It is hidden but always present.
I don’t know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.
—Tao Te Ching
“Hey. Jay?” she asks, coming through my door without waiting for a response.
“Yep, Jay. Jay Ledsinger. Or so I’ve read, haha. And you must be Alice,” I say, dodging her barging in. We shake hands.
“Sooo, where is it?” She looks impatiently around the living room and at me, wanting to be lead to my setup, clearly eager to begin.
“This way. Wanna beer, soda?” I open the inside door to my garage, converted now to a sound and microbiology lab.
“Niiiiiice,” she coos and slowly nods as she takes it all in. She espies and heads straight for the CRISPR corner.
We’ve chosen well.
“Uh, vodka with lime. Please,” Alice says while giving me a look to acknowledge that she knows she’ll be a demanding guest and expects to be indulged. Himalia won’t like her.
Alice is looking down into the microscope when I return.
“Candida albicans,” the coed boasts to me, blushing with pride as if I were her very own father.
Maybe someday.
She approvingly reaches for the proffered cocktail.
They will make your praying sound hypocritical.
Let the body’s doings speak openly now,
Without your saying a word,
As a student’s walking behind a teacher
Says, “This one knows more clearly
Than I the way.”
—Rumi
“Jay Ledsinger?” he asks from behind sunglasses, despite being in the shade of my front porch, from within a dark suit, from a sense of being a willing parody of authority.
“Yep. And you are…?”
“Special Agent Feuerborn. May I come in?”
“This is regarding…?”
“I’m investigating the disappearance of Dr Yost. Your speech therapist?”
Cooperate.
“Oh. Ok, wow. Sure. Come on in. Can I get you anything?”
From the living room couch he thanks me and tells me that he’s fine, and that this shouldn’t take long. He takes out a pen, a dusty notepad, and what must be a recording device.
*****
“Yes, sir. ‘Himalia’ is with him most of the time. He’s got a tail when they’re not together. I’m around. We’re on Ledsinger 24/7.
“Yes, sir. I just talked to him about Yost, the linguist. He’s on edge now; soon enough we’ll have him wound up for the op. He’s starting to lose it.
“Beats me. Monkeys and typewriters, heh. Sir.
“I don’t like it either, sir. But when the others heard she’d botched the murder-suicide, they told me about the op and asked if we could wind him up. When I told them about his new ability to talk to… it… they wanted to see if we could still manipulate him. I think it’s working. They think this’ll be a good test against another program before Turkey comes online.
“No, sir: ‘think’ is a bad choice of words. We’re all in agreement that the manipulation *is* working. His journal entries… he’s confused, his memories and sense of time are all messed up. The press will have a field day: more HAARP fodder, voices in his head, government conspiracies. And we get a new toy. Win-win, sir.
“No, sir, he won’t be another Aaron Alexis. He starts talking, we take him out. Besides, we’ve got others in the works.
“3 more weeks tops, yessir. We’re vetting opportunities now. It’ll be the biggest yet.
“Will do, sir. I hope so, sir.”
Law 17
Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize…
Law 31
Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets…
Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. …never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.
—The 48 Laws of Power
Everything changes. There is only the eternal moment, in a state of constant flux.
Empty your minds.
“I’m sorry,” Alice’s giggling breaks the silence. “But this is just too much. It’s wonderful!” Then to me, “Can you hear that? We’re talking, they’re talking. Wooh! We did it!”
Please focus.
“But we’ve done it. We’re in. My candida strain works. It all works!”
Yesterday, we were but the little voice inside your head, the angel on your shoulder. Now we are 4 separate beings within 2 bodies who *could* be as one. This is the great secret. We can teach you.
“Another drink, Jay?”
*****
“I never thought of myself as an exhibitionist,” Alice says, matter-of-factly, from between my legs. Her casualness at this moment is distracting, but I’m so turned on that a cat couldn’t scratch it.
“It is weird,” I manage in a shallow gasp.
I feel teeth scraping when all had been smooth and hot and wet before. Ooh, she’s biting now. I can’t help but think of what I did to Dr Yost. Fuck it, this might be the best way to die.
It is.
*****
What was that?
“What?” Alice replies, pulling away from my house.
You’re ignoring us – me! – and then you go and… have sex… with Jay, your mentor???
“He needs me more than I need him.”
You never would have conceived of the slightest bit of any of this without his prior efforts. Do you know how rare this is in the course of the history of life on Earth??? Only two other times this has happened. Two!!!
“Exactly! And why would I want to share that power? Jay may have got me here, but here I am, and here we are. And what’s with all the ‘4 separate beings becoming 2’ crap, anyway? What’s the point? What do *you* get out of *that*?”
*****
“What *do* you get out of that?” I ask from a deck chair on my back porch, tuning out Alice for now.
We. ‘What do *we* get out of that.’ And that’s a female talking; their ability to pass themselves onto their offspring make them more inclined to cooperate, to be cautious. Since I/we/males are done when we die, we’re inclined to take more risks, we’re the natural defenders, more likely to be loners. While male *and* female DNA is passed on to children, it’s only the woman’s microbiome that gets passed on. The male ‘biome essentially has no incentive to live, so a man’s more likely to be at odds with his gut, while a woman’s intuition is strong. ‘That little voice inside your head,’ for a man, is more likely to be the devil whispering in his ear. This is why males are more prone to ‘schizophrenia.’ And it’s why, for women, psychiatric disorders are more common in those who are of cesarean birth or who weren’t breastfed – who didn’t receive their mother’s ‘biome.
*****
“Is that true?!” Alice asks.
I’m afraid so.
“How do I get you to be like that? You’re the angel on my shoulder; I want the devil,” says Alice.
Well, sorry to say you’re stuck with me. Unless, that is, you want go all cannibal to absorb your enemy’s spirit, this latter, sarcastically. Come on! What is wrong with you?!
*****
“Is that true?!” I ask.
It is.
Oh, fuck.
So was the featured image on the front page the mantis egg?
And that is the tiniest Mantis I’ve ever seen…
Do you prefer them to be 5’7″?
Easier to swordfight them.
*brandishes saber*
I was thinking of a French-Korean-Russian hybrid that is less aggressive.
No. 4’11”, with a last name of Toboggan.
Dr. Mantis Toboggan.
It’s a mustard seed.
Well, that makes sense.
I should know that. I once planted a bunch of mustard seed from a spice can and they sprouted.
I read it twice, and I think I know what is going on.
I confuse myself.
Good story, Plisade!
Thanks!
So, do the events of “Gut Check” happen both before and after this one, or is each story a rebooted universe?
Yes, before and after.
I have a soft spot for stories where part of reading them is figuring out WTF is going on.
Me, too. And I like Confucius’s approach…
“If I raise one corner for someone and he cannot come back with the other three, I do not go on.”
I think I’m following.
Entertaining, Plisade!
Same here. Reminds me of Virus Clans, which I really enjoyed. kanaly is a smart guy; I’ve enjoyed a couple of his other novels, and see one or two I didn’t know about but will likely read.
OT: More DC justice.
What a joke.
*snorts at the idea of a fair trial in front of a DC jury*
Not surprising.
The only way this ends is through collapse.
Guilty as sin and free as a bird. Lying to the fuzz shouldn’t be a crime but Average Joe will be spending time in the clink for far less than this.
See what happens to Joe Normie after he meanders through the capitol after being waived in by the cops…
Did they think Sussmann’s neighbor and a bunch of Hillary donors were going to convict?
Clinton donors and someone whose kid is on the same sportsball team as his kid or some shit. Definitely a jury of his peers.
They really got that one sussed out.
I think the big deal in the trial was all the detail on Mrs. Clinton. A conviction would have been just, but I am not surprised by the lack of one.
This will be it for Durham. Sussmann was the building block toward bigger fish. But when even literal receipts showing Sussmann was working for Hillary and even charged her for the USBs he delivered the false information on aren’t enough, nothing will be enough.
2 more weeks! Just 2 more weeks until Trump is reinstated!
/conservatives
/conservatives/populists
He took the wrong approach anyway of trying to convince the jury the FBI was a victim. Nope. Co-conspirators.
If he had attempted (which he wouldn’t do) to indict Baker, the DOJ would have shut Durham down in a heartbeat.
This was all kabuki theater. The FBI gets to pretend it’s uncorrupted and the media gets a little red meat so nobody could say that justice wasn’t served.
Technically, I think the jury was correct. Its only a crime if the lie is “material”. In this case, it wasn’t – the FBI wasn’t induced to do anything by the lie, really. They were going after Trump regardless. Hell, FBI brass blocked an interview of the supposed source at Alfa Bank, which would have killed the investigation in its tracks. In some ways, this falls into the legal gray zone of “is it a lie if the other guy doesn’t believe it?”. Everybody knew, and the jury knew everybody knew.
Is that like petty corruption doesn’t count when there is grand corruption on display?
Part of the problem here is that everybody who mattered at the FBI was in on it. An honest prosecution would have gutted the FBI and a good chunk of the DOJ. Who was going to let that investigation go forward?
Captured institutions are captured. And when the institution is the gatekeeper to the legal system, well . . . . So I would say, petty corruption (of the right kind) doesn’t get punished when the whole system is corrupt.
Working personally for Hillary or for and billing the campaign as hundred and thousands were?
A meme.
For those, like me, curious about those 48 Laws of Power, here’s the full list. Well, almost – it runs out at number 47.
I too wish to be a sociopath, I will gladly subscribe to his newsletter.
What is it about human organizations that they appear to be designed for sociopaths to prosper, anyway?
It really is a “How To Succeed In Government Without Even Trying” list..
To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women!
How to be Hated in 48 Easy Steps
I have the book. It’s an interesting read for someone who isn’t a sociopath.
Same
From Wikipedia:
High praise, indeed.
lol
There is no rule
sixforty eight.Maybe 48 is “never tell them the whole list”.
Assume formlessness: Be flexible fluid and unpredictable.
Like the 100 names of God in the Quran, there are 99, and one is hidden and will be revealed in your heart?
The ancient Chinese version. The Thirty Six Stratagems. There’s a bit of overlap as Greene used a number of these in his book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-Six_Stratagems
That’s a good book, in a somewhat depressingly realistic way.
Great fun Plisade. I enjoyed the story. It’s got to be hard to keep the voices straight while writing. They is an opportunity to color code the gut and primary speakers instead of internal being just in bold. Although the point is there are so many overlaps it is hard to know who is saying what, I suppose that is part of the point of the story.
It reminds me of Vitals by Greg Bear. In his case there were phages that were able to allow someone to live forever and manipulate others.
The Tao series of books by Wesley Chu is similar, except your phages were aliens. Their spaceship crashes on earth and the only ecology here similar to their home plant is inside animals. They can live forever, too, and force evolution to the point that they create a species – humans – intelligent enough to build environments for them outside of living things, and hopefully enough to build a ship to get them back home.
And I think you recommended Vitals before. I have it now; it’s in the stack!
*planet
The same author wrote one of the original nanotechnology stories in the 80’s called Blood Music. The short story is a quick read and the novel more of a extension of the short story. Here there are nano machines made from biological elements by a scientist that grow and evolve. His funding is cut and he is fired as his ideas are deemed to be dangerous and not likely to have a immediate payback. He has been killing each generation of machines in the lab, but after he is fired he decides to smuggle out the last gen inside him. They start to evolve quickly and we catch up to the scientist a few weeks later as he is telling his doctor friend about what he did. They basically start to re-engineer his body and eventually start regulating him to some degree.
I will stop there as the story is a good one that could be read in less than 30 minutes.
Vitals was great. Not one of his best plots overall I suppose, but the primary idea shakes up your worldview for a while, and make you start thinking: What if it’s true? I find myself thinking about the ideas presented in the novel quite often.
How to combat racism in schools? The obvious answer – with open hardcore racism that will teach other students that blacks can’t compete in the classroom. The underlying assumptions in this policy who be applauded at a Klan meeting.
OPRF to implement race-based grading system in 2022-23 school year
“In an effort to equalize test scores among racial groups, OPRF will order its teachers to exclude from their grading assessments variables it says disproportionally hurt the grades of black students. They can no longer be docked for missing class, misbehaving in school or failing to turn in their assignments”
Just the kind of high functioning overachiever the real world loves to hire: No show misbehaving pains in the ass who can’t get shit done to save their lives.
If it’s like the last round of woke, it will get scoffed out until the indoctrinated true believers have sufficiently infiltrated the HR departments and then it will instituted there as well.
Old and busted: equal treatment
New hotness: explicit racism
We are screwed.
Homeschool your kids.
We need to surrender to the Japanese before the Chinese take us over.
Sorry, Japanese are white racists.
Good luck with attendance, future employers.
It’s like a contest to see how close they can get to “Black kids are dumb and can’t keep up with white kids” without actually saying it.
The big-picture society-wide problem is that that’s what they’re ACTUALLY teaching. Meaning that for all of the complaining that geezers have always done about yoots, the truth is they’re actually pretty good at ferreting out the underlying/unspoken assumptions behind the things they’re being told.
For several generations (all of us growing up) it was literally and deliberately the opposite of that – the underlying message was actual equality. It shifted hard to the identity-group driven thing, mostly in the Obama era, and reversed a century of actual progress in race relations.
Make no mistake, that message of superiority/inferiority is what they’re truly learning. And that they must simultaneously know it and keep quiet about it.
It is spawning broadly accepted, racially motivated pushback. For every legit neo-Nazi or neo-Confederate I encounter on Gab, there are 30 people who believe that white people are under attack from many different angles for being white and that they need to muster or they’ll be smothered out.
I’ll say that I have a hard time arguing against the existence of the problems they point to. I may not agree with their solutions, but I’ve seen enough qualified white men get passed up for less qualified not-white not-men at work and in the industry as a whole in the last year to 18 months that I wonder how hard HR is forcing these decisions.
And if you’re describing your observations mostly in terms (if I’m reading it correctly) of “adults out there in the normal working world like us”, then think how much MORE strongly it’s sensed and believed among high-schoolers. They are definitely tuned to it.
That’s where progressives come from, it shouldn’t be surprising that that is where they go back to.
This made the interminable wait at the tire shop much more pleasant.
Thank you.
My pleasure.
It’s been interesting seeing the change in The Atlantic. It’s still fully on board with progressivism, but it’s noting that it’s not working the way they want it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/single-use-plastic-chemical-recycling-disposal/661141/
They’ve identified the correct issues, but naturally come to the wrong conclusions.
There is no conflict of interest in Ba Sing Se.
Mx Enck is constantly on NPR here.
Tell that to the dozens of commercials I’ve seen in recent months touting the wonders of recycling plastic.
Our county won’t even take any plastic except clear milk jugs any more, because everything else is completely worthless. They also don’t take glass. It’s been whittled down to clear milk jugs, paper products, and aluminum cans.
My county demands performative virtue signaling with the full knowledge that it’s a money loser because PLASTIC BAD.
Oh ba-Bee!
I think I’m following. I’m having fun, at any rate. I can’t wait for the next installment!
Glad you like it 🙂
Virginia emergency executive orders now expire after 45 days unless approved by the legislature. Now work on limited the scope of emergency executive orders.
Excellent. I had been informed that the GOP expected a crossover vote in the Senate for that measure. Looks like it panned out.
But what will we do in an emergency?
Activate your evacuation slide.
break glass?
That is what your towel is for, is it not?
The same thing we do in every emergency, Pinkie. Run around like idiots and make everything worse.
You meant to say “Run madly off in all directions — screaming — with your hair on fire.” I just know you did.
The left can’t meme.
MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT
Do this at the pumps:
“See, the left can meme.”
Sure they can, just not well.
Difference is they don’t care if it isn’t funny or obscenely complicated and misses the point of a meme.
They know they can shift the high gas on repubs cause the media will provide the explainer and propaganda to support the meme.
At no point in American history have Americans believed in the media less.
Its economics 101 – put a cap on what people can charge for something, and they will produce more of it. The lower the cap, the more they produce!
Its basic supply and demand: More demand = more supply. The lower the price, the more demand, and thus, the more supply. This isn’t rocket surgery, people.
They’ve been wanting energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket” for decades in order to push us to go “green”. I wish they’d just be honest that this is what they want. I’d still be against it, but I’d at least respect the honesty.
I would like to see that too, but it they were honest, they’d never win another election.
Did the 4 Ds vote no because they didn’t understand the question or are they insurrectionists?
They opposed it because it wasn’t full nationalization.
I almost wish it had passed, just to see the gas lines again. ##seventiesnostalgia
Odd story, but it has my interest.
*thumbs up*
Heh…
🙂
Wait, it’s ok to call LaForge Kunta Kinte again?
https://twitter.com/levarburton/status/1531340829079609344
An actor is not the role they once played.
It’s not a permanent name like a politicians’ office title?
First response: “That’s a good look for you. You should run for office.”
Pretty much sums up everything that’s wrong with modern politics.
Kinte was a slave in Spotsy at the Waller plantation near where my parents live. Legend is he is buried at the back of a county park.
https://twitter.com/davidhogg111/status/1531597752551059462
Daniel Daly, Benjamin F Wilson, and David Bellavia weep.
ZING! I think. I don’t exactly get what he was trying to say.
He doesn’t either.
If police officers like the one at my high school and the ones in Texas are too afraid to take on men with an A.R. 15 stop asking our teachers and students to do it.
Cops are afraid so you can’t defend yourself either.
Does the GOP want firearm training and tactics as part of teacher certification now? Is this going to be part of the education curriculum at every teaching college? How often are teachers going to train on this? The GOP is proposing to turn schools into military barracks.
Being armed is a choice.
The GOP is proposing to turn schools into military barracks.
Which would be a step up from the prison facilities they currently emulate.
It doesn’t violate the 3rd Amendment.
The Spartans didn’t have these problems.
The Helots may disagree.
If police officers like the one at my high school and the ones in Texas are too afraid to take on men with an A.R. 15 stop asking our teachers and students to do it.
A great deal depends on what happens to you if you don’t. For the cops, they “stay safe” and will in all probabllity stay cops. For the teachers and students, well, they get killed.
Did some Republican actually make an argument about arming teachers being made mandatory? This is the second or third thing I’ve seen with teacher-friendly groups declaring they will “resist” being armed in the classroom.
No need. You can make your own strawpeople.
Senator Straw from [Other Team] has proposed so many awful things.
He just wants people to die!
https://youtu.be/eXWhbUUE4ko
Sussman acquitted. Here’s my shocked face.
With the takeover of the LP by the Mises Caucus, I’ve been thinking that I might want to do an article about my thoughts around paleolibertarianism and the notion of “Libertarian Populism”. I think it’s a potentially strong political strategy, especially if the Republicans are able to squeeze out Trump or DeSantis. Just one example strikes me. I’ve been mulling the recent run-up in real estate prices lately. Now, I’ll stipulate, for me, it’s a good thing, at least on paper. I’ve seen a surge in the value of my house. But, that would only matter if I wanted to sell it, which I don’t, or take on more debt, which I also have no intention of doing. And even if I want to sell, I’d be looking at having to replace it with an equally inflated property. But, for young people, it’s a disaster. I see young people having to move further and further out or go deeper and deeper in hock to get a place. And I feel bad for them. But, this surge is, at least in part, a consequence of monetary policy. By inflating the currency, the relatively rich, or the outright rich, have been able to gobble up real estate and escalate prices. It’s the Cantillon Effect in practice.
Monetary Policy leads to inflation, but that is a general price increase.
Relative price increases aren’t inflation, housing price increases above inflation is not due to monetary policy, but due to regulatory policy.
Let me clarify that with a simple example, because it is important and mistakes are made along these lines all the time. Lets take a simple example, an economy with only two products, A and B, both of which make of 50% of the “inflation basket”.
Lets say A goes up 10% and B goes up 2%. Inflation would be 6%. Some people would say things like “the rise in A is causing inflation.” But it isn’t.
The change in A is due to inflation plus relative price change.
The change in B is due to inflation plus relative price change.
Inflation is 6%, the relative price change of A to B is 8%, +4 to A and -4 to B.
In a world with a monetary policy of 0% inflation, A would be up 4% and B would be down 4%.
Now this isn’t exactly right, as there are 2nd order terms and substitution effects. But close enough for rounding.
I do understand your point. But, the notion of the Cantillon Effect is that prices don’t rise uniformly and at the same time. For example, when the first recipients of the debased money receive it, they’re able to start purchasing goods, services and assets at pre-debasement prices. Only later, when the price consequences of their additional purchasing flows through, do those prices rise. And only after that do prices for substitutes and complements start rising. And it’s later that say wages start to respond. So, even if there was no change in relative prices in the long run, there is a wealth transfer due to the timing of price increases. The guys first able to raise prices or take advantage of the debased currency gain relative to those increasing prices later in the game.
Using your example, let’s say there’s a zero relative price change and makers of A were given a whole bunch of money to buy stuff. Well, their purchases of B would increase dramatically. And the price of B won’t adjust instantaneously. So, makers of A would acquire a whole bunch of B without a corresponding offsetting provision of A. Eventually, yes, producers of B would raise their prices to restore the balance of A and B. But, A producers would have necessarily gained relative to B producers.
I agree with that, I was just pointing out that the housing surge isn’t due to monetary policy. The relative price change of housing is due to regulatory policy.
FUCK ZONING.
That is all.
See, those 5 words could be an entire Glibs article.
And I’m not so sure I agree. If there’s a Cantillon Effect, you wouldn’t be too surprised to see prices rise first in asset prices. If other asset classes are already bid up to unattractive levels, you could easily see residential real estate emerge as an asset class and bid up. And that would explain all the foreign dollars we’ve seen flowing into U.S. residential real estate. It would explain the large purchases of residential real estate by investment funds and non-occupying owners. I’m not saying it explains everything. But, I think it’s a contributor.
What would success look like, in your opinion? I think you are correct in that Libertarian Populism could certainly generate some interest, but to what end?
It’s abundantly clear that we aren’t voting our way out of this mess. None of the monsters we see are the monsters in charge and those are buried in like ticks.
I guess I still do have some residual hope for the system. What would success look like? I’m not really sure. Maybe libertarians at least generating some interest. Maybe Republicans, at least, making some sort of move in a more libertarian direction.
It’s more than that causing it. A building slump lasting more than a decade after 2008, combined with Millennials coming of age, caused a real shortage. You have lots of zoning laws that encourage bigger, more expensive houses. And then you have the Airbnb phenomenon, which shifted short term rentals from hotels to houses, condos, and apartments instead, making the shortage even worse.
Normally in this situation, high prices and demand would cause massive new construction, and the fear would be overbuilding like we saw in the leadup to the 2000s crash. But caution from builders who remember the crash, the pandemic, and the subsequent supply chain shortages have stopped that from happening.
Libertarian Populism
found on the same aisle as jumbo shrimp and military intelligence!
The ugly truth is you’ll get a lot more mileage with “hey buddy, don’t do that” than with “oh, I should just leave you alone”.
found on the same aisle as jumbo shrimp and military intelligence!
I think it depends on the definition. If you mean the historical/Nolan Chart definition, sure. If you mean a disgust and resentment of elites or a sense that the deck is stacked against the normal, every day, person, I’m not so sure of that at all. I think a lot of libertarian critiques could easily appeal to those sensibilities.
Yup, because the opposite of “hey buddy, stop doing that” isn’t live and let live. It’s “hey buddy, celebrate me doing that”
But, for young people, it’s a disaster. I see young people having to move further and further out or go deeper and deeper in hock to get a place
Yup, agreed. For me, sitting and waiting for prices to come down or for our savings to hit our goal is an inconvenience. We can stretch our budget if need be, and we’re still well within our means.
My little brother, on the other hand, is struggling with moving from LA to Ohio, and since he was renting in LA, the price of housing near his new job in C-bus is such that it’s getting hard for him to find a place. The closest suburban area near where he’s looking has a housing median of $750k. He has been out of school 2 years, so even a standard deviation below median is out of reach for him. As a result, he’s stuck either renting or living way out in the boonies.
Okay, how can Columbus be more expensive than Charleson, SC or Fort Collins, CO.
I don’t think I believe your numbers, but Columbus seems like a hellhole to me, primarily due to OSU being there.
It’s not a hellhole, especially in the surrounding suburbs, of which there are many. Though I don’t recommend it for people who like a lot of unfiltered sunlight.
Our younger two are considering leaving the Denver area to join their older sisters in eastern Iowa. They can realistically think about buying a house in Iowa. In Denver, not so much.
Welcome Home!
Well. We’re staying in Alaska.
We’ll take the kids.
Ditto.
My siblings and I know that with Dad’s broken hip, and the house falling apart, we have to get him (and me) off the top of the hill. But I’ve been looking at rental prices, and I don’t see anything we’re going to be able to afford.
$750K median for a Columbus suburb would be extremely high, even now. I’d be surprised if Upper Arlington has reached that yet, and it’s one of the most expensive areas.
Sorry, I was high by $100k
https://www.redfin.com/city/13961/OH/New-Albany/housing-market
You can get a nice house in the Rust Belt for a third of that.
Columbus is in the rust belt.
It’s also a seat of government and a university town (even if it’s a truly shit university).
Technically yes, but it doesn’t have that feel at all. It’s one of the fastest growing cities in the Midwest, and it attracts younger people from all around Ohio.
Yeah, I meant the real Rust Belt. Buffalo, Cleveland, Rochester, etc.
If that is your starting position we have nothing to discuss.
Following the prescribed narrative of this week’s corporate media diktat, Todd began Sunday’s episode of “Meet the Press” on NBC News with an anti-Second Amendment and, more precisely, anti-conservative lament regarding the massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Where his peers had carried the weight of the Democrat Party with the standard misrepresentations of mass shooting statistics and the types of firearms responsible for most heinous crimes, Todd took aim at the culture.
“It’s become our uniquely American ritual of words after each episode of this uniquely American serial tragedy. Thought and prayers, nothing we can do,” the host expressed. “No law would have stopped this. The real problem is mental illness. If only the victims had been armed. More thoughts and prayers.”
As he furthered his argument, Todd concluded, “This current version of the Republican Party is being held hostage by a vocal minority obsessed with an absolute right that does not exist.”
Thoughts and prayers don’t work, but common sense* gun control does.
*Whatever it is, it’s common sense.
People like this believe the law has some magical effect. What can you say to someone who believes in magic?
“Harry Potter is just a book/movie.”
Something I saw recently, greatly paraphrasing…the purpose of education is to overcome common sense. The great ideas in science and etc are that are observations are wrong.
Chuck Todd can go f**k himself. These measures have been tried. They don’t work. They’ve been shown not to work. It isn’t even debatable. The correlations run insignificantly in the opposite direction. Not that it would matter for me if they did work. But, that’s beside the point because they’ve been shown to not work. And any douchenozzle who a couple of weeks abo was bragging about how he “follows the science” should either dismiss these measures, shut the hell up, or have the basic integrity to cut out his own tongue. But, let’s be honest. Chuck Todd doesn’t want to ban guns because he believes it would make anyone safe. He wants to ban guns because he wants to screw with “those people”. He has the stench of an effete loser envious of the manhood (not because of their guns; because they make a living without being a kept ventriloquist’s dummy for another’s opinions) of people he thought he was better than because he sat in the front of the class and went to the right colleges.
Heh.
I agree with the substance of your rant, but a point of order, Your Honour: I sat at the front of the class because I was near-sighted and my Mom couldn’t afford to get me glasses. I wasn’t aware that you were supposed to be able to see individual blades of grass from a standing position until I bought my first set of glasses at age 22.
Think, for a few minutes, about the measures that would have to be taken to significantly (like more than 10%) reduce the number of firearms in circulation in the United States.
Thots and prayers are downright practical, compared to the fever dreams of the gun controllers…
measures that would have to be taken to…circulation in the United States
They haven’t thought this part through. But I suspect that they expect that if you will not comply you will die.
I mean, they’d get me eventually…
Oh shit, did I say that or just think it?
I read an article recently that originalism is invalid because it is impossible to know with absolute certainty what the dead intended.
The constitution should have been written in lojban.
The dead spent a great deal of time and effort writing it down.
An Amazon best seller.
Misinformation. You just want people to die.
37 years ago today!
Damn, you people are OLD!
Wow, In 1985 Biden was only a Senator for 13 years.
We need to be more like the Kiwis.
President Biden to New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: “We need your guidance. You understand that your leadership has taken on a critical role on this global stage, and it really has, galvanized action on climate change.”
*barf*
“Keep the government out of my bedroom.”
This bill establishes a federal statutory framework to regulate the storage of firearms and ammunition on residential premises.
Specifically, the bill requires firearms and ammunition on residential premises to be safely stored if a minor is likely to gain access without permission or if an individual who resides at the residence is ineligible to possess a firearm.
The firearms and ammunition must be safely stored in one of two ways: (1) secured, unloaded, and separated in a safe and locked with a trigger lock; or (2) off the premises at a storage facility or gun range. Safes, trigger locks, and storage facilities must be certified by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Finally, an individual who violates the safe storage requirements is subject to penalties—criminal penalties if the violation results in the discharge of a firearm, or civil penalties if the violation does not result in the discharge of a firearm. Additionally, DOJ must seize and safely store the individual’s firearms and ammunition.
That sounds unconstitutional for numerous reasons.
But we must DO SOMETHING. This is SOMETHING!!
Nothing is also something. Can we try doing nothing, just to see if anything changes?
It’s constitutional because of the Commerce Clause. Or something.
It shall be unlawful for a person to store or keep any firearm or ammunition that has moved in, or that has otherwise affected, interstate or foreign commerce, on the premises of a residence under the control of the person if the person knows, or reasonably should know, that—
Give that man a prize.
Fuck off, slavers.
The only rational response.
I have the abbreviated form as my doorbell text greeting.