The future is fractal.

Okay, that’s probably bullshit, but it sounds better than saying “We can’t predict the future at all, stay frosty.”

This is also not exactly true, but it’s as true as we can make it, in human words, right now. Yeah, sure, the future is still probably composed of days, and the people experiencing it will be human (If not no, what’s the point?) etc, etc, world without end.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. The future I refer to here is the future we prepare for. And the future work and earning activities we specifically prepare for, to be exact. You know, the things education used to do.

Mind you, education never did that very well, but it tended to adapt with the times- ish.

For instance, education always thought in its own internal forums that it was about something it really wasn’t. Like in the middle ages it probably — not sure, wasn’t there. Stop laughing — thought it was about making better and more knowledgeable Christians. Clerics/clerks for the massive church bureaucracy extending across Europe. And it was, sort of, maybe. But what it actually was doing was creating a learned class that could read and write and speak a lingua franca, which allowed diplomacy and commerce to go on. The more were needed, the more the learning apparatus became bigger and more complex and more internationally respected.

Then as education turned to practical things, in the great industrialization, things that used to be considered at best shady crafts like medicine and engineering became part of the system, and people got the stamp of approval of officialdom to practice their craft, for which there was increasingly more need.

Meanwhile, because late-stage industrial revolution needed literate and at least somewhat educated workers, child labor was forbidden and minimum education made the state’s responsibility.

Then things went weird. Partly because, I think, the left thinks an uneducated “proletariat” is more likely to suit their needs. Partly because all states got alarmed and saw people who could actually think as a threat. And partly because they just suck, yo.

So public, mandatory education turned into indoctrination factories. Twenty years ago, I already had trouble finding college freshmen who could express themselves in writing with any degree of clarity.

Look, I’m not being picky. It wasn’t “oh, no, you used the passive voice.” Dear Lord, no. It was more like the best had sentences that made sense by themselves, they just didn’t add up to a coherent meaning. The very best had a paragraph that made sense. The rest made you go “What even?” And the majority just made no sense whatsoever.

The only way to explain it is that they’d learned whole word reading, and therefore thought of words as symbols. But because as symbols written words are very complicated, they only really remembered first and last letter — which was all that was required in school, since they knew the context, and it was all multiple choice — so, claimant was the same word as complaint was the same word as concomitant and what actually got typed was part the student and part the word processor fixing it.

The result was… well, AI is not that bad. And these were people I’d meet or talk to on the phone, who made perfect sense in speech, but weren’t in any way literate, not even vaguely, particularly since they read by the same method.

These people could even, sometimes, write sensible messages on the level of “went shopping” or “where are you?” but anything out of the every day and super-common left them floundering because, again, they weren’t in any way shape or form literate.

I understand that has got worse, with the result that after 12 years of state schooling, most colleges find themselves teaching very elementary reading and math.

And I want to make this clear, this is not the fault of the kids in any way. It’s the schooling that has gotten…. bureaucratized, clerisized (in the original sense. Most teaching schools are temples of the Marxist cult) and rendered anti-teaching. Look, kids would be more literate if left to loiter on street corners, okay?

Now, obviously, most kids learn to read and write, at least somewhat once they’re out of the government prison schools. Over the next ten years all of them — the ones who go to college and the ones who don’t — seem to be come more or less literate, and many even learn to read for fun.

But they should be doing it much, much earlier, okay? And the solution is not to make university free or mandatory. That will just delay their achieving literacy.

In fact, university, free or not is not the solution for anything. With increasing frequency, and depending on the area of the country, if university is the answer, the question is very, very stupid.

It took me forever to realize this. And even longer to realize why. I imagine it’s worse for those embedded in the University system.

Look, guys, I only realized the problem with traditional publishing because having achieved just below top rank success, I realized how little that was, and started digging at why. (Yes, I’m part terrier. Deal.) If I’d been a publisher, editor or an enormously successful author, I might never have started that dig, and never realized that most houses had traded “being commercially successful” (I.e. selling, i.e. what their job was) for “Educating the people” and “Looking good at the cocktail parties me and my homies all attend.”

I’m not inside the university system, though I connived in sending both my kids through it in what might have been the most spectacular misuse of influence and wealth in my life, and the thing I regret most after not homeschooling.

And now you’re all looking at me like I lost my mind. No, listen. These are not your father’s universities. Except in the ways they are, which makes the whole thing worse.

The way they’re not is the way they’ve become just one more avenue for continuing indoctrination and trying the whole Diversity Inclusion and Equity, which is and should be DIE because that’s what it is. More and more the professors, openly or not, view as their job to let minorities and particularly women have the best grades and graduation rates and succeed. This is why University is a terrible bargain for girls more than for boys. They are given the impression they know a lot; actually know nothing; hit the world and become convinced patriarchy is holding them down.

The way they are exactly what they were in your father’s (and my father’s) day is that they are admirably preparing people for the 20th century. Except they’re doing this in an environment where memorizing factoids is counterproductive since the computers in our pocket can give us those instantly. (I’m not against stupid memorization. That’s my other regret. I should have made the kids memorize poems and factoids when they were tiny. You who have small children should do this, all the time. Turns out memory is a muscle. It needs to be exercised. But it doesn’t make much sense in terms of a pedagogical or the main pedagogical objective.) So memorizing long lists of “if/then” is mostly ridiculous, and doesn’t benefit the student. And examining them on those is even more so, which is why we’ve become more and more paranoid about cheating to the stupid point.

The other thing that doesn’t make much sense is the whole hierarchy of learning. Sure, professors who got their degrees a bazillion years ago, like me, are very well informed of the basics of the field. You know, the things you can acquire in a week, with some study online and a few lectures that are free. What is missing is how to apply it to the current age.

Yes, I know I sound like the educators saying “but they don’t need to read. The computer can do that for them.” but I’m actually the opposite. They should have all the very basic abilities. On that they should layer an ability to pick up the more advanced bits as needed. And move on to other advanced bits. Because information and data are more available now than they ever were.

What we’re doing instead is dinning into their heads a narrative where the certification and the blessing from the “experts” is all important. Which is counterproductive. And unbelievably stupid.

What we should be training… well…. reasoning from facts and factoids. Flexibility. Innovation. Ability reason from present conditions and find the best place and time to improve them.

The kids — eh, for me anyone 45 and under — have amazing opportunities at their disposal, and college is — at best — putting blinders on them.

More importantly, it is rendering them unfit for a future where the best security is multiple streams of income, the best guarantee of excelling is to be able to take your losses, roll with the punches and emerge whole on the other side, and the best guarantee of a middle class life is stubborn refusal to give up.

The universities, particularly for highly specialized careers consume a person’s entire youth: six, seven or ten years. Heck, the typical bachelors is now six years, and no, that’s not the students’ fault. Universities multiply and maximize time needed to complete in order to keep being paid more.

The problem is, we do need something like universities. Yes, I know, people can pick up most of it on the fly. But specialized stuff like medicine, engineering, law, physics, etc. still need to be taught. For things like the first three which honestly are all more art than anything else, apprenticeships would work best, given an alternate licensing system. It is my guess too that being ossified those places will be the last to admit it. Honestly, business administration too need apprenticeship more than college.

But Physics, math, chemistry, etc. all the advance, specialized fields need … something like university. Just mostly not university as it is now.

But we even need or could use a university system for the liberal arts. We don’t realize that because those fields were turned into indoctrination first. But I have a friend who used to teach art history, and we do need that, because it’s like a message sent to us from the past. More importantly we need to be able to analyze real history and real economics, and sharpen our wits one against the other, until we find solutions for present problems, or track down where we went very wrong.

We need it particularly because the world is changing at speed. Not in social mores or that, which are imposed from above, in the great part, but in technology. Each bit of technology has repercussions no one is tracking or fully understanding, to the point the crisis in commercial real estate took the idiots in charge by surprise, though it’s been coming for twenty years and was made inevitable for the covidiocy. Instead, as in the days of Noah when they married and were given in marriage until they drowned, our “business administrators” were building and buying showier and bigger headquarters until lockdown. Or even after. Into which they now can’t herd employees at any price in the world. (And why a lot of them went under.)

This is daft. I saw teleworking coming for most desk jobs 20 years ago, and mentioned it here at least 12 years ago.

But these people were educated to think that things don’t change. They don’t learn the basics, but boy do they learn dogma. More unchangeable dogma than any pope ever processed.

So, yes. We need “something like college.” We might need it at multiple times through a life in which tech and jobs will change a few times. What form it takes, I don’t know, but my guess is it will not resemble at all the live in/don’t have a job on the side, etc. etc.

I feel, more than think, because this is not my area and I’m sure there’s factors I don’t know or underestimate (none of them being providing a happy environment for beardo the weirdo, who needs to retire or become a barista already), that what would work is labs and perhaps classes for things that absolutely must be done in groups. (Fewer than anyone thinks, except for stuff like chemistry.) For the rest? Assigned subjects with recorded lectures that can be taken at any time and discussions in something like a discord group, to sharpen mind against mind. Perhaps tutors to oversee groups of students (more like England, or the early-modern system.) And exams. Lots and lots of exams, including certification exams, some of which will be more valuable than others.

The objective should be to learn and become flexible in your ability to analyze facts and to move from “expertise” to “expertise” and adapt when tech wacks their job upside the head and they have to learn something different.

Basics are important, and being able to discuss and adapt what you know is important. But that’s not what we’re training.

For you people with promising kids, yes, sure, things like welding or HVAC do pay for now, but I’m also afraid of those fields becoming crowded. If they absolutely must go to college, try to push them into fields where the training is short because the time, let alone the money, is a massive sunk cost, which in a time when everything changes very fast is not wroth it.

And if you can make sure they have paying hobbies, and two or three sources of income.

Because multiple streams of income, and a wide ability is the best way to stay employed and profitable.

As for us, who are at an age that at any other time would be retirement… well, you know what you’re depending on for retirement. But for most of us it is a losing proposition, both in terms of maybe the money being there, and in terms of us living a lot longer than people used to. You’ll get bored.

So– stay flexible, learn more, multiple streams of income.

And don’t get so wedded to your view of how things are that you can’t change when your job becomes obsolete. Or perhaps something completely different.

Stay ready; stay flexible. Keep riding the wave.

We’ll Never Survive By Our Wits Alone – a Blast From The Past From May 2011

Three days ago, I took it upon myself to dispute the conclusions of Michael Levin writing in the Forbes blog and prophesying the end of the book. Not just the end of the paper book, or the end of the book as we know it, but the end of the book, period.

He seemed to believe it was at least in part suicide, with the publishers choosing to publish a lot of things that no one really wanted to buy, and – as it were – metaphorically standing at the end of the abyss saying “stop me before I jump.” In this scenario, Amazon came along and gave the final shove.

Perhaps because economics is my hobby, I tend to look at the same scenario – and I’ll admit Michael is right – grosso modo – about the scenario – and see the free market at work. Or perhaps more accurately, the iron law of economics at work: if there is a market that’s being badly served and someone else comes up with a way to serve it better, the model will change and the old way of doing things die out. Or in other words (sorry, writing this late at night after a day spent packing for two weeks abroad) if you build a better mousetrap the manufacturers of inferior mousetraps will go out of business.

So far so good. What I disagreed – and disagree – with is the disappearance of the book as such. Michael, who, it turns out, is a good sport and didn’t even get upset at my calling him Mark – Okay, didn’t get VERY upset – (It’s something I do to Michaels. My friend Michael Kabongo has been for some time “Tony” to our circle of friends. No, he doesn’t like it, so I wouldn’t advise trying it.) but his comment in the “about” section of my blog clarified his argument.

Dear Sarah,

Many thanks for reading and responding so passionately to my piece about publishing in Forbes. The reality is that there are more of them than there are of you and me, in that you and I pay for content and others don’t, or won’t in the future. Maybe I’m as wrong as you say. But my first name is Michael, not Mark, so perhaps we both have a right to be wrong! I enjoyed your piece and am glad that you saw fit to write about it. Warmly, Mark no wait Michael

(I think by “passionately” he means that I’m excitable. That’s fine. I am. My husband says so, and he knows me quite well.)

His next statement however raises eyebrows. For more on this, look at the Baen Free Library. Also, note that Baen has long run its ebook section on low prices and no DRM and far from having a loss continues to thrive.

For yet more corroboration that piracy alone won’t kill an industry, look at music. Yes, it’s completely different from before going electronic, but again, provided the price is reasonable and there’s no DRM you’ve eliminated two reasons to pirate: costs, and because it’s a challenge. Music for money still exists and it still supports artists.

The caveat here is that Michael works, mostly, in non fiction. I’m not sure of the mechanics for non-fiction. I know in fiction, most people have an instinctive understanding that only this writer could produce this work, and if the writer starves in his lonely little attic, you won’t have any more… Honor, or Athena, or Captain Vimes, or…

I’m not sure the same understanding applies to non fiction. It’s entirely possible that people just assume there’s no intrinsic virtue to how-to or non-fic, that the info was there, if anyone else had collected. Non-fic might fall under the misguided apprehension that “data wants to be free.”

Also, because some non fic, at least (school books) is unlikely to crawl out from under the thumb of the big houses any time soon, it will probably be overpriced and DRMed to the gills.

So Michael might be right. It might be the end of a TYPE of book. I don’t think so, but I’ll concede the point that on THAT I have no other proof than a gut feeling that once people realize the stuff you can get for free is worth what you pay for it, they will realize non-fic writers need to live also.

However, as I told Michael Levin, in my answer to his comment, the future is notoriously hard to make predictions about, particularly when it hasn’t happened, yet. I will admit for non-fic he might very well be right, which means the market will transmute to another media. I’m going to guess specialized how-to and non-fic blogs, probably supported by contributions.

UPDATE FROM 2023: Ah. I was right. Books have no gone away. Not fiction and not non-fiction. In fact, I’ve recently found it hard to figure out if a well researched book on, say the revolutionary war, is traditional or indy. And indy tends to have the lead. Why? because people write these non-fiction books about their passion: something they’ve been working on their whole lives.

Now I grant you this might be harder to make a living from — I don’t know. I imagine no one ever made a living from the incredibly specialized books I tend to buy or want as reference for writing. I mean one of the biographies of Marlowe I bought way back cost me $250 because it had a print run of 80. No. I’m no missing a zero. 80. — and that if you really want to write about the plight of the inhabitants of some small village in Greece it will be hard to raise the money to travel there. Then again if it’s an interesting enough book, you can fund it with your future readers. I’ve seen people do it.

So, just for the record:

How it started: “ZOMG the book will stop existing.”

How it’s going: Not even remotely so. People do pay for the books they want, because pirating is hazardous and whatever you download is probably infected, but mostly it’s not convenient to go hopping trying to find it for “free.”

It might be sometimes you pay for the convenience of having the book available and appear on your device immediately, but you still pay.

And most of the time, it’s worth the cost.

I was thinking, never mind why, about large countries eating small ones next to them, or small ones surviving, and I thought, in the way that human cultures work next to each other, it’s quite possible the US will eventually eat Mexico.

Oh, not soon. 200 or 300 years. I think the idiots in power are trying to speed it up by opening the borders, but they are idiots, and their ideas rarely yield what they want.

And yes, I think right now at least, given the cultures involved, this is a dangerously stupid idea, so any Mexicans reading this, no I don’t think we should annex you. (I know I have Portuguese readers. I don’t think we have any Mexican ones, but who knows?) I really, really don’t. The merger of the cultures would truly suck. And yours would probably win, because y’all are atavistic.

But in 200 or 300 years, who knows?

Why merge? It’s that long UNPROTECTED border. There is no big obstacle. And a wall won’t be a big enough obstacle, no.

England and Scotland at a larger scale.

But there are exceptions, of course. Portugal is the only stand out from the general unification of the peninsula, probably because Portuguese are very contrary. (Though that might be in the process of being diluted by communications and travel.)

Anyway, when I was thinking of that — because I’m not a well woman. Also, I was doing laundry. Dishes are for plotting. Laundry is for thinking about history — I thought about what would remain of the culture that works in such an event.

Of course I’m not sure. There’s no way to be sure. As is, our idiots in power think they can replace the population and get themselves more compliant people, and that only means they never actually dealt with Latin culture (which is mostly what they THINK they’re importing. Never mind.) Yes, sure, there’s a lot of going along with the “betters” but revolution is also a way of life. They’re just blinded by the stupid assumption communism is the future so all revolutions will be “for” them. This was Obama’s mental issue, too, when he planted OWS and thought the people would naturally support it, because people are “naturally communist.” (Rolls eyes.)

Anyway– getting back on track (sadly it’s one of my Adderal days.) — as I was thinking of that, I thought what remained was likely to be a straight up dislike of authority.

Why, you ask? Well, because it seems like we have inherited that all the way from the early British, though how I don’t know since most of us almost for sure don’t have enough English genetics to do that.

In 2012 I wrote a post called We King Killers. I ran it by Toni Weisskopf before I put it up, because something about it felt funny, and she advised me not to publish it, because it might be construed as incitement. (It wasn’t. It was mostly me running down an historical rabbit hole, but yes, she was right. And I don’t need more paid agents provocateurs flocking. So, it was good advice.)

The gist of the article is that the English, throughout their history are addicted to king killing. Which is kind of funny, because the French did it once, and get the bad reputation. No wonder they hate the English.

And the trend seems to have transferred to America, on more or less the same cycle of presidents either killed or attempted against. Seems to be a deep set cultural thing.

I didn’t realize how deep it went, though. I’ve been reading a mystery series set in the time of Edward I (I won’t post the name here, because I’ve met the author long ago, and he’d be very upset to be mentioned on this blog. But the books are decent. All his books are.)

Apparently around that time (and a hundred years before that,) the merchants of London rebelled and wanted… well, self-government and a republic.

This amused me no end because the earliest record of husband’s of family are as merchants in silks and luxury goods in London. (Probably where our lines connect and responsible for his tiny percentage of Portuguese: you see, dad’s paternal line were merchants in luxury goods.) And I could totally see them involved in that. We know for a fact they were involved in the glorious (failed) revolution, etc. And of course, an ancestor fought in the civil war.

Yes, his family is mostly (MOST of it) on the other side, but that’s…. the puritan character, right? And the belief they’ll emerge on top, like every smart person who falls for communism. (I wish they’d get a grip on reality, but hey.)

I suspect though that should we swing to a real tyranny (look, no. It’s not. They’d like it to be, but they can’t get enough of a grip. They have the institutions but not the people. It’s like the only way to precipitate a famine for real would be to confiscate food door to door. And while they’d love to do that, they can’t because we have guns. Like that.) they’d find their “king toppling” ways again. Because it’s part genes, part family culture.

And I think that part is so strong, it has survived the dilution of the original stock. (The blood and soil people who want only pure blood from revolutionary times would be able to round up maybe one or two pure Americans. With luck. The other part of the American character — like my dad’s family — is to marry the most exotic they can find, so there have been a lot of …. ah…. integrated imports. Even “born here for three generations” would be a stretch for most people.) Weirdly, most of my kids’ friends who were most aggressively don’t tread on me American had at least one foreign parent. (I know that didn’t use to be the norm, but I think in the eighties and nineties we drew an anti-authoritarian pool of immigrants.)

I don’t even know why, but I think it’s partly our image, and therefore the bend of character of those who throw in with us. “Nae Kings, Nae Queens, Nae Lords, Nae Ladies. We’ll never be fooled again.”

I think in the end that will remain. In fact, I’m almost sure of it, as much as it’s possible to be sure of something my grandkids likely won’t see.

I’m not sure where it comes from, how it attaches to our culture. And yes, I know you’re going to say Great Britain seems to have lost it, and so do the other anglo-descended cultures. I’m not sure that’s true. There were lulls and periods of “good kings” whose PR enabled them to sound like they cared for the people, etc. (Most of them didn’t.) But the characteristic always surfaces. More violent when it’s been repressed for a while. (Salutes in the general direction of Australia and Great Britain.)

In the same way that the French tend to be wordy and chaotic, no matter what actual genetics fall in THAT pool, the English tend to be “practical anti authority” and trying to limit the power of the state.

I suspect the aberrations of the 20th century, which haven’s played out in the rest of the anglosphere have to do with monopoly of very persuasive means of communication and story telling. More than ever before in human history. Or pre-history.

But hey, we’re shaking that off, and I suspect it will get to the rest of the world. Just later, and unpredictably. (Because the future comes to America.)

But that’s for the future. For now, we have to deal with our own issues.

It will happen, because the trend of history is that it will. And mind the “king killing” isn’t always — or most of the time — literal. We didn’t kill George III, but we most definitely “killed” him in these shores. And a lot of it, from John Lackland on involves clipping governments little ugly sticky wings.

There is, let us put this way, in anglo-descended cultures a marked self-government bend.

Now go forth and exert your natural cultural tendency.

Book promo

If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. A COMMISSION IS EARNED FROM EACH PURCHASE.*Note that I haven’t read most of these books (my reading is eclectic and “craving led”,) and apply the usual cautions to buying. I reserve the right not to run any submission, if cover, blurb or anything else made me decide not to, at my sole discretion.– SAH

FROM ALMA T. C. BOYKIN: Herbs and Empire: Merchant and Empire Book Eight

When Saxo smeared herbs onto the great-hauler’s leg, he just wanted to ease the bird’s pain, not turn his world upside-down.

Saxo, called Birdson, has no family, friends, or skills, aside from caring for Master Agri’s great-haulers, the birds of burden in the Northern Empire. A beast healer priest discovers Saxo’s secret—the boy is an herb healer with a beast calming magic.

Now, Master Jeaspe wants to train Saxo to heal. Master Agri wants Saxo’s gifts—and income—for his own use. Yoorst, Lord of the Beasts, has other plans.

When the gods speak, men obey. If they are wise.

FROM HOLLY CHISM: The Schrödinger Paradox: Heisenberg’s Point of Observation

To save the future, sometimes you have to reach to the past.
Thomas Sutton was not your average fourteen year old, not even in an Ark City. Born in one of the three refuges of the last remnants of life on earth, deep underground, he knows his history. A century after an asteroid shattered and struck the earth, they have been trapped below by volcanic eruptions, toxic gasses, and radioactive dust. But what if he could…change things? What if he could reach the past, to prevent the asteroid’s impact?

FROM JERRY BOYD: Shipping Out (Bob and Nikki Book 34)

After as much as the company has practiced bugging out, you wouldn’t think that loading up a few hundred folks and their belongings would be that tough, would you? Well, if that’s what you think, you haven’t met our shepherd. Tag along and see how they come up with solutions to problems they didn’t even know they had.

FROM LEIGH KIMMEL: Beach House on the Moon

The Moon is a dead world, airless and desolate. Emmaline Waite has known this fact since childhood, when she watched the Apollo landings.

But here she sits on the shores of the Sea of Tranquillity, looking up at the gibbous Earth as the waves roll in. What madness can this be?

She gets no time to contemplate that question, for she is not alone. She is about to enter a realm of love and fear, of mindbending secrets that change her understanding of human history, and of self-sacrifice.

Her life will never be the same.

FROM DAVID VINING: Colonial Nightmare

When George Washington was 21 years old, he went on a dangerous mission into the wilds of the Ohio River Valley to deliver a message from the Virginia colonial governor to a French military base, Fort Le Boeuf, a message to prevent war between England and France. The journey was harrowing and dangerous as Washington, joined by frontiersman Christopher Gist and Iroquois leader Tanacharison, also called the Half-King, braved the bitter cold of an unforgiving winter.

Washington wrote of his journey as a report to the governor, but he gave an incomplete portrait of the goings on of his journey, for he was attacked. He was attacked by something he could not explain. Something not of the New World but of the Old. Something that had preyed upon innocent for centuries. Something that scared him so much that he refused to report it to anyone.

Here, for the first time, is the full account of the colonial major’s journey. Far more than an act to prevent conflict between nations, it became a conflict that pitted evil against a man unlike any other, a man who had to potential within him to lead a nation.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: CROWDED

Because it’s been a bad month, in a bad year. I mean my head is working better, but if relatives would stop threatening to die I’d appreciate it.

Meanwhile…. Promo tomorrow.
Just wanted you guys to know I’m okay.

As the armies range on the side of Trump or the side of DeSantis; as heated words flow; as each side is incredulous the other can be in earnest — other than finding myself vaguely amused at American Greatness and their attempt at running equal and countering editorials for one or the other — all I can do is shake my head and think that the game isn’t worth the candle.

Look, I have a mild preference for Trump, simply because I’ve seen how he governed. And because DeSantis is a career politician. Yes, you can be shocked at that, but not if you understand what I view as the only function a President not sold to China can perform in the present place and time to be a lance to the heart of the status quo.

You shouldn’t be shocked at this. I know I try to be a voice for calm, and perhaps more than any of you I am aware of the price one pays for civil disorder. But I also know better than any of you what international socialists can do to a country, and there is a very angry part of me that wants to burn it all down.

That’s not what I am for though, when I say I want a lance to the heart of the status quo. A president as such a lance has the enormous advantage of exposing the rot and the corruption, of removing masks and doing it without overt violence. It gives people a chance to wake up and maybe stir us off the rocks. I think we were headed towards that and a less apocalyptic convulsion in 2020 when the left played their most evil game yet.

And before you tell me that Trump isn’t who he was, or that his 2016 campaign was much better than today’s, let me PSHAW loudly. LOUDLY. Have you forgotten his alleged twitter tweeting out a Nazi symbol on the fourth. Have you forgotten the message tweeted out saying that he loved Mexican food, and had got some from the restaurant on Trump tower, showing a badly Photoshop photograph of his eating a taco salad. There is no such restaurant and the Photoshop was so bad he had three hands.

Those were almost certainly the result of his campaign being infiltrated in the same way that his later administration was infiltrated. And those who say “Why can’t he hire good people?” Well, because he has to hire from a pool of people who do political campaigns, and trust me on this, all of those are at least soft left. Also for the “He hires people and then he fires them” — well yes. His training is in business. That’s what one does in business. It is in fact something we could use more of in politics.

However his campaign in 16 was such a sh*tshow I was sure it was a front and even more sure that if he were elected he would be only slightly better than Hilary Clinton.

His own words didn’t help. I’m told that throwing out hot words and crazy accusations is the New York state of mind, to coin a phrase, but seriously. Has every one of you forgotten Trump himself accusing the Ted Cruz’s father of killing JFK? Because I haven’t.

I finally decided to vote for him on the day before the election and only because of three things: Two of them were earnest talks by L. Neil Smith and Jerry Pournelle who told me I should. Look, if those two agreed, it was time.

The other was an earnest analysis that told me he was SLIGHTLY less likely to have me shot on the back of the head than Hillary Clinton would. Note, I didn’t expect it to be UNLIKELY. Only slightly less likely.

However, his presidency was glorious in many ways, even with all the resistance he faced, and that’s enough to give me a very weak preference for Trump. Very weak, in fact, because I’ve not forgiven him for falling for the Covidiocy yet. He should have pulled a Reagan and gone to the people. Let the intelligentsia pillory him, but go to the people and scream from the rooftops that this was nothing. Keep hammering the numbers and how hollow they were, and how this was a psi-ops from China.

Would he have sounded crazy? Possibly. But if I could take the people — even people I liked — coming by to tell me I was crazy or evil, certainly he could. He should have shouted the truth and shamed the devil.

Except that he FELL FOR THE SCAM and remains convinced.

I don’t understand it, except that in talking to friends the other day, we realized in our group, the ones that believed in the covidiocy wholesale are for lack of a better term, the Paladins. The people who can’t conceptualize utter evil.

Because the covidiocy psi ops, as it becomes obvious that the death rate didn’t really go up, that no one died of it who wasn’t going to die of any flu or other rampant virus, and that all the measures deployed for it did nothing and were often counterproductive, does nothing — nothing — but convince me it was an evil plan by the Democrats in conjunction with Chinese idiots. (Idiots because they don’t understand, even now, that if America falls they starve. What Marxist education does for you.)

Perhaps I am the only person who remembers how desperate, in Jan of 2020 the left was for something to wreck the economy or they couldn’t defeat Trump. Well, they found it. I don’t know if on purpose or not but they were clearly willing to extend an economy-killing lock down which btw destroyed the economies of other countries as well, just to get their vote by mail and fraud their hag-ridden, brain dead zombie in. (They knew vote by mail and machines could do it, because that’s how they took over Colorado, which they admit is their model for taking over the rest of the country.)

The sheer evil of the operation, even without getting to pumping an experimental vaccine of a type that had never worked into as many veins as they could by mandate, is simply impossible for the good people of the world to conceive of.

And trust me, this is not in Trump’s favor as I say it: that man must be the most unlikely Simon-Pure-Paladin to walk the Earth. I’ve already been floored at how friggin’ clean he is that all their digging has not found anything terrible in his past. But his inability to grasp the sheer unmitigated evil of the psi-ops run against him puts the cap on it. I salute him, and I wish he’d grow a little more suspicious and paranoid, because this is ridiculous.

DeSantis? Yeah, he has done well for Florida. But how most of you view him has had a good bit of help from adversarial media. Or is the media truly adversarial? Have they learned — or think they learned — that we’ll run towards whomever they attack? Because I’ll note their attacks gave DeSantis credit for not locking down and challenging the Covidiocy but lots of other states did it. In fact there might be more states that did it than not. People from Iowa are known to huff when Florida is extolled in this respect, and heck, people, in crossing the country by car in the fall of 2020 I found most people weren’t actually locked down. They only had an iron grip on the states they meant to steal (and which mostly had leftist governors.)

Now, what do I have against him?

Not a lot. He’s a career politician. Is that enough to damn him? Probably. Look, we’ve had mostly career politicians as presidents in the 20th and early 21st, and look where they have taken us. Look, I can’t be the only conservative looking at all the wars — in the face of how “easy” it was for Trump to get the Abraham accords and start clipping China’s wings — and wonder if we were rooked for over 100 years. Yes, I know it’s not that simple.

But it’s entirely possible that the politician way of thinking is…. towards the kind of cycle we’ve endured for a century.

And then there’s “he does things”. He does. He flexes his muscles. He goes after — mostly — targets for social conservatives. Look, I’m not even kicking too hard on this. The left has gone far enough that social conservatism is needed.

On the other hand, on the other hand…. That’s in Florida. So, say we send DeSantis to DC….

I must ask, clearly: What pool do you think DeSantis will hire from? No, seriously. Very seriously. “Oh, he’ll bring his own people” — snort giggle — those will have fun against the permanent bureaucracy in DC. Those who can’t be corrupted will be destroyed, but there’s a lot of money and favors in DC which will buy most of them. They will be eaten.

And he’s already hiring from the GWB school of election consultants. And he’s getting donations from establishment Republicans. Now, he can no more control that than I can control who reads me and reviews me.

But…. but it worries me. They are donating because they either think they can control him, or they can use him to explain away the loss in the elections as not fraud. (And if you think they wouldn’t like to do that….)

And if they control him, if the establishment succeeds in using him, the best we can hope for him is the jackboot in the other foot. Authoritarianism for causes we like. It’s still Spinach, and it should still go to heck.

Against him, personally, I have but one thing: He’s engaged in underhanded attacks, to get Trump to respond and SEEM to be attacking him for no reason. Yes, I do realize it’s a good strategy to raise his profile. It’s also unspeakably SLIMY.

And if you’re going to say I can’t be against one of them for being a G-d blessed paladin and the other for using slimy tactics? Watch me. Yes, I can.

In many ways yes, DeSantis would be a better manager for what the American State has become.

But that’s not why we voted for Trump. We didn’t want a manager, we want an IED in the heart of the establishment.

I will submit to you we can’t have Trump without the negative stuff. Heck, do you remember what they said about milquetoast Pierre Delecto during the campaign? They’ll find things to say about DeSantis if he’s the nominee. And they will be horrifying.

And if he actually DOES oppose the establishment on the right? Yeah, you’ll find really quick that he’s mean, evil and has tons of things they can attack.

HOWEVER AND THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT: if DeSantis is the nominee, I’ll crawl over broken glass smeared with lemon juice to vote for him.

Because I’m not sure my beloved country can take much more of the international socialists.

There are people supposedly running I won’t vote for because I don’t trust them even against the international socialists. Yes, I’m looking at Pence and Chris Christie. But I’ll vote for DeSantis without blinking.

And yet the game isn’t worth the candle.

Why? Because you know and I know that all this fighting will just give the left an excuse for when the zombie wins with four hundred million votes.

America has electile dysfunction. And until we fix that, none of this — none of this — matters.

Until we get the fraud out, we can vote to make us feel better, but it will make no difference. It just gives them excuses.

Until we get the fraud out, all we can do is build under, build over, build around.

Oh, sure, vote. Make them work for the fraud. But don’t get too excited about who’s running on our side.

Chances are we won’t be voting for a champion sans peur and sans reproche, but for someone who is slightly less repulsive than Zhoe Bai Den, by the grace of Hell Xi the Poo’s vice-roi in the USA.

And that it won’t do us any good. We must do it nonetheless. Force to fraud ridiculously, in front of G-d and everybody. AGAIN.

Meanwhile…. Meanwhile be not afraid, and do your best so we might, maybe, get our republic back, if not in our lifetime, in the lifetime of our kids.

Go build.

Banks and You by Francis Turner

Q: What’s the difference between Hunter Biden, Konstantin Kisin and you?

A: Access to banks

Let me explain.

Recently Konstantin Kisin (a UK comedian/commentator) got a message from the company that was acting as his bank for a podcast he does with some other people.

There then followed a certain amount of hilarity as Mr Kisin asked (not unreasonably) for a reason why and received a number of non-answers.

There are some interesting curlicues to this case though.

Starting with the fact that the “bank” isn’t actually a bank. There’s nothing wrong with that, what they’ve done is partnered with a couple of actual banks to offer a banking service that is more convenient for small businesses than that offered by a traditional bank. This is no doubt one reason why Mr Kisin decided to use them. However it probably gives them rather more flexibility to discriminate that they would have if they were an actual bank.

Mind you in the T&Cs there’s this:

So it would seem that the lack of initial explanation means there’s a “legal, regulatory or security reason” for the decision. Now, as someone who works in cyber-security, I can say that this vagueness is typically there so that the company has a get out when closing an account for a “Nigerian Prince” that offers exciting opportunities to for suckers to work from home while enriching some Eastern European cyber-criminals. BUT short of Mr Kisin running a scam, which seems unlikely given his relatively high public profile in the UK, and given that the account seems to be tied explicitly to a locals account where he and a colleague do video interviews for subscribers the “involved in (cyber)crime” excuse seems highly unlikely.

So the more likely reason is that the “bank” doesn’t like Mr Kisin’s generally unwoke and skeptical viewpoint on matters and is now desperately trying to retcon a reason. Quite possibly the root cause is that some SJW activists figured out that Kisin used Tide as a banker and caused some regulatorily complex work to be done on his account which meant that Tide was spending a lot more money responding to them than it could possibly make from Kisin’s account.

I should note that the excuse about third party payment processors and validation simply doesn’t pass the giggle test. TRIGGERnometry uses Stripe (as part of its locals based subscription service) and Paypal (linked from twitter and youtube for donations and in the shop part of the website) and as far as I can tell that’s it. Lets start with Paypal, which has had its own free speech issues (see this for example), and which seems more likely to be the source of donations. Paypal knows the email address and credit card (or bank account) details (including the address) of everyone using it and there is no effective difference (to the recipient’s bank) to a payment made for a purchase of goods/services and a donation. Moreover it stretches credibility that no other Tide customers are using Paypal to receive payments.

That’s the very slightly more plausible 3PPP. If Tide has problems with Stripe then I guarantee that TRIGGERnometry is far from the only organization that banks with Tide that uses Stripe. Stripe is ubiquitous and one of the reasons for this is that it is very good at reducing fraud, which it does by precisely the sort of validation that Tide says it can’t trust. Now I suppose there’s the vague possibility that somewhere on an older website that I can’t find the TRIGGERnometry people have a different payment processor, but that seems unlikely. Aside from anything else if one particular 3PPP was problematic, the obvious thing for Tide to do is to mention that they have a problem with 3PPP X.

Since, rather than say that, they originally gave notice of closing the account and only a week or so later came up with 3rd Party Payment excuse we can be almost certain that Tide simply don’t want TRIGGERnometry’s custom but aren’t willing to come out and say so.

Anyway, moving on. In one of the threads on twitter discussing this there was reference to an excellent, but older, thread by Patrick McKenzie (of Bits About Money):

Assume everything you’ve been taught about the 20th century is wrong. Okay, so most of it isn’t if you’re going with facts and figures.

But if you look at the conclusions drawn from events, at the bigger movements you were told were behind things, everything you were told is a lie. Pretty much. Except, of course, that sometimes the people telling you the lies thought they were telling you the truth. Either because they, themselves, had been lead up the garden path by philosophers or (and often and) because they couldn’t endure the truth. It didn’t fit with some incredibly appealing theory they had been sold, and which demanded the plainly obvious reason for something not, in fact, be true. Even when it was.

Yes, we’re back again to the vexed topic of World War I. And thereby to the topic of all the wars of the twentieth century. And the vexed topic of military service for “your country right or wrong.”

In the comments on memorial day someone left a comment saying “Whatever your politics, thank the war dead for your freedom.” Or something like.

Look, I’ve been surer or that than I am now.

Um… I am okay with thanking the war dead, because at the very least they thought they were defending freedom and the principles of our constitution, but as a friend (who is a veteran) said in his memorial day post, it is hard to imagine any of our honored military dead coming back and seeing what’s happening in our land and not being profoundly confused, if not disappointed. Because in fact our own — corrupted, frauded in — government is indulging in the sins of the Kaiser and often — sorry — using the tactics of the German National Socialists.

They’re doing this despite the Americans who shed their blood to stop crazy globalism, and partly because their government, their education and, oh, yeah, definitely their bureaucracy is running a program resting on the wrong conclusions taken from the clashes of cultures of the 19th and 20th century.

Look, I can never do this as a scientific theory, not because I can’t develop methods to test it (though those would be mostly examining history) or accept or reject my hypothesis, but because the “science” of sociology currently is caca, and I’m not going to give any college my head for washing to get the right credentials.

So, instead, I’ll write it into science fiction books, and maybe sometime in the future someone can codify it.

This is the thing, though: As far as I can tell, both from observation and experience (acculturating (twice)) and from reading history, cultures are not just the assemblage of a bunch of people under more or less arbitrary rules, which they follow because they’re conformists or stupid or something. Cultures are also not (rolls eyes) born with the person, nor do they transmit genetically. Yes, we do know from animal husbandry that individuals can be born more docile or rebellious, more people-oriented or introverted, etc. and that those traits are inheritable within reason. (There are always sports.)

However, humans are not just creatures of nature, and on the nature nurture puts a veneer that puts limitations on or enhances traits, that rewards certain behaviors or suppresses others. So, even though most people in culture x might be docile if a baby is brought to a highly rebellious culture, like the US and raised in it, he or she will “conform” by being rebellious.

I, myself, had no idea I was introverted. Not a clue. Why? Because Portuguese culture is highly gregarious and group oriented. So, even though I was considered weird and standoffish for there, once I got to the US everyone thought I was very gregarious and people oriented. The one and only tell is that I’m utterly wiped out by being around people too much — the definition of too much being way more than I’m used to — and I either have to get some time away (when I disappear from a con, I’ve usually run to my room to read or listen to music, or do not much of anything. And Dan and I have been known to run away and have dinner by ourselves) or I start showing weird symptoms, like losing my voice. Until I figured that, I thought I always got sick after cons. Actually most of the time I don’t. I’m just wiped out. This is because my natural introversion was shaped by the overlay of a culture where everyone lives in everyone’s pockets, all the time.

Anyway, though, I have come to the conclusion from observation, that while individual humans are plastic to a certain extent, humans in a group, all belonging to the same culture are harder to mold and shape arbitrarily.

It is probably part of human evolution, that cultures react like sentient group entities when attacked, destroyed or occupied.

There is only one way — known for sure — of destroying a culture utterly without killing every member of that culture, meaning it’s eradicated and doesn’t surface again, ever. That is to kill everyone over the age of 3, adopt the surviving children and raise them as yours with no awareness of a separate entity.

Even our savage ancestors didn’t do that, that we know. Oh, in pre-history — even modern primitives (for lack of a better term. Cultures with no writing, and sometimes no future verb tenses or a limited language. Yes, they exist. Mostly tiny tribes in remote places — it was fairly common, as far as we can tell, entire bands and tribes were completely wiped out, their culture leaving absolutely no trace in the future except maybe as a fragment of much-distorted myth. And probably there were times when only the babies were taken and adopted. (Or eaten. Look, there are no noble savages, okay?)

Most of the time, though, throughout most of history, fighting men (or all males) were killed and women, children and non-fighting men (maybe) enslaved.

Because of this, cultures developed what I can only call evolutionary adaptations to survive those events: the women become whores (usually for he conquerors), the men become submissive, and children learn the new language and lose the old, oh, and full blooded children of the old culture stop being born.

In fact most of the symptoms of what we believe are “decadent cultures” aren’t. They’re wounded cultures. Cultures which, sometimes wrongly, assume they’ve been conquered, and therefore go into “survive conquest” mode. This is the mode that will allow some (or most) of its traits to survive, by being passed on in stories, in what you teach the children, in “this is how we do things” even when a majority of those who carried the culture are killed or enslaved.

Now, when I talk of cultures deciding something it sounds like I’m going to break in paens of the Ashkantic records (sp) or perhaps start talking of the collective unconscious. It’s not. It’s a short hand. Because, you know, we are social creatures (even those of us who prefer to make friends over the internet and only see our close family on a regular basis.) This means when your subconscious adds two plus two and gets aardvark, you give certain signals most of them non-verbal. And when everyone does that, the culture acts like a collective entity. I refuse to explain this every single time, so I’ll say the culture does this or that. You will most assuredly deal.

Our culture, yes, is acting like a conquered culture. This is because through most of history for someone to come in and impose on you “new ways of doing things” and trying to shape you into something different, meant that you had lost a war and a lot of you were laying dead.

In our times this is because our intelligentsia was converted against its own culture (while still being part of the culture, which makes them funny. Or they would be funny if this were happening to someone else long ago) by Marxist and “progressive” theories that purport that both humans and cultures are infinitely plastic. Being part of the ruling bureaucracy and class, they imposed arbitrary rules from above, which felt to our subconscious like conquerors giving commands.

Which brings us back to colonialism. As we all know the left considers colonialism evil. It probably is, at least when engaged in from above and arbitrarily. What I mean is, if you conquer a people and impose your ways on them, they’re going to suffer and their culture is going to become corrupted in weird ways. Sometimes…. sometimes that’s an improvement. For all their — many — faults, the Spaniards did stop human sacrifice to the South of (and in some portions of the Western states of) the US.

But it is strong medicine and a high price to pay. Also the reason why all the dreams of the early science fiction writers (and the retarded would-be techno lords of today) of a world government are not just impossible but utterly and unspeakably evil.

Because if you try to impose a culture (and the current idiots it’s not even a culture, just the Marxist virus) on the whole world, it’s going to …. change. And what it will become is not what you set out to impose, but this weird, bizarre amalgam. When you take in account all the cultures of the world, that means what results will be … uh… alien is a good way to put it. And probably mostly Chinese. (Because their culture is older, and frankly while judged in terms of comfort to humans and ability to provide completely nonfunctional, nonfunctional in a way that has created mechanisms to increase the cyclic dysfunction. And those mechanisms will survive and infect everything.) And on the way to installing this maimed and maiming thing, you’re going to kill most of the population of the world, and only a few outright. Most of them with depression and internal destruction.

And here we come back to the age of Empires from oh, the mid-fourteenth but more obvious from the mid-19th century to World War I. That was straight up internationalism.

Cultures that were in the industrial revolution and needed resources, but more importantly, cultures that were absolutely convinced they had the right way to live stomped around the globe showing everyone else how to live, and sometimes hard-enforcing it.

“But Sarah, that’s nationalism,” you’ll say. Oh, is it? Because what they were trying to do was create international empires, all over the world, and enforce the one culture, with, in some cases (hi, Germany) the idea that eventually the whole world would be like them.

I don’t care what they call it. Particularly when you look at the alliances of the ruling families (kings, queens, emperors, empresses, and princes and princesses) it becomes obvious that it was an overarching supra-national elite trying to add more regions to their already vast domains, and make their dominance world wide if possible.

They were not, despite the nationalism of those in the trenches, fighting to preserve their own tiny countries, but their vast international alliances and empires.

Yes, the Germans were the most rampant case of this and they were stopped by the sacrifices of those in World War One and World War Two. And we’re grateful for that.

Our degree of gratitude doesn’t change, but their wasted sacrifice might make us furious when we see the global elite has either achieved their objectives through other means (We’re looking at you EU) or are trying to achieve the rest of it by even stupider means (We’re looking at you WEF.) Oh, and let their buddies in the Soviet Union go a-colonizing for most of the 20th century, and would do it again (the Soviet Union never really existed. It was always Russian colonialism) given half a chance. And are now trying to distract us with a fun proxy make-believe war.

World War I was not caused by nationalism. Though it shocked various internationalists, including the Marxists, that individuals would fight to preserve their countries against internationalism, rather than the workers of the world uniting.

It was caused by colonialist impulses and imperial land grabs.

We — nationalists — have been at war with internationalism for a long time, and it’s time we recognized it, shedding the wrong stuff we were taught.

Yes some cultures are appalling judged on the only standard that counts: Do they promote human productivity happiness and health?

Yes, cultures can change. What they can’t is “directed change.” America has infiltrated more cultures than I care to mention from the beginning, purely by example. Yep, some of the results — I’m looking at you, French revolution — were appalling, because they were the result of our principles being taken up by an entirely different culture, that couldn’t process them as we did. (Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Note this is what I mean that a world-culture would be unspeakably alien.)

It’s entirely possible overtime we can change most cultures into being more functional and better for their members. But we can’t do that by imposing it from above. (Is looking seriously at the EU where most of the members are behaving like conquered cultures. And therefore becoming increasingly more dysfunctional.)

Colonialism is evil because it wounds existing cultures, and often imposes more dysfunctional ones. But even functional cultures, as colonizers, can cause splintering they don’t understand and can’t prevent. It might be needed but it’s always a form of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Imperialism, the formation of vast international empires, is a form of colonialism, whether under the banner of the Soviet Union, the WEF or Kaiser Wilhelm.

Cultures evolve in isolation. In our hyper connected world, they’ll change and meld through contact. The best we can do is denounce the bad changes. And keep the local identities as much as possible.

Because in the end, nationalism is good. Despite our fantasies — and I often have them — both a culture imposed from above — whether a real or synthetic one — and a world in which our physical location doesn’t matter are unworkable. And if they worked, they’d be nightmares.

Even as we live and work across borders, even as we borrow each other’s food and clothing, it is important to remember that the national culture evolved for a reason, and that everything we experience of other cultures must be experienced through our culture.

It is important to remember other cultures we come in contact with are intrinsically different and shaped through millennia (or in our case centuries. Hey, we’re the annoying genius kid) of different evolution. Evolution suited to the needs and location of the majority of people.

It is important to remember that every immigrant-group will bring culture with them, and that they will process their acculturation through their culture. (For individuals acculturation is more complete and faster. Not to say that it’s always 100%. It’s not. See my figuring out I was not an extrovert.) This is one of the reasons open borders is stupid. (Sorry. Yes, I badly wanted to believe in a borderless world. But that just guarantees the least functional, most predatory culture wins over all. No.) It is also one of the reasons that countries should be able to vet who comes in, and keep it — if possible — to individuals. And countries must demand and enforce acculturation and integration.

Because cultures will war with each other, openly or not. And because there are no noble savages, and the deep background of our culture was formed in a time of utter savagery, if you let cultures war, the least functional will win.

Cherish your national culture. Protect your national borders.

The dream of a borderless world is a nightmare, where elites completely divorced from the regional beliefs and needs rule all, according to their arbitrary will and their philosophical illusions.

Think of the different cultures as the founders thought of states: Little laboratories of humanity, competing (but not warring. Not if we limit immigration and don’t try to grab each other’s land and people) to see which is best for humanity. The best at achieving prosperity freedom and innovation will spread naturally.

Which is why all over the world, the future already comes from America.

Let’s make it a functional future. Let’s make it an American future.

Get to it.

Stock Up Now for Galt Month By Overgrown Hobbit

June is supposed to be Pride month. I was told I’d need to apply for a religious exemption to avoid being mandated to celebrate it.  I shouldn’t be suprised: Corporate is also keen on Greed, Gluttony, and Wrath year-round.

It’s tragic. It’s horrifying that virtues like self-mastery, charity, or humility are opaque to these perverted aristos. Who do we little people think we are, wanting honesty or dignity? It’s “See deer, point horse, peon.” We’re supposed to know our place as demoralized consuming/producing mules in their economic fiefdoms. Up is down, down is up, cruelty is kind, and decency is perverted: All the better to enslave you with, my dear.

So let’s not. And not tell them we did.

I know loads of us are already trying to follow the advice of Mr. Niemeir here. But it’s tricky, and hard to disentangle oneself completely, all the time. https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Give-Money-People-Hate-ebook/dp/B087C4V1GM

Maybe it’ll be easier for just one month, eh?

I ran across a suggestion a commenter I know posted over at Rod Dreher’s blog:

This year, let’s kick off a general economic strike on June 1st.   Don’t buy anything not absolutely necessary. Buy your groceries: That’s it. Whatever you can buy from farm stands with cash, do that. Planning a major purchase? Punt it to July. We’ll be washing dishes by hand for thirty days. Make do with clothes, shoes, what have you, until after June 30th. Find ways to avoid all but your most essential purchases.

I think a sudden drop of 10 – 15% in expected earnings could really drive the point home, especially since June is the end of the quarter. I’m told these sociopathic pool noodles live and die by their earnings reports.

If enough of us #GoGaltJune maybe the oligarchs will get it through their thick heads to just quit with the whole patronizing proselytizing Pride malarky* already and leave us alone. Leave our kids alone.

Me, I’m off to fund the The Wise of Heart

https://www.fundmycomic.com/campaign/113/the-wise-of-heart

and Draco Alchemicus https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rachelfultonbrown/draco-alchemicus before May 31st.

How ’bout you?

Godspeed.

*This is Sarah. I’m not overgrown hobbit, the author of the guest post above. And I didn’t originally have a problem with Pride parades. Look, in most cities it was rather dorky people shouting “We exist and are allowed to.” That’s …. whatever.
HOWEVER the “Pride month” and “Mandatory celebration” have stepped on my LAST NERVE. People are what they are, and being gay is not the worst thing, but why the heck would we “celebrate” it for a whole month? Even motherhood is celebrated ONE DAY a year. And corporate-mandated celebration? No. I realize they want a fascist state, but just no. These are my middle fingers. I endorse this here hobbit’s suggestion. – SAH*