Yesterday, by accident, at night, I read about the barbaric things done to women in Israel by the Hamass terrorist attack on 10/7. I enjoin you not to follow that link, if you don’t want my nightmares last night.

And I woke up and was thinking… well, about a lot of things.

The only thing unusual about the way Hamass treated those women (and children) is that they killed most of them. Unusual, I mean from an historical perspective.

I was thinking of the rape of the Sabines, upon which the founding of Rome rested. Bunch of young braves, (given Romulus and Remus’s origin probably expelled from some community for being outlaws) claims land, then kills all men in a neighboring tribe and kidnaps every woman: crone, pregnant mother, young woman, barely pubescent child, rapes them and sometimes — sometimes — marries them. “Marries” them.

There are certain beats to this horror throughout history. And variables. Whether old women are killed is a variable. How young the age of “women” kidnapped is another. We know for a fact Plains Indians kidnapped girls as young as 6 and subjected them to the same treatment as all women. The horrific beats of this treatment included beatings, starving and serial rapes. It might or might not include the killing of the first child born. (Why? well, because it could be the woman’s murdered husband’s.) And everyone was subjected to this, from very young to very old.

The purpose, evolutionary was to break these women, to give them what was later described as Stockholm syndrome, so that they would, by the time they were given to a single man, cling to him as a protector and give him all their loyalty. So that they became willing broodmares for those who had killed their own families in front of them.

These stories are no longer told. Not the deep past ones because women have been lied to and told of some mythical past of powerful women who could have whatever men they wanted and no one was “judged.” (Oh, and there was no property, etc.) Marina Gimbutas should take a bow for her fraudulent insane theory of pre-history here. You know, the one where all the bulls heads were interpreted as uteri and she sold the story of a great, pacifist feminist religion, which somehow — inexplicably — was destroyed by the evil patriarchy, even though every one, men and women were much happier under matriarchy. (Everyone who really, really, really wants the crazy people to stop rewriting Eden and calling it science join me. We’re going to throw plastic ducks at them till they stop. This might stop us having to buy a fleet of helicopters. In minecraft.)

And even the relatively recent incidents in American history are never mentioned, because that would be raccciiiiiis. They were neither rare nor did they use to be hidden. If you check your local library you’ll probably find some in the older local history books. But they are so taboo to even be mentioned that some young twit on twittex was talking about how there was no rape in the Americas before the white men came. White men invented rape.

In a way she’s correct, but only so far as the concept of rape demands the acceptance of women as beings who can say no and have personal agency. This was utterly unknown for most people’s throughout history until the advent of Judaic-Christian morality and it was surpassingly rare until Western Civilization became a thing. And therefore there was no “rape” because you can’t rape a table or a chair, and women were perceived as things, just as those objects are things.

I’m fairly sure this is still going on in most of the world, where tribal culture prevails, but again, it would never be mentioned, because “racism.”

(And yes, as the dog returns to his vomit and the sow to her mire, someone will come to explain to me that the poorly understood and less well known culture xyz of the deepest Amazon had in fact the deepest respect for women and– Maybe. But that’s not the way to bet. In the immense variety of the human race, it’s bound to have emerged and disappeared a few times. But for any given culture until western Civ, that’s not the way to bet.)

But it actually has zero to do with race. It’s all culture. ALL culture. And it’s baseline human, before Western civilization.

Because that’s fairly recent, insofar as the history of the world goes, you probably are descended from at least 25% of such couplings, regardless of where you’re from. Given my ancestry and the wars involved, probably more.

The fact that women are weaker, men are stronger and that women are the only ones who can bear that precious commodity: the next generation, sets us up for this dynamic. To be fair to most human cultures throughout history, aka tribal cultures, men weren’t exactly non-objects either. A few of the men, the ones who managed to rise above the others might have agency and be considered human beings, but anyone who was poor, vulnerable, or just not part of the tribe, was a thing, to be disposed of or pushed around as it suited his “betters.” (Our “betters” still think this way.) And it had nothing to do with patriarchy that women rarely (though sometimes, but very rarely) made the class of deciders and pushers-around. It had to do with physical strength, in a day and age where everything from producing food to defending yourself depended on that.)

That is the state of nature — human nature — red in tooth and claw. If you were a woman you were always, your whole life, at risk of a raid, and having your entire family and community destroyed, and being subjected to a fate literally worse than death.

We’ve risen above it in pockets of time and places here and there, by effort and civilization. Western civilization.

But we’re teaching innocent children — particularly females — the opposite of that. We’re teaching them that if they help destroy the civilization that protects them and makes their lives peaceful, and allows them the dignity and choice that humans should have is the oppressor. We’re teaching them that if they destroy it, they will revert to Eden, where everyone was free, didn’t have to work and there was no sin.

And with what glee these pampered daughters of good and plenty have set to work.

Teach the children well. Not tenderly, but well. Which includes making them aware of the horrors of the past.

Lest they come again.

Some of you seemed to think my post yesterday referred to a sort of apocalypse or disaster. That’s not what I meant. The only ominous part about it is that things we’ve learned to take for granted, like, oh, long distance travel and money enough to do it might not be for some for a while.

For the record, they weren’t when I was young. People are always puzzled that growing up in Europe, I never went to the major touristic points. Well, you know, I flew for the first time at 18 when I came to the US. And while I once had a Euro rail pass, I used it to get a summer job and travel to and from. And we were not poor, not by the time I was a teen. Oh, not rich, either, unless you were looking from very far down (say where mom started.) I once asked grandma what our “class” was because we were learning Marx, you know, and I’d had an argument with a friend whose father made about double what dad did, but spent it differently, and she said we were upper class because we had books, and we decorated our house better. So I asked. Grandma sat there for a while thinking, and then said “We’re the class that makes do.” Since then I’ve taken great pride in this. I was born the class that makes do. And we still are. (In fact, in my case, the great problem is whether I allow myself to not “make do.” Right now I’m debating whether to buy a tripod ladder to paint the front of the house. Look, I don’t want to fall. OTOH it’s expensive, and I have a ladder, and I can make do. Yeah. I know. I probably should buy it. Still cheaper than paying someone to do it. But argh. Either I’m old, or everything has gotten crazy expensive.) Anyway, that nice excursion on why class is insane aside, the truth is that we couldn’t afford to travel far or on a whim. Our big trips were train or bus, and usually for dire necessity. So, we might fall into that for a while. Which would be okay, if the country weren’t so large and my family here dispersed (let alone the ones overseas. I have not yet met great-nephews.)

The thing I’m warning about is not apocalypse, but major disruption. And a disruption neither I nor anyone can predict. In fact, the nature and size of this disruption should put paid to the notion of “rule by experts” to the extent the last three years haven’t yet.

Now will it disrupt travel? Or merely remove burdensome restrictions, so travel actually flourishes? I don’t know. Will food be scarce? Arguably, some places. If you haven’t yet and can, grow some. Or, you know, acquire some next Spring, if we get there intact, and dehydrate and store. Will electricity go away? For some time some places, probably. I mean, blackouts are always possible, and when the economy is in turmoil they’re even more possible. Will they lock us down again? Well, it depends. I think they’re going to try. If the try gets past what we had since we stopped being locked down, (Them:”There’s terrible disease X somewhere, be TERRRIFIED” Us: “Nah bra.” Them, run around in circles for a while, then “There’s terrible disease X somewhere, be TERRIFIED.”) is anyone’s guess. Some places, maybe. Will they try to inflict famine on the people? They’ve been trying, and failing that, they just keep publishing articles saying people are starving. Look, some people are very tight indeed and the rest of us are feeling a pinch. And I’ll fully believe more people are hitting the food banks. Particularly around this time, because I doubt the money for presents is high, and people will want to give the kids at least SOMETHING, so if they can get groceries for free. But we’re not Venezuela, let alone Ukraine during Holodomor. For one, if there were real hunger, not manufacture via survey hunger, the ubiquitous urban geese would be gone. And that deer who keeps nibbling your tomato plants would be in someone’s freezer.

We have a deep fund of wealth in real terms: much more clothing than we need, much more food than we need, houses that are weather-worthy (for the most part) and health better than our ancestors at the same age. We won’t be easy to topple.

Even in Ukraine, Holodomor was only possible because the army confiscated ever handful of grain people had stored. But you see…. we’re armed, and right now they’re not sure of the army. (Their attempts to enlist a foreign army is something else. Kind of like what Rome did, I guess. But even then, I betcha our veterans will eat their non-cohesive army of many pieces and indifferent literacy for breakfast and not notice.)

We really are a unique place in composition and living in a unique time. So their attempts to reduce us using historical techniques (they really only have one script) hasn’t worked and is as likely to work as their screams of “hand us all your guns now, this time we mean it.” And they don’t fully understand it. For which I shouldn’t sneer at them (oh, but I will. If nothing else, because they call themselves smart) because half on our side don’t understand it either.

Yes, history repeats, but not exactly the same, because factors are different. And the problem in accounting for every factor, and not just half a dozen cherry picked ones to support the speaker is why history is not scientific and ruled by formulas. For one, the individual human factor is, by itself, unaccountable. How many times do you think you know how someone will react — someone you know and have close association with — and they surprise you with something completely wonderful or horrible that you never even considered? Now multiply that by 300 million or so (Heaven only knows how many of us truly are.)

Look, the left is relatively easy to predict, because they have one guide book, and they adhere to it. And when not following it line by line, they follow the spirit of it and the bizarre idea that humanity are widgets, easily divided into groups, where everyone acts like everyone else in that group. So their errors of judgement and logic are easy to predict.

But reality is not leftist. In fact, since the nineties, it’s become increasingly obvious there’s a yawning chasm between what the left thinks they’re doing and what they are actually doing.

There are several bits of psy-ops floating around that amount to “Everything is proceeding the way the left wants it.”

That’s kind of easy to say, because we know — and have caught them at it — the left ultimately hates civilization, humanity, and life itself. (They’re sort of like the auditors in Terry Pratchett. Only immobile rocks would satisfy them.)

But the thing is that’s not their normal mode, or what they act from, or what they think they act from. They think they’re acting from good. They hate civilization, because the noble savage would flourish in concert with nature, and then everyone would be happy. They hate humanity because why do we refuse to be the noble savages of their dreams? They hate life itself, because why is nature red in tooth and claw? Can’t the lions be vegetarians already? And so on. Their “Hatred” is from a place of frustration because reality refuses to conform to their dreams. The problem is they really think that their crazy ideas, which they have been taught in schools since they were 3 or so will work and make everyone happy and contented in Marxist paradise.

When they say “you’ll own nothing and be happy” they really mean it, because they’ve been fed a lot of nonsense about a pre-history when there was no property and no war. (This has no relationship with real history or humans of any sort, but it is taught in schools, nonetheless. It is just really an heretical version of the Garden of Eden.) When they tell us to eat the bugs, they really really think that would work (look what they don’t know about animal husbandry, farming or nutrition could fill several blogs bigger than this one.) When they say they want to eliminate fossil fuels, it’s because they believe that there are solutions which the evil oil industry has been evilly suppressing to make money (for mustache wax, so they can twirl their mustaches, of course.)

My window into this was Occasional Cortex. And yes, I know we love to make fun of her as being very, very stupid. But I don’t think she is, in reality. I think she’s a midwit, maybe a little higher IQ than her cohort, and what most schools would call “gifted” (which means an ability to behave and kiss up to teacher, but that’s something else.) However, even if she were as dumb as we all think, her admission, buried in Green New Deal was a shock to me. What admission? She said we should maybe ask “Native Americans” how to live in harmony with and restore the environment.

This made my jaw drop. Even if you buy the whole noble savage in perfect harmony with the Earth thing — and you might, if you are completely lacking in historical knowledge at all — how on Earth did she miss that most “Native Americans” these days are mostly people living in reservations on the government dole, (not of their choice in the beginning, yeah, but inescapable now) or maybe successfully running casinos? Or you know, normal people who have some percentage of Amerindian? I mean, my husband has some (from certain issues in one of the sons), my DIL almost for sure, my prospective DIL almost for sure (they haven’t tested.) According to 23 and me I have more than Elizabeth Warren (not much, no. And probably from Brazil, since US tribes refuse to be tested, by and large. And no, no idea how or where, except my guess would be some ancestor brought a souvenir home.)

I don’t know guys, but I think the chances of “Native Americans” such as they exist in current days magically having some kind of magical ecological knowledge is fairly slim. Even if they’d ever had it.

But remember the left thinks of people as groups, and groups controlled by one characteristic, usually genetic (Lord love a duck, Hitler would adore them.) Therefore if you have Amerindian blood, you magically know how to “heal the environment.” You are in fact a Disney “Native American” singing while forests grow around you, and deer gambol with bears.

If you realize this crazy not only came from the pen of someone who is university educated, but was undoubtedly vetted by her staffers, and then embraced by her side of the isle, you realize what we’re up against.

It’s not so much that they’re at war with reality. It’s that they don’t realize what they were taught since they learned to toddle — in school, entertainment and “news” — isn’t really reality.

In other words, they know a lot of things that just ain’t so.

And that’s what’s brought us here. Because when they decided to perform a color revolution in 20, they really thought once they took over and instituted their great plans over the heads of the “idiot” populace utopia would come about, and we’d all love them and praise them.

There is a desperation in the way they keep insisting the economy is fine, or stomping their little hooves and trying to stamp out “disinformation.” It’s because they don’t understand why open borders, printing tons of money, insisting on DEI and a lot of other crazy hasn’t already ushered in extreme prosperity and improvement.

No, I’m serious. Remember for years I moved in the Science Fiction community, amid people of arguably much higher IQ than the general population and better “informed” and “read” than 98% of people.

If I had a dime for every time I heard them go on about how if only Carter had been elected and carried on with his “reforms” we’d now (circa early 2k) would be so wealthy, and the environment would be healed, and we’d already have colonies in space, I wouldn’t be at risk from even hyper inflation. I’d also have all the hair I pulled out in my hotel room while screaming in frustration at the total crazy. And yes, these were almost always people who’d lived under Carter.

… but that’s the problem.

Nothing has turned out as they expected. And things are coming apart in weird and scary ways they can’t comprehend. And their screaming and pointing at a scape goat (which in their minds is the real culprit, having hypnotized us all into not believing the wonderfulness of the economy and their rule.) isn’t working. Their importing vast numbers of people who can tan and are therefore enlightened and perfect Marxists also isn’t working. So all they can do is double down and believe twice as hard. (We haven’t reached the “offer sacrifices to the cargo cult yet.” or not widespread, yet.)

The problem is that the idiot children have hit so many things with hammers, and keep doing it as they double down, that we can’t predict it either.

I don’t pay any attention to their news and economics analysis, other than to point and laugh. Any coincidence with reality is mere … coincidence.

On the other hand, because of where and when I grew up, I speak fluent “other signs.” And because you are all spread all over the country and have more and diverse occupations than I could dream up if I tried, I get reports. And the reports are scaring me.

Now you could say — and would be right — that most of the Odds are in Odd occupations, even when they’re traditional. I think a lot of you work for yourselves, but there are also those who work for others, usually in strange, off-beat side occupations. You’d be right. And maybe we’re hit before the rest of the people, but I don’t think so. I think we just think about it.

You don’t hear of how much trouble people in tech are having finding jobs, because complaining is less likely to allow you to find a job, but I see it in my inbox, and it’s gone way beyond a blip. You don’t hear about how strained various social nets are with the influx of illegals, but I get pms and emails.

Now do I have a good picture? Oh, h*ll no. I have a lot of pieces of a vast jigsaw. But I can’t tell for sure where the pieces go. And the tail of the cat looks just like the rug. But I can still guess what’s assembling is not a beautiful, serene, fireside scene.

However, add to this that we were already headed for turmoil. Even if we had an ideal government, that left things mostly alone, we were headed for turmoil and upside down-ness.

As a lot of you pointed out in the comments, computers and the internet is a major disruption factor. One they (the broad left) didn’t see coming. (They ain’t very good at predicting.) They could tell space travel would be a majorly disruptive factor, because they have read the history of discoveries. So they’ve squatted on space travel and done everything possible to prevent it, including the ridiculous cry of “We should not go to space till we learn to take care of this planet.” BUT computers? They thought it was just something that would speed up calculations, and hey, it might help them control the people.

But it doesn’t work that way. Even with their attempts at censorship more information and reality escapes than it did when they just had to control newspapers. (Obama isn’t revered as FDR. The effort they made was arguably larger for Obama.) And much as they control the schools, kids keep escaping.

I don’t know what they thought they were going to achieve with lockdown. I have reason to believe, from their own bleatings (“the new normal”) that they thought they could keep us locked up for that, while they did as they pleased. However, I predicted then, and still am, what it actually did is bring “Telecommuting” from a wild and woolly strange way of living to “What most people who work via a computer” do. And they can scream and cry that’s only 20% of people. I’d bet these days it’s closer to 40%. But that’s not the point. it’s the knock on effects. Those people lived in cities, mostly, of necessity, and the countryside was dying. And the cities flourished with support professions: shop keepers, and restaurateurs, and various support people.

For twenty years, it’s been possible for some largish percentage of people to work from home. How many? I don’t know. Again, I suspect more than the talking heads think, but all the numbers are corrupt.

So, why weren’t we? The “normalcy” of what’s been for a long time holds sway over “what could be”. It always does. Innovation has to come as something small that slips in. Also, companies were invested in commercial real estate, and they didn’t want their offices to devalue. Also, people were used to going to work every day. I mean, it’s just the way it was.

Dan and I are weird in that, since our twenties, our ideal situation would have been to work from home. I did. He couldn’t though by 2018 he was, at least some days a week.

And then 2020.

And now most people simply don’t want to go back. This was never anticipated. The number of people that moved away from blue states, and away from large cities shocked the left.

What shocked them even more, and another number we can’t get, is how many people took kids out of the school system to homeschool. (And they should be terrified. Even people who, just before, told me they simply couldn’t, are somehow managing now. And any young couple you speak to, who is having kids, is already studying how to homeschool.) Speaking of and as a tangent, as it happens one of the things I have no visibility into is daycare. I wonder how those are doing. I realized recently, when I drove past one, that they’re far less visible than they were in the eighties, when I swear there was one in every block. Is this because we have fewer kids, or because fewer women are dropping their kids off at daycare at months old, in order to chase a great “career”? I don’t know.)

In fact, what 2020 and the crazy lockdowns did was let the potentiality for disruption of the computer revolution become fact. And now everything they try to do to recover pushes things in the other direction.

Look, most things that come out of the computer disruption will be good, I think. It’s much harder to tamp down a million voices than to simply purchase newspapers and infiltrate book publishers. And it’s harder to control — physically — a distributed country of small towns. And it’s healthier for kids to grow up with their parents than strangers.

But the way to the “eventually better” is massive Earthquake level disruption. No, Atlantis-sinking disruption. And some of those effects are already baked in. I came across some “expert” bleating that there would be a commercial real estate crisis and giggled. What, he got there now? Welcome to the party, pal.

Now pile on top of that that the people who are supposed to at the very least “shepherd” us through this kind of thing, by seeing what’s happening, and easing the fall so we don’t hurt too badly: perhaps ease regulations, so offices can become apartments; ease up on taxes while service people figure out how to position so they can serve the same population now distributed (I mean, people like repair people, doctors, nurses, retail, etc.), etc. are instead hitting things with a hammer trying to bring about utopia that can only exist in Disney movies, where people are drawn.

That is taking the chaos and taking it to the next level.

My feeling — and again, I could be wrong — is that the economy is coming apart at the seams. Things that “always worked this way” and associations that people used to listen to and things like the WHO or financial experts are coming apart.

Now add to it the demographic factor — which as BGE tells us (often) explains a lot of otherwise inexplicable phenomena — and realize that my generation (the not-boomers and not quite-x) were already massively badly taught. I mean, seriously, compared to my brother say, my training was ridiculous. We compensated for it, though, and because the boomers took so long to retire, we sure had a long apprenticeship. Now we’re…. well…. my husband has made noises about wanting to retire. Everyone our age seems to be doing that. Probably not for a while, I think, as we’re in our early sixties. Then again, some will.

And the people ten years older than us are already retiring or retired.

This would fine and dandy if there were a generation of eager 40 year olds who’ve been on the job for 20 years or so, and are more than ready to step into our shoes, no matter how bad their education was.

Except that because of the elephant-bulge of the boom, and what it did to jobs and economics, let alone what Marx did to education, kids are starting later and later. “jobs that aren’t temp by 30” is a dream for a lot of them.

So the people available to step in are poorly trained and bare beginners. Now some will take the load and do admirably. Hopefully most of our kids. But demographically? There is a huge gap in competency coming up just in the middle of all this.

Because things change as graves fill up, there is a chance for change, too. Real change, where the practical necessities force people to look at reality and not at the theory they were taught in school.

The fact that many companies are paying less attention to degrees, for instance, is one of those good things.

But what we’re looking at is not cataclysm, except to the extent that humans, let alone human societies, don’t deal well with change.

What we’re looking at is a whirlwind of bizarre things none of us can anticipate.

There used to be a poster in the eighties of a discovery ship falling off the edge of the flat Earth. I cannot find it for love or money. Never seems to have been digitized. And my attempts to get midjourney to reproduce something like have failed. (If you’re an artist and want to try it, do)

That image fully encapsulates what I see coming.

To a great extent we’ve been living on a flat Earth. It’s a lie, or at least not true, but for the purposes of our every day lives, it worked and allowed us to predict the future.

It is a construct of the early mass-industrial age, created and coddled by a take over of the mass-industrial-communication and art complex. It is infused with Marx, and doesn’t really fit reality, but it was so prevalent that even a lot of us have it in our heads. It explained the past (by lying), the present (by ignoring what didn’t fit) and the future (by lying again, but also by moving things forward continuously.) It was the “arrow of history” in which the future was always more “progressive”. It still lives in the starry eyes of the children saying “you’ll own nothing and be happy.”

But reality never fit it, or felt any need to obey it, just like the Earth never became flat because people believed it was.

And our ship — metaphorical — is about to sail off the edge of the construct and into reality. Because the construct isn’t holding.

The problem is that reality is unforgiving. There’s going to be a lot of crashing and splintering.

But reality is also not like in movies “and now everyone starves.” For everyone to starve you need a high level of communist control, which they don’t have. Even in Venezuela there are people who “make do” and live reasonably okay lives. There were some at the end of the USSR too.

So, what I was trying to say with the other post: There are things you can predict, and things you can’t. There’s something heading for us at speed, and I’d guess the first impact is somewhere very close, though the biggest might be 20 years from now, that we can’t predict. Not just because we’re not smart enough, or because it’s completely out of our experience, but because we can’t predict it. Period. It’s unpredictable. It’s not written.

Factors will careen into factors, the whole thing creating chaos.

I know it’s possible to continue when currency loses value completely, because this happened well before I was born, in Portugal. But it was a very different country, and I don’t know how they managed, not in details. And it would be different with modern tech anyway. (I’ll just say, feel free to boo, I don’t think crypto is the solution. No matter how much people would like it to be.)

What’s heading for us is… fractal. It will become clearer as we’re closer on. But right now, we just can’t predict it.

Will it be better? Some places, some things, some ways. Will it be worse? Some places, some things, some ways. Will it be catastrophic? Some places, some things, some ways.

In the end we win, they lose. In the middle, all is confusion and turmoil.

So, keep your hair on. It’s impossible to prepare for this, because you don’t know what this will be like, much less in your particular place, occupation, group.

Yeah, sure, basic preparations. Same you’d do if you expected a massive storm. And sure, travel now, because long distance travel is a fragile thing, dependent on a high level of stability and civilization.

And keep your hair on. Don’t go crazy and go imagining things. Suffice onto the day, etc.

If you get really stressed, learn something new, practical or not. Keep your mind nimble.

In the end, remember grandma: Our class of people are the people who make do.

We are free because we don’t ask permission from anyone to be free. We survive because we find ways to survive. We thrive because we find ways to thrive.

We make do. Continue doing so.

First, be not alarmed. I’ve had this feeling before and it was wrong, or at least the decay and loss I feared was slow and grinding, not catastrophic and eminent.

Or it applied very personally to me. I mean to an extent 2013 WAS the last summer for our family, not due to catastrophe, but to the boys no longer being kids and things changing markedly. Also to us moving a lot over the next two years. So when I kept getting that feeling of “the last halcyon Summer” I wasn’t wrong. It was just PERSONAL.

And the feeling part of this might be personal, you know? Because, well, I’m over 60 and it’s not like Dan and I don’t have health issues. And while none of them are serious as such, people of my generation have died in their early sixties in my family (mostly of cancer. And of my generation, but older than I, of course. All were older than I, even my brother is.)

BUT–

There are places and things and gatherings we’ve all cherished, and didn’t know the last time was the last. I’m sure we all remember that. Particularly with really familiar places and people. Last visit to grandma and grandpa, for instance, not knowing it was the last, and going through the routine, and thinking of what you were doing next.

Or even with things I really enjoyed and which were a treat, like going to Denver’s Lakeside park with the boys and Dan, and following them around with a book, while they did ALL THE RIDES. (I don’t ride, because of my middle ear, but I enjoyed walking around watching them have fun more than I can say.) I didn’t know the last time was the last time.

Or midnight drives to Denver with older son, to discuss plots over a table at Pete’s. The lockdown stopped those well before he moved away. Or–

Oh, fill in your own. I’m sure you have a couple of dozen, each of you.

Part of the reason I enjoyed a trip back to CO this summer, despite the altitude issues getting worse over five days, is that I got to say goodbye, knowing it was goodbye. (Not saying there won’t be visits, again, but probably not over more than a long weekend. MAYBE.)

Honestly, I also wish I’d enjoyed my writers’ group more before the hammer fell on it on 9/11.

Anyway, I’m having that feeling again like in the summer of 13. Like…. Closing call. Last drink being served.

Only it’s not so much “this is the halcyon summer” but “Do you need to do something that involves travel/takes effort” “is there someone far away you need to hang out with a last time?”

Note this doesn’t fill me with glee, since the earliest I can get to Portugal is May, and I don’t know if that’s before or after it’s too late.

It could be wrong. It could all be wrong. During one of the last trips in our protracted move, younger son and I had rented a van that was convinced there was a slow leak on the right tire. Note it continued telling us that, and only that while the left tire was RIPPED OPEN and we were stopped waiting for AAA to come help. And after.

It could be that. The sensor is broken, and it shows something, but not what is real.

However the reports I’m getting from friends working directly with retail either on their own business or for someone else are starting to give me a sense of baffled panic. Baffled because words like “Worst ever” keep coming up. Cheap things are still selling. Like, stocking stuffer level. And honestly ebooks are still selling, though KU (and knowing how little that pays these days, it will tell you a lot) is now a major part of my earnings.

I don’t get a feeling of “the economy is in trouble.”

I get a feeling of “The wheels are coming off so fast” and “I don’t know how long the mask of normalcy will last.”

Last call. Belly up to the bar. I know the feeling when something or someone dies, and you never got to say goodbye. As I said, that last trip to CO healed something in my soul, because we moved during lockdowns and there were so many unsaid goodbyes.

So, it’s probably nothing. Probably false alarm, or intensely personal. But if you can afford it….

Go say goodbye to places and people cherished. It will give you strength through what’s to come.

Which hopefully is not as insane as I can sort of picture. Not fully picture, because I don’t have the experience for this.

We’re not going to the stone age. Or even the 19th century. But I get a feeling a lot of the “of courses” which are mostly habit, custom and institutions are about to be cast loose into the wind.

And that’s….

Some will be good. Some will be bad. But all will be a maelstrom.

My feeling is we’re approaching the point of singularity, from which there is no return. Afterwards might be better, but it will be very different. Humans don’t actually like different, you know. So that will be a shock, if nothing else.

Very different. Totally uncharted.

This is your last call.

Depression By David Bock

As the title implies, this article is going to be more serious than what I usually post.

I’ve struggled with depression most of my life. By the time I was 18 I’d gotten through almost a decade of therapy, this helped quite a bit and I learned some good coping mechanisms. Unfortunately, depression is never something that completely goes away and the blue devils are always waiting at the edges for me to let my guard down.

I’m not alone in this. A great many people suffer from similar issues of varying severity and we all have our own ways of dealing with the internal darkness. Some healthy, some less so, and some tragically permanent.

This was where I was from childhood all the way through 2019 and leading up to the year that shall not be named or its sequels. Over the past few years I’ve taken some severe emotional blows. A number of people reading this know about some of them.

So if this is what I’m dealing with now, when the lights go on with the flick of a switch and the internet is there to distract me, what am I going to do if things get really bad? Not just for me, but in general.

What I’m not going to do is give up. That’s not in my nature. Will I have the occasional pity party? Of course, I’m a human being. But I’ll find reasons to carry on. In a survival situation we can’t afford to wallow in self-pity. We have to get up and get to work to ensure we see the next day. This can be very hard even in “normal” times.

To get me through the tough times, I have resources and abilities. I spent more than half of my life without the internet or cell phones, I can get used to going without them again if need be. I’ve been involved with a couple of living history groups over the years and they taught me valuable skills, these experiences also helped me add to my reference library. If we’re sheltering in place, I’ll still have access to my books and my tools. Regardless of where we are, I’ll also have my wife and our cats, they are four reasons to get up every morning no matter how much I’d rather stay in bed with my head under the blankets.

In August of 2011, we survived Hurricane Irene, even though our house was the worst affected in our town and the DEC considered ruling it uninhabitable. My wife and I lost a great number of things and the financial hit was significant, but we carried on and we were there for each other.

Which leads to my next point, one of the best resources we have to keep us going is other people, our tribe. Friends, biological family, or family of choice doesn’t matter. Be there for each other, be kind to each other, help each other through the rougher patches and we’ll all be stronger on the other side.

If you have, or know anyone who has, worked the AA program, you’ll be familiar with the phrase “One day at a time.” Dwelling on the past or over thinking about the future will interfere with living in the present. The general meaning is to focus on shorter term and smaller goals to help eventually achieve longer term and larger goals. When we can’t control most of what’s happening around us, we can focus on what we can control.

Having a routine helps. Make lists, keep the items on them achievable, but don’t get too granular. Try to start each day with a small success, it can help set the mood of the day. One of the things I try to do every single morning (unless a cat interferes) is make the bed. Is it a little thing? Yes, but it gives me a minor dose of endorphins from completing a task and makes the next one that much easier.

As Harra Csurik said to Miles when he visited Silvy Vale in the Lois McMaster Bujold book Memory “You go on. You just go on. There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier. You just go on.”

Brena Bock Author Page

David Bock Author Page

Team And More

Okay, to begin with, this post is not picking on anyone. It might seem like I am, but I’m not really. There are just certain concepts that I need to perhaps make you think through, and consider, because technology has changed, but people haven’t thought through the implications of it. And for some reason the right side of the isle has REALLY PECULIAR feelings about work and about what it respects. And look, here I’m saying I have those issues too, and I had to THINK through them.

We all of us — or most of us. If you’re over 90 it’s only 50/50 it applies to you — were raised in an intellectual environment filled with Marxism, and it comes through.

Yesterday on twitter I came across a post by someone I like and whose opinions — with some occasional croissant flakiness, but who doesn’t have that? — I generally respect. Or at least understand. But her twitter said she’d read Instapundit since 9/11, but now was done. I was taken aback, and because I work for the site, I read her post.

What egregious crime had Glenn committed? Well, he asked people consider donating to instapundit on Giving Tuesday. And because he takes expensive vacations (!) has a day job, etc, he shouldn’t ask, and therefore she wouldn’t read him again.

To be fair to her, later, in an exchange with me — well, you know. Mom always said the beggar might go without alms, but not without a reply — she clarified that what offended her is that Giving Tuesday is for charities, and Glenn doesn’t need the money, and is taking bread from the mouths of widows and orphans BLM and the UNICEF.

Okay, I’m being mean. She’s a nice lady, and I’m sure she donates to children in need, and her parish’s charities. And that’s fine. But those organizations I mentioned? Well, it turns out Giving Tuesday is a UN organized thing, (yeah, there’s an official story, but it’s big because the UN piled on) so absolutely that’s what they mean you to give to.

However, let’s assume that Giving Tuesday is “for people in need.” Yeah, I also don’t think the boss is. I don’t know. I’m not privy to his paychecks and bank account. Yeah, I’ve seen his vacation photos. Yeah, his lifestyle looks nice. That’s fine. He’s not in need.

You know though, he pays a technical team to keep the site running (and I swear guys, I break it every month. It’s a gift.) and unhacked. And even now that he’s not the only poster, he herds cats with all of us, and — judging by my own work load between this blog and instapundit, where all I do is “Night DJ” — I’d be shocked if he takes less than 2 or 3 hours A DAY. And probably more. So yeah, he has a day job. And at night, while his colleagues are chilling, or getting drunk or whatever, he’s at the keyboard. Because I am. Those who’ve visited know. Evenings/early nights, Dan is watching something, and I’m sitting at the laptop, writing tomorrow’s post, culling/looking over comments, instaposting.

So, he does it for fun. Why should you donate to him? Doesn’t he have enough?

The Marx coming through stuck in my craw. HARD. I’m not going to say I’m without sin. I mean, guys, I didn’t ask for money for a long time, because I was afraid of that type of reaction, and after all we were surviving.

Then we weren’t and I needed to ask. And my family had an odd condition. “Okay, but if you’re going to ask for money, you must promise to do an annual fundraiser. Because if you had been doing that, we’d not be in this situation. And it’s not like you don’t do the work, or have the traffic.”

So, I do a fundraiser, in July. But I still edge it around with “This is not a need-fundraiser.” Partly because I hate to beg. Partly because I’m terrified of the reaction above. And partly because I’m even more terrified that people in worse shape than I are going to hurt themselves trying to give me money.

All of this amounts to rats in the head. MY HEAD. Big, stinking Marxist rats. Begging — I’m not begging. I’m reminding people that time and effort go into the work you see on the page. The reaction above — Yeah? I’m not responsible for the rats in other people’s heads. People hurting themselves — they are adults, right? I’m not holding a gun to their heads. I’m not asking for your entire life savings, either. Objectively, I’m pretty happy when people give me $10 once a year. (And if everyone who reads here at least twice a week did that, I’d have more than made my goal. And yeah “if everyone” is bs. NOT saying everyone should, just that I’m not asking for an unreasonable amount. Or any amount. Just saying “if you find value…”)

Now, does Glenn Reynolds need the money? Do I? I don’t know about Glenn. Nor should I. This is one of the classical problems of a communist regime. How do you know what anyone needs? During my highest grossing years, we’d made the mistake of buying a house that was a money pit and were bleeding out more than I made for two half college tuitions, not counting books and maintenance on what the two young men couldn’t cover with catch as can work. (Which was all their schedules allowed.) Also during that time we took a vacation in the South of France. I don’t know that I posted pictures. But as it happens, I paid for none of it. It was covered. Or we couldn’t have done it. Do I know the boss’s vacations aren’t paid? Nope. One of the weird perks of our job is that people give us stuff.

But let’s say he’s as well off as he seems to be, okay? Does that mean he doesn’t deserve to be paid? Why?

Let’s put this another way: say someone came to your front door, rang the doorbell and asked if you needed the lawn mowed. It sure is looking scruffy, so you say sure and how much. He says $50. Cool then. He mows the lawn. You like his work. Then he comes for payment and you ask him: “Do you need the money? Do you have savings in the bank? Do you have another job? Are you taking vacations?”

What would you think of someone who did that?

I can see the stomp stomp stomp “it’s not the same thing!” You’re d*mn right, it’s not. It’s more like someone comes to your front door every week and says “Okay if I mow the lawn?” And you go, “Sure.” I mean, you were paying someone to do it, but weren’t too thrilled with this work, and this guy is just…. doing it.

Okay, so, every time he rings the doorbell, he has a little note he leaves behind that says “If you feel my services were worth something, donate at–” Kind of like the donate link on the side of instapundit — or most other blogs. But he doesn’t say “pay up or I stop” so you don’t. And then one day he grins and says “Hey, it’s Giving Tuesday. Would you care to kick in some cash?”

Then you are offended. Look, he has a top of the line riding mower. He wears brand name sneakers, and look at that jacket. His jacket is better than yours. You’ll never let him mow your lawn again!

THAT is what it actually is like.

Was it silly of Glenn tying his request to Giving Tuesday? Well, I have official funding days. He doesn’t. I ask on those days. But before, when I wasn’t asking for money openly, I had silly occasions. Like Feb. 29 being blogger tipping day.

And yeah, I can see Glenn finding it hilarious to ask for money on a day for UN approved charities.

But does it deserve a “Stomp, stomp, stomp, I’ll never read him again!”? Does it really? WHY?

Well, because he doesn’t NEED it. So, how dare he ask?

Because he does the work. That’s it. He does the work. And by your own admission, you use his service regularly. Do you pay for a newspaper subscription? Did you, once upon a time? Or did you go and investigate the newspaper’s assets, and how much they got from subscriptions, then go “Well, they don’t need it. How dare they ask?”

BUT SARAH! you say, and go back to the analogy. “He came and mowed the lawn. I didn’t make him. I just used what was being freely offered.”

Sure. Because that’s the model. How did you know your digital lawn needed mowing, when it was new as paint? Or that any one blog would provide something you wanted?

So bloggers set up their site, and gave things for free. This is not so much the model anymore. A lot of people set it up in substack from day one. Though if they’re smart, they do some for free too.

But it is work. Glenn, even with co-authors, is one of the few blogs still continuing from the post 9/11 days. And this very humble blog is now — dear LORD — 15 years old in daily posting. 3 hours a day or so. Sometimes 4. (I need to teach my assistant to work the comments. But I have one because I fundraise. And you trade money for time, you know?) Nearly every day. While on vacation or sick, or when we went away a week for my son’s wedding, I might skip Glenn. I rarely skip here, without lining guest posts up.

And work deserves payment. If I were mowing someone’s lawn, I would expect payment. And providing thoughtful opinion pieces, I grant you, is done inside, and in the warm. And I might have killed the sensitivity on my fingertips, but I don’t have calluses. It is still work.

The time I spend on this, day in and day out means I’m paying someone to weed my scruffy garden no one has cared for until we bought it. Means I clean once every two weeks, even though I hate messes. Means time taken from novels. (I AM doing the overdue chapters, I swear.) This and the time spent on Insty means I go to bed late, get up early, and have a list of things to do in my head.

Do I do it anyway? I enjoy it. And I can do it. And it’s, in a way, fun. Also, it funds. (Yeah, this year very slowly, but I anticipate hitting fully funded between all the sources by July.) So I can pay people to do the other stuff.

But if it’s not funding at all…. well. I’m putting 3 or 4 hours up the spout, every day. What do you think I’d do?

Well, I’d shutter the blog, say thank you for all the fish. Maybe start that craft business on the side. Maybe write moar novels. Maybe start that “sex with an alien” sex line I keep threatening every time we’re pinched. (It’s a joke. But we I do deploy it every time we’re pinched.)

The thing is, you see, time is money. I couldn’t really afford to do this for free for many years, but I did it, because to begin with I hoped it would be publicity. That’s sort of mixed, though instapundit IS publicity. And that came from having this blog and being known. So in a round about way it worked. But enough for the work I put in? Ah, no. And the time I spent here I didn’t spend on anything else. And my family was DEFINITELY so tight we squeaked for most of that time. I felt it had to be done. So I did it. But I was stupid doing it for free.

The family were right to say I should ask. My Marxist notions of “but I don’t need it” were wrong. I hurt my family by not fundraising; by being too scared.

And now we get into being scared. Every time I fund-raise, and when I post this at instapundit tonight, there will a commenter of many sock puppets (or perhaps an office that works at trolling. There are indications that way) who will come in the comments under many, many personas to talk about how greedy I am, and how I am all about the money, (like being on the right is lucrative or something) and how I want the money for purposes that he/she/it/them imagines will disgust my “right wing” readers. Hence why his “ex-marine” (sic) persona claims I want the money for my sex game room (something that ANYONE who met me in person probably giggles about. I mean, even if I had the money, who has the energy? Who has the head space? Who doesn’t have the arthritis?)

It’s stupid. It’s silly. It’s an organized operation (fairly sure from what I see in the back panel) dedicated to demoralizing the right.

And it works. Every time I mention fundraising, or link a friend in trouble (I always donate, too, but normally anonymously) I cringe. Because all that bilge is going to be thrown at me, and some people are soft-headed enough to buy at least part of it. I’ve never seen it, but I can imagine it “Well, she and her husband are well off. He has a job. She writes novels. They go to conferences. They visit friends. Her sons have jobs.”

All of which is true. (You’d be amazed though how little novels pay. Though Indie pays better than Trad. And conferences are a net drain.)

But not the point. In fact, utterly beside the point. I do this. I do the work. No one is either forcing you to read or to pay. But if you read, if you read for reasons other than to find something to be offended by, if you’re a regular… well…. I bought many magazines at $50 a year back in the day for one columnist who wrote a column a month. And as for instapundit, have you checked what your local or national newspaper subscription is?

It’s a service. Sane people who expect a service to continue don’t ask if the people doing it need the money, but only “Are they doing it to my satisfaction?” And give, if they can what they can, so the people performing the service don’t have to abandon it and oh, I don’t know, I keep joking my retirement plan is being a walmart greeter. (More likely than an alien sex line. I don’t have the voice for it. And who is that inventive?)

Here’s the thing, though, the trolls shame us for fundraising because it works. Because a lot of you have forgotten the bad years, when you subscribed to a magazine for that one, precious column. Because you’ve forgotten the cost of a newspaper subscription. It’s on line. It’s free. HOW DARE THEY ASK FOR MONEY FOR THE WORK THEY DO?

The right doesn’t have the big pockets. We’re not astroturf. Some of you sent very generous donations (you know I’m grateful, right?) But most of the donations we subsist on? $10 here. $5 there. $20 now and then. What people can afford right then. And we do all right. Because we have the numbers.

But if the trolls, or the people who don’t think about what they’re saying, succeed, and we stop asking for money? Well, when the pinch comes, we go do something that pays. And another dissenting voice is silenced. At remarkably little cost to the left. Just some trolls who probably work for cheap, and the Marxist rats in the head of the right wingers planted there sixty years ago, in elementary school.

Look, I get it, okay? Money is tight for everyone these days. The only reason I’m not crying in the grocery checkout line, which happened often during the summer of recovery years is that well, the boys are out. And the blog by and large funds. And indie pays better than trad. And–

Money is still tight for everyone right now, even those of us who are a little more than okay. As I confessed on the post on Monday, I am having to husband our resources. We have a budget for charity, and over the last 3 years it’s grown to be more than our eating out budget (which is at any rate laughable. We’re really cheap dates, unless it’s someone’s birthday) it’s grown to be more than our vacation budget. Heck, it’s more than our grocery budget. That all said, all of those are tiny. So, it’s not only not infinite, it’s not huge. It used to get hit with a GSG or a gofundme by someone in need…. once a month? so it would all go to one person. Now I get three or four dire-needs a month. And we don’t have much room in the budget. So I’m giving less to each person. I’m sure you’re doing the same.

Plus fixed income people, which the original poster is, well… yeah. Groceries are horrendous, and getting anyone to fix the gutters/paint the wall has become prohibitive.

So, they might not give where before they would have. And that’s fine. When a lot of you said “Sarah, I’d give but–” What did I tell you? “First, don’t hurt yourself.” If the time comes I can’t afford to do this, I’ll cut back to two or three days a week. Regular. And do something else, the rest of the time.

I’ve never held it against anyone for not giving. And in fact, when some of you ran aground, I offered to give them free subscriptions to the serialization or the others (Yes, chapters. Yes, they’re coming) and have them stop paying. A bunch of you who comment here know this. And some of you whose finances I know, I yelled at for subscribing, and you got very insulted “Hey, my money. I want to.” Which…. they’re right, you know?

And I keep books on KU because I know some of you, it’s the only way you can read. Because idiots are hitting the economy with a hammer.

And I give free advice on writing on Madgeniusclub, which heaven help me, doesn’t pull its weight in publicity. And yeah, I intend to do more workshops and stuff. Let me get myself in gear.

And if any of you regulars want my books and can’t afford them, ping me. I’ll send them. (Ebook. Look, some cases I’ve sent paper copies, but the problem isn’t even the expense, though it’s expensive. It’s that I’m scatty. It’s easier to forget.)

I do the charity I can outside giving money, too. Not because I must, or owe it, but because I’m a decent human being who’s needed help and had you all come to the rescue more than once. It’s called paying it forward.

I also get “subscription creep”. I subscribe to three blogs because I love the content. I subscribe to two others because they need encouragement. That’s a lot of money per year. And I’m careful. It’s easy to spend much more and not notice. (I do annual, too. Because it’s easier to reconsider every December.)

I get it, okay? Time and money are both tight, and the world in general has its hand out. And if you don’t want to give/can’t give/are sick and tired of subsidizing blogs? No one thinks you’re a horrible human being. It’s your prerogative. Heck, most of us won’t even know.

But saying you’ll never read someone because he dared — dared! — ask for money for a service you admit you used for years? That’s staggeringly rude. And stupid. And probably evil, since it’s all based on envy of his PERCEIVED lifestyle.

You’re aiding the leftists to demoralize and demonetize the right. And you’re shocked and surprised when I wait for you behind the bike sheds and pounce. Because you didn’t think any of this through. You didn’t think anything through beyond “being nice” (what they used to imprison us during Covidiocy) and “he’s taking money from the mouths of–“

Is asking on Giving Tuesday crass? Well, it might be, if it weren’t a UN instituted thing. But even then, please note we pile on these occasions, not because we’re crass or brazen, but because we’re used to people thinking our work should be free. And we’re embarrassed as heck to ask. So we try to pile on some public thing, and smile, and try to slide it through.

But being paid for your work shouldn’t be means tested. There are things in the Bible about paying the laborer. There are things in the Bible about not binding the mouth of the kine that tread the grain.

There isn’t, that I know, anything in the Bible that says “You should not buy into Marxist arguments and neatly demonetize the people on your side, doing work for which they are often penalized in their careers” (No? FIGHT ME. I can tell you times, and not just for me.) “For which their families are penalized. For which they are often, yes, even now, even here, at risk of various sorts.”

That is because the Bible didn’t, as such, deal with the online world of blogs on the right and the finer line between “of course I’m asking, but you’re not obligated to give.” And even the Almighty probably scratches His head at the right’s cult of never asking for money, even if you’ve done the work, let alone the right’s cult of “POOR but honest.” (Ah, don’t jump me! I know He’s omniscient.)

The point of this overlong blog: Not jumping the original poster. She’s probably already blocked me on twitter, convinced I’m being mean and will probably never see this, but listen, if I wanted to jump her, I’d give you a link.

I don’t. She’s a good person. She’s simply not thinking. And she let her baser instincts take over. Which heaven knows, all of us do now and then. Because asking for money used to be only for beggars. The others? They negotiated price up front.

It’s not like that. Not in the online world. I mean, it can be, but then no one will stumble on this blog by accident and start thinking. I’d prefer not going paid-only. And I know for a fact Glenn also doesn’t want to do that.

So people’s heads get stuck in “if you’re asking, it must be for need.” But ah…. there’s no other way to get paid for this work, in this model.

Note we don’t shake people down for money. We don’t say pay or else. Yeah, yeah, if you don’t pay the thing might/will eventually go away. But that’s not a threat. That’s life and economics, and hey, it is what it is.

And the model has give, so we don’t need people to hurt themselves to keep going.

But don’t take offense because the worker expects to be paid. And don’t call people greedy who work above the required to survive, and expect to be paid for that too.

Don’t demonetize your own side to be a “nice” person.

We already know the left is trying to shut us down. Trust me, they don’t need your help.

Love by the Balloonatic

Earlier this year, my friend Nathan Brindle was experimenting with Midjourney and he began sharing images he had developed using images of his wife. I called them my daily Sally and they brightened up my morning when he posted them. I’m not sure if it was his plan or our encouragement, but he released them in a delightful picture book, AI is Love. Nathan and Sally, while they attended the same high school a few grades apart didn’t start dating or marry until later in life. However, having met them in person several times, they have a love that is tangible despite their differences and they are one of those  couples that, if you had to define love, you would point to them.

It feels a little ironic to be writing about love. I’m a child of parents who split up in my late teens, and the only one of my siblings to also be divorced. I’m one of those people who suits the description of lucky in cards, unlucky in love. One of the best ways to illustrate this is to point out that my older brother moved to Australia as a young adult, fell in love and got married to an Australian woman. Almost a decade after he moved there my older sister followed in his footsteps – attending school for a year, where she met her husband, fell in love and got married. Five years later, I also went to Australia for what was meant to be a year of study. I met someone, fell in love, and he moved to England. Such is the story of my life.

And yet, while I have never had a great romance of my own, I have been fortunate enough to experience it vicariously through many of my friends and family. I have seen the marriages that have lasted for decades, strong and steady. I have seen some that appeared like roller-coasters, full of ups and downs, but with the couples hanging on tight despite that. I have seen the tragedy of several friends losing their soulmate and somehow surviving, and, having had that powerful experience of love they seem to have the strength to go on with the hope that they will be able to find that love again. And some of them do. And I find myself envying them, despite their loss and the hardship that they experienced because they are secure in the knowledge that they were loved.

However, while romantic love may never be in the cards for me, love – as the Greeks taught it – has many forms. I have many people that I love and care for deeply as if they were my family. I have a son I love and of whom I am extremely proud. I have parents and siblings, nieces and nephews who I love even when I do not always like them or the choices that they have made. There is my love of God and His love for me. Plus I have my dog who adores me and loves me unconditionally (because lets face it, the cats, as much as I like them, just tolerate and expect adoration; and the chickens….). I also have a strong love for my adopted land, and the hope that as a country we can redevelop the bonds to the constitution and bill of rights that made us a shining beacon and a place where people could find freedom, justice and liberty. That we can find and strengthen the love of what made us what we once were and could be again.

As the holidays approach, let us reach out in love to those around us. Whether you are married or single, find someone who is struggling and let them know that they are loved. It might be a family member, a neighbor, a friend, a colleague or a perfect stranger. There are so many powerful people who are trying to fracture our bonds of family, friends and country. Let’s fight back not with hate but with love.

There is nothing quite as terrifying — and remember this is coming from a person who has to defeat a baseline fear of driving to drive at all — as pushing your brake pedals and it goes mushy on you. And maybe it has some effect but it’s not what you expect.

As some of you know I’m not a trusting person. Born under one form of socialism, raised under another. Why would I be? Precisely?

So I’m more or less always sniffing the wind, looking for signs, because the economic numbers are not reliable and no, no one trusts what the Talking Mop — oh, pardon me, the Lesbian Talking Mop, so much more important — says. And the idea we should all be happy for Bidenomics is hilarious. If you like dark comedy.

I read the economy as farmers read the weather, and most of it is unconscious or subconscious. “Well, my left knee feels creaky, there will be snow.” Kind of.

I used to keep an eye on want ads, and craigslist ads. I have not been keeping track of the new thing which seems to be Facebook Market Place, and heaven knows I never go to the neighborhood sites, because I have axes, and knowing the crazy my neighbors show might tempt me to use them. (Well, in Colorado there were days. No, I didn’t go there, either, but Dan read me some posts. Like the person who was very upset the horse farmer was shooting cute little prairie dogs. Don’t GET ME STARTED. I can start myself up.)

But I still keep an eye on things. People coming to the door offering to do things for money. (No. Take your mind out of the gutter. I mean chop wood or rake leaves or stuff.) Grocery stores, and what’s selling and what isn’t. Prices. Car prices. Gas prices. Shortages on shelves (seem to be regional and mostly (MOSTLY) not here, though for the love of BOB what happened to chicken? It used to be a whole section. Is the bird flu back?) That sort of thing.

I’m also keeping an eye on — duh — book sales, because of course, well, it’s my job, you know? But others. I have a lot of friends who are specialized craftsmen and–

Anyway, y’all will pardon me, but right now? There’s a storm incoming, and also a mudflow, a blazing forest fire, a flood, and a drought. All at the same time.

The gates of chaos have opened, and my G-d have mercy on our souls.

Let me explain. Nothing makes sense. Nothing. But when I think about it: really think, the word that comes up is “mushy.”

The people in power — let’s remember these mondo-intellects read AOC’s Green New Deal and weren’t alarmed by her line about finding Native Americans to tell us how to take care of the environment. She might be stupid. I don’t think she’s below average, just maleducated. But what is their excuse for that not setting off bells in their minds? — really thought by reversing all of Trump’s policies, from the border invasion stopping, to the throttling down on fossil fuel would usher in utopia. No, they really did. Oh, there are a few malicious ones in there, but most of them are just…. dumb. And maleducated. And economics isn’t taught. And economics is a b*tch. It has no mercy.

I mean, I can almost see it from their perspective. If you had Marx crammed down your throat as a young critter you would too. See, they’re getting cheap labor in. CHEAP. So, it will cause a flowering of the economy, right? (What? Second order effects? Culture? Competence? Wassthat? People are widgets. Also, shut up.) Also, if they stop those greedy greedsters in oil and coal from profiteering and subsidize green energy, everyone will spend less, and have so much more money. And the Earth will be so clean and beautiful. Also– But what’s the point? You know? Even DEI will unleash a marvelous pool of talent we’ve been suppressing because raciss capitalists.

As Ronald Reagan of blessed memory put it: It’s not that they’re ignorant. It’s that they know so many things that just AIN’T so.

Now it’s not working, and they’re running around doing random stuff which they don’t actually understand. Most of which amounts to doubling down, because if it doesn’t work, do it harder. And after all, they have the “experts” on their side.

What they’re actually doing….

I’ll admit I worried slightly at my fund raiser. Not actually horribly, because I make sure to tell you it’s not need. (I mean, it’s not. We survived with no fundraising for years.) And I expect I’ll make most of it by next July, because a lot of people are on subscription. (And yes, I need to do chapters. The health edition of annus horriblis has been special these last few months, but I’m almost human again.) But still. The feel was “Uh… I wonder why…”

And then I started tracking people doing actual in-need fundraisers, the kind that are somewhat low, and used to fund overnight before. Most are hitting half to three quarters and …. sticking. And heck, my donations to others have been halved. Not that we WANT to halve them, but because, well…. everything costs more. We’re not hurting mind, but I hate the feel of hemorrhaging money that anything — anything — brings on. From little things — like heck inflation is only 10% or even 30% she mutters, shopping for Thanksgiving — to big — I’ll paint the back porch, rather than pay the price of a car for someone to do it — to…. everything. I hate the feeling I’m bleeding out money; the feeling that “well, we’ve budgeted x, but now it costs x + y + your left big toe.) So, discretionary spending is way down. (Except I bought a lot of sweaters, and I wonder if that’s psychological.) And donations are discretionary spending.

I’ve tracked this effect elsewhere, and it tracks to my behavior. I still buy ebooks — mostly ebooks, because kindle is easier to read and I haven’t dragged my *ss to the eye doctor in almost two years. Yeah, I know. No, it’s not money, it’s time and getting myself in gear — and I keep up my KU subscription, because, well, d*mn good value for the price. But my reading is more escapist than it has been, and sometimes downright silly. Because I feel like one more serious emotion, and I will pop. I actually bought more music recently — CD because I’m paranoid and we have an external CD/dvr for ripping — than in many years, mostly because…. small pleasures, cheap for the money.

Small pleasures. Friends in discretionary spending fields are all reporting back (I know 10 or twenty people, across the gamut) small/cheap/fun is selling. Particularly in gift giving season. I think people want to give stuff for Christmas, but are looking for value for the buck. Give three small things that are fun, as opposed to one big one that they can’t afford.

What’s worrying me is that this is mirroring in people way above us in the economic scale. People who, in other years, would be buying designer/expensive/stuff we could never afford. There’s that feel, you know?

I’ll confess I’m running sales/keeping my books in KU (though it makes money, but not as much as it used to) mostly so I can allow other people the escape, too. I think it’s needed. Right now.

Stuff in the grocery stores is bizarrely …. weird. Other than the aforementioned lack of chicken. Particularly whole chicken. (I buy them when I find them, because they’re great for Sunday dinner with the kids. Pop it in the oven, and it cooks itself. Throw some veggies in the last half hour, to roast together, in the juices.) I’m told it’s not the same other places, but other places have weirder/other lacks.

But the really weird stuff is the expensive, high end stuff being discounted, consistently, every week for lack of selling.

Look, in every recession I’ve lived through, including the Obama Summers of Recovery, there’s a group of people who aren’t touched. Let’s call them the Champagne and Caviar set. You know exactly what I mean. The rest of us are shifting from Dannon to store brand, but the exquisite little yogurts, in glass containers, imported from France, are still not getting discounted for lack of sale. Or cheaper and cheaper cuts are selling better, but hey, the people who can afford the huge-*ss briskets are still buying.

Now, this is a small fraction, and you can tell the store orders it very carefully, because the market is small. But I’ve never seen a recession where week after week, obviously smaller and smaller sets of this level stuff is selling at rock bottom prices before it expires. It’s…. uh…. interesting.

And it mirrors with big-ticket items not really moving. I mean, they still move, but not like they did.

Now we’re in the middle of almost-somewhere in a medium town, so it might be different. But the reports I get…. aren’t.

All those movies tanking? Well, guys, listen: even if they’re very very good, I don’t think we have room in the budget for more than maybe four a year. I don’t know about other people, though. (And they’re not very good.)

My view is limited. I don’t know how concerts are doing, for instance, and for that matter what age is targeted in those. (Makes a difference.) And I know cons, even the non-woke ones aren’t doing so well. Hotels seem to be surviving, but they’ve also doubled in price. (Keeping in mind we got them always on discount, since our vacations are flexible.) Rental cares are older and higher mileage.

There’s… other stuff? Stupid stuff. The picture is…. weird.

I know tech is in trouble, but only because, pour des raisons connues, we know a lot of people in tech (and in writing) and the number of them looking for work right now is higher than ever. Also, there seems to be nothing out there. It seems to be harder to find a job in tech than to find someone to clean my gutters. (Yes, I know there are signs by the side of the road. And yet, you call and they ghost you. Same way there are signs for tech workers/ads but no one is getting jobs. Certainly not fast.)

All we can tell is things are going wrong and going wrong fast. I know shipping is…. not. And it’s bad when gas demand falls enough the prices fall?

But–

I mean, what in the name of Ned are people doing publishing articles about seeing a crisis in commercial real estate coming? Good Lord. I can see that from the moon. Have seen it for three years. It worries me that the experts still find this WORTH WRITING. What is actually wrong with them? It was obvious from the moment they proved telecommuting is viable.

And of course the importation of an entire medium-sized country of unskilled unacculturated, often incapable of working at anything, sometimes criminal people has consequences. That type of people-movement is on an epic scale, and– Why are the experts suddenly realizing they can’t feed them/house them/keep them warm in winter. Not even with all our considerable resources? This stuff should be obvious. Eyes on your face obvious. Are the “experts” and the policy makers — lefty though they are — really that stupid? Did none of them ever try to imagine the scale of the thing? Did not a single one of them, EVER organized a weekend event for 300 people (say) and realize what scaling up numbers does to the “needful” to have on hand?

Then there’s our so called monetary policy. I have hair I would like to not tear out by the handfuls, so I’ll just say it’s as stupid as asking people who happen to have Amerindian blood how to care for “the environment.”

I have no idea what’s coming. I just have a really, really, really — do we need another really? Sure. Have it. — bad feeling. No, worse than that.

I feel like all my indicators, even those that still seem relatively healthy — entertainment; cheap entertainment — are ‘mushy’. Like pushing on the brakes, and they’re mushy. Like, the things you’d expect to work, mostly aren’t.

But worse, it’s the sheer unpredictability in the middle of the utter predictability. Like, I know that commercial real estate is in trouble. But where is that knock going to hit? How far will the ripples go? And what are the social/cultural effects of that? And why in heaven’s name are some things suddenly, sometimes for the first time ever, doing well? Granted, small scale things.

And when you hit transportation with a hammer, what happens to other things? And what about all the stupid anti fossil fuel laws in states that freeze solid? Europe survived those, but the weather in Europe, except some extreme places, is not as extreme as here. What if the mild winter they predicted isn’t? (Bet you it isn’t. I track volcanism.)

Mushy. All the indicators are mushy. And somewhere off screen, in the back of my mind, there is a siren howling, and I can’t shut it off.

What happens when people who were taught only lies do stuff that forces the economy to fall apart, even while catastrophic change is rewiring it?

I don’t know. Neither do you. More horrifyingly, neither does anyone else.

Throw into this that every specialized field — things we actually need, like oh food production transport, engineering — is in trouble because they either can’t find people to do what’s needed, (because they treat people so badly that they run away) or people have been so maleducated they can’t function, even as the generation 10 years older than I retires or die or because regulations force the field to not work at all, in any meaningful sense.

Add the institutional memory retiring, or running to unemployment to evade DIE.

Some of us can take one tiny portion, one we know well, and work the signals out, and see what’s happening. It’s rarely good. Sometimes it’s not catastrophic.

But the whole thing? I think that no one is seeing the whole thing. Even without the falsification of numbers and statistics, it would be daunting. With it?

Mushy. The whole thing feels mushy. Like wood that’s rotted underneath its impeccable coat of paint.

Prepare, prepare, prepare.

And keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.