Month: February 2019

38F damp and windy. Joy.

Jam packed day and weekend coming up.

The crazy continues. I think that some of it is not as crazy as it looks. Using a young ambitious woman for your own ends is old hat to the aging reptiles that inhabit the halls of power. It’s a two-fer- discredit a rival, and get your radical ideas out in the public sphere for discussion. Trial balloon launched! Catspaw used successfully! Achievement unlocked! The danger to the reptile (and the Republic) is that the catspaw understands the new political media better (instinctively, natch, ‘cuz there certainly isn’t intellect in that persona) and eventually turns the tables on the manipulator.

It’s an age old negotiating technique- demand the moon, then settle for less. There are also elements of classic prog techniques- emphasize the outrageous to get people used to the idea, then sneak in the lesser evil. Eventually, they get to the greater evil. It’s a play we’ve seen many times and damned hard to counter.

It’s a bit terrifying looked at this way.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s just the pendulum at its farthest swing, and the swing back starts soon. That’s what I’m hoping for. One of the radio commentators said that the main bulk of people in the country are finally opening their eyes, with the Virginia and NY abortion/murder laws. Perhaps it’s not too late.

n

71F and wet with rain in the forecast. Lots of driving around to do today, so I hope the rain holds off.

The world seems to have forgotten history. “This time it’s different!” seems to come just before the proof it’s NOT.

Once you’ve been around a while, you have actually lived through a few cycles yourself, and you can see, if you have the eyes. This is what drives older people nuts about ‘the young.’ For someone like the new socialist in the congress, or the SJWs with the outrage du jur, they are baby ducks. Everything is new and shiny. Everything is the best ever or the worst ever. The truth is that people haven’t changed that much in the last couple thousand years. We eat better, have better health interventions, but as HUMANS we are pretty similar to the “ancient” greeks, romans, etc. More of us have enourmous wealth and personal power verses the vast majority of humans in history, but we still use it to find a mate, get more food, frustrate a rival.

About every couple of generations, we have a horrific war, mainly because the generation that fought in the last one has passed from power, and the powers that be have never experienced one first hand. So they think that THIS time it will be different.

It’s not. Not really. And I think we’re about to have a new generation of baby ducks learn that hard lesson. The shiny new thing is really just the same old thing underneath, because WE are still the same.

n

71F and saturated this morning.

I spent the afternoon yesterday on the next step in my application to do the CPA program with out local PD. Lots of identity verification and paperwork for this program.

Woke up dreaming about prepping. In my dream, I discovered that two work colleagues were preppers, when we were all three looking for work. I think that is actually the most common disaster to strike, becoming unemployed. That and serious illness in the family. They are personal disasters, but EVERY disaster that happens to you is personal.

Don’t forget to prep for the simple stuff while prepping for the unusual… your simple preps are much more likely to be used.

n

60F and 99%RH, basically yucky. Technical term. Yucky.

Everything was sweating and moist all day yesterday. The concrete floor in the garage is treacherously slippery in those conditions. It seems like everything is a soggy mess.

So imagine my joy when today starts the same way!

I’m working on my contribution to our tax preparation, and it occurs to me that all the spying has already collected the information I’m compiling. Google knows everywhere I’ve been, and the routes taken, and from the speeds can infer transportation mode. They could go a long way to doing my business mileage, instead of me having to add up every page in my log book. There’s some overlap, like going to the UPS store for business, or for personal shipping, but hey, give them a window to my ebay account and that could be straightened out too.

People put up with invasive technologies when it reduces one of their burdens or saves them money. I bet people would be clamoring for ebay/google/quicken integration if they would automate some of the tax reporting burden. It would be terribly invasive, catch cheaters and the innocent, and some people would hate it. But since it’s happening ANYWAY, I feel that I should get some benefit….

‘come to the dark side, we have cookies’

n

66F, 99%RH all the concrete is sweating. Moist.

Funny sounding word, moist.

Moist is hell on packaging. Moist gums up the works. Moist leads to rot and decay.

Moist leads to corrosion. The opposite of a ‘cool dry place’ is our friend ‘moist’.

The wooden pallets in my driveway are rotting on the bottom. Moist. Gah.

Another week to get ready. Use the time wisely.

n

61F and overcast. Drizzle all night. I don’t think we totaled very much.

Before I went to be last night, I tuned around the shortwave bands. Lots of strong signals on the low bands. 5, 6, and 7Mhz usually have something to listen to, but last night they were coming in like local broadcast.

The kids’ “bushcraft” shelter is still standing. They had a lot of fun yesterday playing in it with their friends. I needed earplugs and aspirin 🙂 It LOOKS great, and introduces the idea. Check out joe robinet at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPBwJG1Z_eQ [added- this is just a recent video, click on his channel name for more relevant and better vids] for how it’s really done. Anyone with PA fantasies about living in the National Forest should watch a hundred hours of his channel. Heck, anyone writing a scene involving it should watch. And keep in mind, he’s in Canada, with much lower population density, and everyone hasn’t bugged out to the hills. Also, no dependents.

I scanned back through the last few posts and boy are they full of doom and gloom. I think it’s appropriate doom and gloom, but it is a lot. I’m going to try for a bit more balance this month. We’ll see if the world lets me.

Keep stacking though!

n

59F and damp this am.

I see more an more evidence every day that the decline is well underway and may be accelerating.

Venezuela took only ten years to completely implode, and the last five were pretty sudden…

We have crumbling infrastructure in most of our major cities, with no plan or money to replace it. Major crimes were decreasing steadily but now are on the rise again. Social fabric is being eroded daily by the constant influx of literal barbarian hordes. Polarization politically and socially continues to increase among the people. Radical political ideology is becoming commonplace.

Worldwide geopolitical changes are underway. Populism and maybe even nationalism is on the rise all over the place. Long simmering grievances are getting new airing. Russia took over Ukraine AND NO ONE DID ANYTHING. Taiwan is next.

Look at the return of diseases once conquered here. Typhus in city hall in LA. Hepatitis in LA, San Diego, and San Francisco from people sh!tting in the street. Measles. Polio- “like” disease throughout the midwest.

There is a general breakdown of morality and social norms. Deviant sex is now commonplace. Mental illness is everywhere you look. Crazy people roam the streets, beggars are everywhere. Parts of downtown look like Tijuana with all the lumps of people sleeping in the open and all the beggars. Drug use, destructive to life, is now also widespread, making inroad to the remaining middle and worker classes.

We’re the frog, and the pot is getting warmer every day.

Stack it high. Learn new skills. Put money somewhere inflation won’t erode it’s value in a few years. Look for income streams that don’t depend on things getting better. Start building ‘tribe’. If it gets really bad, it will be you and your neighbors. Better have some good ones.

nick

56F and wet. Light rain/drizzle/heavy mist all night, starting late afternoon, but there wasn’t any accumulation… just a yucky day.

Today is supposed to clear up a bit. We’ll see. I’ve got stuff to do involving the pickup truck, so I hope it’s dry.

Out in the world, it seems that the pace of change is accelerating. Now Russia is buzzing our patrol jets. China has bad economic news. Deutche Bank is in trouble. Venezuela is moving gold. The SWIFT alternative is being used to subvert US foreign policy.

At home, the political divide grows, with restaurants banning Trump clothing, social media companies BRAGGING about their bias and censorship, and the rhetoric is heating up. We have elected officials DEMANDING full on socialism. States legalizing murder, as long as it’s babies (and no matter where you stand on the ‘right’ to access an abortion, waiting until after the birth to decide is killing a living human being- ie. murder.) If someone ‘misspoke’ there should be loud and strong denials being issued.

Ebola continues to spread in africa. It will escape. France still burns every weekend, and other countries are infected with ‘yellow vests’ too. Brexit is still unsettled.

Remember that almost no one called the collapse of the USSR.

Things stay mostly the same until they change. Then it’s very sudden and disruptive.

n

(and it seems that not just assassination is back on the table, nukes are too.)