a joke: a man was walking his dog through beautiful fields, and he knew he was dead because the dog had been dead for years.

        They came to a set of beautiful golden gates and as he tried to pass through the man standing there said, “I’m sorry, no pets are allowed in heaven.”

        So the man and his dog continued on until they came to an old fence with a gate.

        There was a bubbling spring just inside the gate and the man asked if his dig could have a drink. The man at the gate swung it open and said to come on in. The man said, “I stopped at a gate a while back and they said it was heaven but they didn’t allow pets.”

        The stranger smiled. “Yeah, that’s hell. We let them sort out those who are willing to leave their best friends behind.”

        Liked by 3 people

  2. Thanks for the refresh. Most of that could have been written today; in fact, when I got to the Red Diaper Baby I stumbled a bit before remembering who that was.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Superstitions about fatal consequences are likely to be preserved by a narrow group that does not communicate outside.

      See the implied ‘you should not endorse mass murder targeting blacks’ seemingly founded on the certainty that ‘there are a lot of unstable people out there waiting to be told to do something, or waiting for someone to give them an excuse’.

      This hasn’t been true for decades, but a lot of sane people have not been checking.

      It is then possible to avoid learning that there are a bunch of crazy people on the internet, and they mostly can’t find more than a few Americans who can shoot, and who are so unstable and biddable.

      Anyway, the delusions I have moved past are boring.

      Mostly. Some would be hilarious in the correct context.

      The stuff I am currently delusional about is what is relevant to OP, but I would have a hard time discussing these.

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    2. I have no idea why my mom’s always kept the oven door cracked open when she used the broiler. But I do it, anyway.

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      1. Probably for air flow. The oven I grew up with you needed to keep the door cracked when using the broiler, so it would work properly. Otherwise it lost a bunch of efficiency. I.e. didn’t get as hot. Newer ovens have built in fans now.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I remember a story that came to me from Ann Landers IIRC. A woman was cutting off the top third of a turkey to cook it for Thanksgiving. Her now grown daughter asked her why she did that. She replied that was what her mother always did. Older woman called her mother and asked. She was greeted by a huge laugh, “Honey, we didn’t have a pan big enough to hold the whole turkey.”

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        2. Heard the same story for roasts.

          Backed potatoes. Why trim ends? Because cutting out bad spots. Now to be fair, raw skin on potatoes to bake or microwave, should have the skin broken. But it just needs to be poked a few times around the potato.

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          1. The cookbook I use says to rub them with a thin layer of fat (I use olive oil), bake them half an hour at 400, and then take them out, pierce a few places with a fork, and bake them for the other half hour. Seems to work ok.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Baked potatoes:

              • Rinse.
              • Remove bad sections or poke half dozen times.
              • Sprinkle (wet) potato with garlic spread (Kirkland)
              • Wrap in foil
              • Cook until can easily squeeze.

              Potatoes will explode if skin is not pierced. How violently explode? IDK. Never tested.

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              1. I haven’t had a potato explode. That seems to be more of a risk in a microwave. I don’t wrap them in foil; my cookbook denigrates the practice, I think because it causes water retention next to the skin.

                I’ve never heard of Kirkland, but I suspect I might not care for it; I’m not all that fond of garlic. I flavor my baked potatoes with butter and parsley after they come out of the oven. But de gustibus non est disputandum, right?

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Yes, wrapping the potatoes keeps the skin softer. I don’t care. Neither son nor I eat the skin. But hubby does. (My dad never did either. One thing mom couldn’t yell at us for!)

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              2. ii keep hearing this. Been baking in oven and microwave for 40 years without poking holes in them. One mild explosion of potatoe in microwave in all that time. Eggs in shell in water in microwave.. my oh my. Took a while to scrape that off the inside of the microwave. Quite repeatable though i havent. Wife and daughter had to do it onece ton not want to clean it up again.

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            2. Same recipe, but cut a thin 1/4 inch deep slice down across the top and salt. Bake for two hours, then pull and cut deeper in and across the short length (making a cross). Bake for another 10 minutes. Really good!

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      3. It may just be my model – but the fan only runs when I have it on convection baking.

        Two reasons for having the door cracked.

        First is that the broiler element is not controlled by the thermocouple. It’s on, or it’s off. That can lead to overheating and oven damage, although modern materials do make that less of a risk. Fatty foods can still create a hazard if the vent is blocked – think a miniature fuel/air bomb when you do open the door.

        Second is that you can notice smoke starting BEFORE you end up with somewhat impure charcoal instead of family dinner.

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        1. I’ve never used the broiler on my current stove. Broiler mode is generally gas grill mode instead.

          Our model also runs fans in convection mode. Also has the option to run the oven fan when in standard mode, but has to be triggered specifically. While the convection mode is automatic.

          I have enough problems with the electronics when I’ve used higher heat. It tries to go into lock mode and trigger cleaning. Not appreciated. Newer, for degrees of newer, but definitely out of warranty. Solution. Do not use higher heat above 420 F for more than 30 minutes.

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      2. I never heard this one. It was always about the eggs used in the dough making you sick.

        Depends on the dough recipe, obviously.

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      3. Raw cookie dough will give you salmonella poisoning. I’m 43 and have been eating raw cookie dough for decades with salmonella poisoning yet.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Lucky you. We used to always eat the raw dough when my mom made cookies, and looking back, I can connect almost every bout of that mysterious, sudden-onset 12-hour “stomach flu” that happened a couple-three times a year to having eaten that dough. Obviously it’s not inevitable…not will make you sick, but can…and it did.

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        2. “Raw cookie dough will give you salmonella poisoning“

          –

          Could give you salmonella poisoning, if the eggs are contaminated. Commercial eggs are less likely to be contaminated.

          I’m 69. Been eating raw cooking dough (cakes, cookies, bread dough), since I can remember. Haven’t been affected, yet. Granted, mostly not making cookies that require eggs (No Bake Cookies, do not have eggs) last few decades.

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        3. Nifty thing, it’s generally not the eggs, it’s the flour.

          Because the stuff made for baking with isn’t pre-cooked to kill off everything.

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  5. “But we are at least semi-awake. So, whether we’re flexible or not (and a lot of us are, being Odd) the shock will be lesser to us.”

    The acceleration of this whole “being wrong about life” thing since 2020 is horrendous. My country, for example, is now actively harmful to the people living in it and getting worse every week. The stories are unavoidable.

    A small thing but significant, the entire city of Kitchener/Waterloo has ‘forgotten’ how to plow snow. Everywhere else, snow is gone from the streets in 24 hours. In K/W, the snow never leaves. It’s still there, screwing everything up, and it hasn’t snowed for two weeks. The truth is they didn’t forget, they just decided not to do it. But you better pay those taxes peon, and that sidewalk in front of your hovel BETTER be shoveled…

    “For most people maintaining the imagined integrity of their world is worth being wrong.”

    Yes, this is the other half of the issue that plagues us. As the obvious (and obviously deliberate) decline of government services continues, people you meet casually are all yammering about Trump. In Canada. I’m not kidding, they are.

    In a nation where whole cities stop delivering basic services like snow clearing, road repair and hospitals, the Normies are complaining about Trump.

    Meanwhile, the Quebec separatists have been joined by a new bunch, the Alberta separatists. A significant percentage of Saskatchewan and Alberta want out of Canada, because they’re done with it. Those would be the Normies that FINALLY woke up and smelled the rotting garbage that never gets picked up like it is supposed to be.

    Those Normies, after 40 years of being ripped off and told to shut up, have finally understood that the great nation of Canada was a lie. It wasn’t great for them, and it was getting worse every freaking year.

    So now, they’re done. The feds said no, you can’t have a pipeline, you can’t have logging, you can’t open new mines, you can’t open new oil refineries, you can’t burn coal for electricity and you can’t have any fertilizer. (Yes, they really said that. #ShinyPony said it for ten years, and now our new savior #CarkMarney has said it again.) Okay then. Time to tell the feds to cram it.

    That’s what it takes to wake up a Normie. I believe that the key ingredient in all this is contempt. Mere theft and oppression is insufficient.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Parts of Nashville, TN have been without power for over a week. The surrounding counties got power sooner. Maybe because they aren’t full of blue-state refugees intent on bringing the “benefits” of progressivism to the state?

      Liked by 2 people

      1. New York was the same during their ice storm a few years ago. I wrote a huge blog post about it.

        https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-phantom-featured-at-small-dead.html

        TL/DR, the reason Nashville is still out but all the other counties are back up is A) Theft and B) Incompetence. All the stuff to fix the power that is supposed to be there was stolen, somehow. Any government minion tasked to fix it now is not up to the job.

        You know what annoys me the most about things like this? Vital infrastructure like the fuel supply for automobiles has no backup. Power goes out, there’s no fuel. Because the pumps are electric, and gas stations do not have generators for when the power goes out. Nor do they have emergency manual pumps. They have -nothing-.

        Which is catastrophically stupid, and something only a dimwit would leave broken like that.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Unlike the US, Canada does not have a federal supremacy statue.

      US references –

      • Who has control of Immigration (Federal), regardless of what states or localized laws are passed.
      • ADA and service animals. There is a minimum federal requirement that must be followed. States can provide further protections, but they cannot add restrictions.
        • Examples of extra restrictions:
          • Require certification. Can offer voluntary certification that adds additional state rights (usually instead of DOJ investigations when denied access, state gets involved).
          • Breed discrimination. Cannot do this.
        • Examples of increased handler rights:
          • Addition of cats as service animals.
          • Protection of service animal in training.

      I might know my rights better under the ADA, for Canada VS US. Canada ADA service animal rights are by province. Anything from, US style, or just carry a letter from medical provider saying a service dog is advised, to full certification by province test or certified program.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Back at the turn of the millennium, one of my oldest friends had her fiftieth birthday. I flew to Massachusetts to spend the weekend with her. While I was there, knowing what I like, she took me on a tour of used bookstores. And in one of them, I found myself gazing at an entire wall of books from university presses on literary theory and criticism.

    What I realized, as I looked at them, was that something like one in three were Marxist, and one in three were psychoanalytic. And I shook my head, with a kind of vertigo, and wondered how all these authors, or their entire academic field, hadn’t realized that neither Marxism nor psychoanalysis had any credibility any more as a description of the real world. . . .

    Liked by 2 people

  8. It’s been a long time since I read The Iliad and The Odyssey, but I recently watched a mini-series on Greek mythology that retold the stories. They framed The Odyssey in particular as Odysseus refusing to believe in the gods after all the tragedy at Troy, and that causing the eventual downfall of the gods. The creeping refusal of Greek and Roman civilization to believe in the old gods left a hole that was eventually filled by Christianity. Our modern, divorced from real life, world stopped believing in Christianity, first academically then civically, and that has left a hole that has been being filled by the marxist heresy. (Yes, Marxism is actually a Christian heresy. Nazism was neopaganism. Hence the vehement enmity between the two.)

    I see young people flocking back to Christianity, and that encourages me. I doubt I will live long enough to see the counter-revolution come to fruition, and, for an old contrarian curmudgeon like me, that is probably a good thing. Ah well, carry on youngsters!

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  9. I had thought that my experience working with China data, government statistics generally, but especially China, had numbed me to this. Recently, especially post Epstein, I’m beginning to wonder if all of it’s a lie including and and the and how one might go on. IM not having an easy time of it.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Life transistions are a risk factor for disorientation.

      And, really, there would be a ton of risk factors for disorientation for us information junkies and analysts, right nwo.

      (I fought off an essay attempt earlier, on the theme of ‘black swans? We don’t even know that these events are rare, adn some of them were even predictable.’ If we are mid realignment, or in something like the generalized preference cascade, this would be expected to be nonlinear, and to have a weird middle time period that is unlike before or after periods statistically. The issue with me working on that is other fish to fry, and I may be in the middle of needing to relearn my statistics. )

      I can’t promise anything grand for shifts. But, people’s actions are influences by what they think is possible, and what they fear, and Trump’s games alone would be a little confusing or reframing.

      Anyway, I definitely have concerns for my own stuff. Some probably legitimate. But, the last difficultly of the day seems to have been allergies, and fixed by a treatmetn.

      Like

  10. I hate your blog.. not the content but wordpress. I have tried to comment many times but wordpress wont authenticate my email address even when im logged into word press in another tab… maybe it will work this time after losing my long comment i tried to submit.

    Like

      1. wants me to install jetpack to use reader now. Sigh. I refuse.. im deleting apps not adding new ones..

        i used to build websites with WordPress, biggest was hundreds of pages and forums with hundreds of members. I turn down paying customers for website work any more. Not that its hard just tedious and a pain. That doesnt include dealing with all the stuff customers want that a stock wordpress site doest do or look like. Tell them the 10x cost of hours custom work is and most leave it at that. 2 out of 10 decide you owe them the custom site for the stock price the were quoted even with the disclaimer custom additions are an hourly billing over base price. In market i did stuff in no one was willing to pay for a custom site. Just stock was 500 to 5000 depending on size.. it was 99 percent closer to 500 for those who hired me. And 75% of those kicking tires and getting quote decided they didnt want a site.

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          1. Using android phone. I guess wordpress app doesn’t work any more other than as plugin to newer jetpack app. Honestly dont care enough to even investigate deeply.

            Also using phone answer/write posts is why my spelling sucks using little virtual keyboard

            If in computer i have no issues other than weird login issues. Did something yesterday. Not sure what and login stuff us behaving for moment

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Long Answer: I will not reply when reading on my phone. I have the blog and comments sent via email to gmail account. I read the blog on WP (I want to click “Like”). But do not have to. Comments do not get triggered as replies from the email when reading on my phone. Because WP reacts wrong. Never mind that I am using Firefox on Android, like I use Firefox on Win12 (now). It is too much of a PIA.

              Short Answer: You are far from the only person who has trouble replying with WP. On a phone or not. But especially with your phone.

              Liked by 1 person

            2. My phone is degoogled, and WP really hates working on it, and via Brave for the phone sometimes works.
              Work requires the MS authentication ap and my phone refuses to install it, siting a security risk

              Like

        2. “10x cost of hours custom work“

          –

          Had to start quoting 30x expected cost to get some clients to drop it (with employer’s permission). Some still said yes.

          “2 out of 10 decide you owe them the custom site for the stock price the were quoted even with the disclaimer custom additions are an hourly billing over base price“

          –

          Usually back off, when sections are highlighted. Usually. Again, I got to hand off to someone higher up the chain and didn’t have to deal with it. Although 99% of the time the request came in later after annual conferences when the concept was presented. May or may not then end in the annual upgrade suggestions.

          Noted as suggestions (weren’t officially listed as suggestions) because there were items on the annual upgrade that had been there before I started, and 12 years later, were still on the list, every year. Not lack of talent problem. Lack of staff depth. Horribly understaffed. There was one programmer who did not interact with clients day to day. The rest not only worked on the annual upgrade list, but worked with clients day to day, support (too often *handholding), fixes, and change requests.

          (*) “Wait? What? X hasn’t called from Z, and it is after 9 AM PST? Must be out of the office!” Naturally, then the sub from Z would call. For what went over yesterday, the day before, and the day before, and the week before, etc. Which I’d written out explicit instructions, with pictures, sent it, gone over it with the individual (so can’t say didn’t have it). Written instructions because getting a call day after day, usually multiple times a day, is irritating. It was not unclear. Nor was it something that wasn’t done regularly. How to change sales tax rate calls, while easy to do, didn’t get done regularly, not even annually, usually. Those calls made sense. Some others? After they’d had onsite training, and been in the system 6 months? No.

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          1. Rofl.. oh god! I remember! One of reasons i started not doing web work. Do a quote . Finish work to speck.. want paid!

            We decided we want it to look more like this website over here.

            Ok. Pay me quote and i will generate one for changes.

            Um.. cant you just do this quick as part of quote.?

            Politely
            Why no. I already did several hours of labor over quote with these two small page revisions and reformatting the contact page twice. Im happy to go the extra mile for customers for a fee changes beyond initial spec and quote. The change your asking for now will take an equivalent ammount of labor to first quote at least..

            Wahh!!! This is highway robbery!!

            Im sorry you feel that way

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            1. Started getting 75% up front then just starting referring people to other web designers. Dont even get asked now days.

              Doing server and sys admin stuff.. they call and say.. we are down help.. 10 hrs later 1250 dollar bill and quote for new network backup system to prevent future issues and it get thank you so much for getting back to work. We thought we lost every thing.

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            2. Oh. Lord. In spades. I rarely had to deal with this. Because the clients were under annual contract for fixed amount. This gave X hours of annual support and maintenance. Initial purchase included installation, customization (usually forms, but could be more, either way built in to quote), X hours of onsite training (boss), and X hours of phone support (handholding). Phone support and changes, new client or not, were NOT tracked.

              The times a change was requested, especially forms, that “looked” simple, and didn’t quote. Some clients that worked. Others? Same as “death by a dozen cuts”.

              Then there was a client (whose changes were complicated and never quick fix) who got quoted a change, get approval back, get it done, deliver it, only to get a call that oops, a different manager wanted something else. Remind *contact this was quoted, approved, and delivered. Willing to quote changes allowed to allow both versions. Get back to me. Last time this happened it was just before I went on 6 weeks vacation (at year-end, no less), when I came back, a week of part-time before I retired. Never heard back. Yes, this client was one of the more problematic ones. Also, the one likely to call at 4:45 PM on a critical “problem” (payroll), due at 5 PM, that was always (in 12 years) a PICNIC (run the dang reports!!!!!, but swore they did).

              (*) Harder clients to deal with were the ones that limited end user direct contact. A gatekeeper, who didn’t use the system. Not all gatekeepers were clueless. But the best contacts were the ones who used the system, and knew their job. In the beginning, indirectly, they taught me as much about the system than the people who I worked with and also did the programming. Coached as “tell me what is happening”, then “now tell me what is supposed to happen, and why”. Not my first rodeo. This worked for 30+ years, at all my jobs. Sometimes my answer was “It is working this way, because … Let me run this by the boss and get back to you”, i.e. education, but not a flat out “you are wrong”. Others? “I see what you mean. Let me get back to you. … It is fixed. Install patch #.”

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              1. Yeah. I learned in my 32 year career in IT that setting appropriate client expectations was one of my most important skills.
                Also never ever appear stressed during IT emergency as your wondering if there is actually a rabbit in the hat this time to pull out.

                One customer in that period if time lost 9 months of accounting data. They had refused a automated data backup because 300 dollars for the software and labor was to much. Showed them how to back up and trained how to back up accounting program (peachtree. Tells how long ago this was) every evening.
                So they had issue with internet explorer on the accounting oc that the data was also on. Let a sales man in the company try to fix it . Somehow how he did a full format and reinstall windows.
                I got there and was very confused for a while. Asked if it was a new as no software was on it. Took a bit before they fessed up to sequence of events. I asked where was backup drive and got confused look. This was a couple years after i had shown them how. Hadn’t been out since then. I looked through desk and pulled out usb flash drive and asked you have been backing up to thus right? Um noooooo..
                Powered off computer and found data recovery comoany sent drive in and 800 dollars later had usable copy of data file recovered but it was a version 9 months old. Hard drive was barely used just accounting program and is o. It. Restored os after updates that employe had run were larger than initial usage on drive. Data was thoroughly over written.

                They were pissed at me that they had not been doing backup. Pissed at cost of data recovery company. 800 was a great magnificent price back then. We recovered more than a decades worth of accounting data. And pissed st the

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                1. And pissed at the 1000 dollars of labor i billed for trouble shooting and then getting it back up and networked for multi user accounting access on recovered data file.

                  1 of only 2 clients 32 years to be upset at me for knocking it out of the park getting a business back up and running in only 4 days with overnight shipping both ways on data recovery.
                  If you can’t tell that one still irks me. It was people that knew my family snd i was always doing the good deals. No good deed!

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                  1. “can’t tell that one still irks me“

                    –

                    Since I didn’t do contractor work (very, very, little, because not me, no way), I don’t have many of the “still irks me” stories. Just “I can relate”, like the one told.

                    One that does still irk me had to do with a program/system written between ’90 and ’96. Division was sold. Boss, bosses, to the top of the division (a lot of managers) told buyers that they really, really, need to hire me. Got told, in managers presence, “No. We already have 5 programmers in our IT department. Do not need more.” Only to have six months later have an urgent call on the critical program for one department. Only wanted one day (not a chance) to go over the coding. Coding wasn’t, or shouldn’t have been the problem (dBASE). It was the process overall. Suggested they contact the manager they let go on day one (technically everyone was let go day one, then they specifically hired those they wanted). They did not want to do that. They insisted after I said “no thanks” multiple times. Finally said, “Okay. Saturday only. 10 hours minimum, including travel (3 hours round trip), at $250/hour, in ’96.” They declined.

                    I laugh about the prior jobs where I left behind documentation, that didn’t get read. But last one I left voluntarily (retired). The other ones were involuntarily, because sold (see above), or bankruptcy shutdown (just wasn’t one of the lucky ones kept through dismantling and sale). But not irked.

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                    1. Every evening, the office lady put the tape in the backup drive and closed the cabinet where the backup server lived. In the morning she retrieved the ejected tape and sent it offsite. The tapers were rotated in four weekly sets

                      For many years.

                      They merged with my employer. I got sent to HQ to inspect and test. Disks failing on two servers. Asked lady there to demo the backups. She put tape in. Closed cabinet.

                      After two minutes, I hear whirrrr chunk. Open cabinet. Tape was out.

                      Years. Of backups. Tape rotations. …..

                      Upon inspection, over next month, no tape had data newer than three years.

                      OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!

                      Fixed backup server. Made backups. Ordered parts to fix RAID disks. Asked lady to inspect drive after 15 minutes for green lights etc. Made it the first thing in the morning task, and check, etc. Enabled mail alerts.

                      You get the picture… Sooooo close.

                      Liked by 1 person

                    2. Tell me about it.

                      When I went on vacation, usually a minimum of two weeks, the person who was “in charge of the system data”, backed me up, doing backups. In 6 years, the system hard drives crashed, replacement hard, twice. I didn’t find out until I got back (we did have a cell phone by then, but it 100% was 800-dial-a-prayer, 30 years ago). We were using the backups to keep an offsite system in sync. So, we knew backup restores worked. The third time we had hardware failure, I was there for that. Problem was it was a whole system failure, and needed more than hard disk replacement. That was “fun”.

                      Hardware replacement, new. Then Pentium. Problem, can’t install SCO Xenix (sp?) OS because can’t swap 5.25″ floppy B drive to A drive (not allowed). Xenix required boot from the old type drive. Xenix not available in new 3″ drive. Okay. Upgrade to Unix. Get system up and running, programs and data restored. Run tests. Xenix compiled programs against data, good. But COBOL based Xenix compiler won’t work on SCO Unix. Fine. Install Unix compiler. Unix compiled programs against Xenix data? Bad. Seriously bad. Sigh. Now what? It was a 3-year verification process to verify this major of a change. Already in process to replace system with C/C++ option. Okay. Restore data and programs again. Retest. Remember the offsite backup system? Any changes it was to do code changes on in editor on Unix machine, dial-up transfer code to back up machine, compile in Xenix, test (via dial-up) remote, bring EXE back (via dial up), test, again. Move on. This all happened late ’95. This was the status when we were told about the division sale and shutdown ’96. No, this was not the system that the purchasing company called about. In the middle of all the above? I got told by both the hardware and SCO (different calls) to “put on IT.” My “I am the IT” reply was a bit sharp.

                      In follow up. My next job was just software development. When that IT told me they’d take a couple of days before my hardware was up and running, my first thought, “I could do that” (not stated), my second thought? “I don’t have to deal with that anymore!” Happy dance. (Except at home.) Hardware is not my thing. I can do it. I do not like to.

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                3. I didn’t have to deal with the IT side after ’96. When I did, I was the one doing the backups or making sure they were done.

                  There are other ways to mess up accounting data. Trust me. Finally had date, as well as level, hourly/salary, and overhead, rates. Auto recalculate totals before allowing posting, but the current rates Have To Be Entered, before the posting step. Target of posting loses detail (kind of the point). Posted records got marked posted (so unchangeable at that point). Every single time. I swear. Software is not psychic.

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  11. The Fibbies just raided an illegal communist Chinese biological warfare lab in Las Vegas. People have been trying to report it for years but the JoeBama Regime buried the reports. 😡

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Will say, allegations.

      That people may be grinding an axe does not mean that they are lying or incorrect.

      That said, I’m obviously not living ‘wait and see’, becaue Routhe was just tried, and I have not followed that closely, or looked into it. I’m guessing ill, or loser, but maybe there was something of wider implication.

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  13. I was raised as a Roman Catholic in the UK. I well remember the sense of dissonance when, on looking at an atlas, I found that the UK was listed as Anglican. I was 5/6 at the time.

    I am told, by no less a luminary than Terry Pratchett, that roast rat is quite toothsome. Let us know.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I think the young folk discovering that all the foundations of the world were lies got broken harder during and since the Covid Panic than in the Before Times when this was written.

    “The magnitude of the crash that would correct it scares the heck out of me and might not be possible”

    Who had 2020 scenario on their dance card? The sheer scope and retardery of it all…?

    The ones who were messed up to start with: abusive parents, absent dads, Longhouse public school teachers… A giant parent-shaped hole in their hearts? Really went off the rails.

    The reflexive reaction that “if it’s in corporate, government-approved media some or all of it is a lie. By omission. By implication, by weasel words, or you know made up out of whole cloth” (“Safe and effective! Trans women are Real Women!)… folks with that mindset escaped a lot of the crazy, and permanent physical disability. The reflexive reaction that anyone, everyone everywhere is following that same Wall of Lies script… except for This One Guy-? Yoiks.

    That’s where you get the groypers, and the young antifa foot soldiers who aren’t all career criminals or paid bots. I honestly don’t know how to reach them except IRL and even there they all want to disappear into their cell phones.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. a ray of hope: 99% of the groypers aren’t in the country. We actually found that out.
      And I’d argue 90% of antifa are PAID. (And a significant amount are criminals) Note how their reach has diminished since we curtailed their funding.

      Liked by 1 person

          1. Well, they’ve learned that X, at least, detects they’re using a VPN and puts up a “shield” symbol next to the advertised location saying they are. As soon as you see that, the assumption is “foreign bot”…. probably accurately.

            Liked by 1 person

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