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Open thread 5/12/23

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  • ghostsniper May 12, 2023, 8:23 AM

    P?

  • Joe Krill May 12, 2023, 8:30 AM

    There is a very old cliche that goes like this. When you cannot dazzle them with your brilliance, you baffle them with your bullshit. OR, The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use this test to examine a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning.

    • Anne May 12, 2023, 9:01 AM

      oh Geez Louise!

  • jwm May 12, 2023, 10:08 AM

    Book of Kells. The Chi-Rho page. That is some serious calligraphy.

    JWM

  • anon May 12, 2023, 11:42 AM

    Illuminated Manuscripts:

    https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%3Ag+illuminated+manuscripts&t=brave&ia=web

    Beautiful.
    I studied them as part of a “History of the Printed Word” (or some such) at UC Berkeley (1988) in work toward a Library and Information Science degree.

  • ghostsniper May 12, 2023, 12:55 PM

    The thing that scares me, what keeps me up at night, is the fear that my vision of the poverty, violence, and unrest that will come when the system fails isn’t close to what the reality will be.

    RTWT
    https://areaocho.com/my-thoughts/

    • Anonymous May 12, 2023, 4:37 PM

      What seems to not be in people’s minds is the effect of technology totally breaking down. Maybe not totally so, maybe just limited – but if some power … US govt, China, Russia, etc … just takes out satellites, think of today’s world without “smart” phones, GPS, IOP, communications (how to communicate when this web thing fails or is turned off). The electric grid collapsing, natural gas distribution shut off (pumping stations run by electricity). Water. All by a malevolent and/or powerless US government. The world takes revenge. The new Carthage.

      (I just read a quicky headline that Russia is preparing for American conservative refugees. I’m firmly convinced that there was a time when DJT first took office, that Russia could have become an ally. Then The Uniparty/State Dept got involved. China? F*)

      DJT … should he live long enough to even be on the ballot and get into office (either of which I doubt) will not be able to “save the day”. Or even want to with enough pressure exerted. Same with Tucker Carlson – his day is done as well.

      The 1930s “Great” Depression will seem like a cakewalk. The Mexican cartels are moving in, building up strength where the Amish aren’t. What to do when organized (they aren’t stupid) MS13 shows up at your door? Your neighbors probably won’t help (“if I don’t get involved, they’ll leave me alone”) … or more likely, “they” show up with enough force to collectively control your entire neighborhood.

      Out by yourself … away from it all? Just an easier target. Live in a deep red region? How well is your region prepared for multi-month siege warfare? Maybe one’s best chance at survival is in a deep blue city and being very, very woke and submissive. Maybe we truly find the meaning of “death isn’t the worst thing”.

      I’m not looking to die but I don’t expect to live to the age my parents or grandparents did. But then I’m old enough to remember “new” Bugs Bunny cartoons; I’ll probably get my “3 score and ten” in – not sure how much beyond that though.

      I worked somewhat in the mining industry. There’s a saying “Gold mines are sexy, gravel pits will make you rich”. I don’t bother with gold: silver and lead are the most useful of metals for an individual.

      It’s growing season. Last chance, it’s going to be a dark winter.

      I’m scared to death of what I envision for the now-near future. Too young to be feeble, too old to fight.

      Sometimes I get the feeling we’re down to days.

      I am NOT paranoid enough …

  • Joe krill May 13, 2023, 11:08 AM
    • ghostsniper May 13, 2023, 11:23 AM

      There will be no reckoning on a large scale. Each person will have to use their brainpower in all medical exchanges going forward, and accept the consequences thereof. It’s a scary place to be if you need a medical service. Again, I put this rotten assed gov’t right in the center of all of it. How to you punish and extract justice from the grossest violation the world has ever known?

    • Joe Krill May 13, 2023, 2:22 PM

      Taken from the article.

      Those who submit to oppression resent no one, not even their oppressors, so much as the braver souls who refuse to surrender. The mere presence of dissenters is a stone in the quisling’s shoe – a constant, niggling reminder to the coward of his moral and ethical inadequacy. Human beings, especially those lacking personal integrity, cannot tolerate much cognitive dissonance. And so they turn on those of higher character than themselves.

  • ghostsniper May 13, 2023, 1:00 PM

    In 1954, sixty-three-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow. Annie had little idea what to expect beyond her rural crossroads; she didn’t even have a map. But she did have her ex-racehorse, her faithful mutt, and her own unfailing belief that Americans would treat a stranger with kindness.
    Annie, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, rode straight into a world transformed by the rapid construction of modern highways. Between 1954 and 1956, the three travelers pushed through blizzards, forded rivers, climbed mountains, and clung to the narrow shoulder as cars whipped by them at terrifying speeds. Annie rode more than four thousand miles, through America’s big cities and small towns. Along the way, she met ordinary people and celebrities—from Andrew Wyeth (who sketched Tarzan) to Art Linkletter and Groucho Marx. She received many offers—a permanent home at a riding stable in New Jersey, a job at a gas station in rural Kentucky, even a marriage proposal from a Wyoming rancher. In a decade when car ownership nearly tripled, when television’s influence was expanding fast, when homeowners began locking their doors, Annie and her four-footed companions inspired an outpouring of neighborliness in a rapidly changing world.

    Read the whole story, with pix, here:

    https://medium.com/history-of-women/the-dying-woman-who-ran-away-from-home-and-saved-her-own-life-c7bf8ad788ae

  • CA May 13, 2023, 1:03 PM

    Good article. Thanks.

    GS nails it: the entities that would do the investigation and adjudication are just other cogs in the murder machine.

    Damn it all.

    • CA May 13, 2023, 1:04 PM

      Good article on the Vax affair. Thanks.

      GS nails it: the entities that would do the investigation and adjudication are just other cogs in the murder machine.

      Damn it all.

  • Casey Klahn May 13, 2023, 1:24 PM

    With so much happening so fast, it’s hard to stay as pessimistic as I want to be. I mean, it’s tiring.

    Yes, medical malfeasance. What medical ethics? That shipt ended in the Fifties.

    I read this week that somebody with a typewriter and time for fuckery, actually penned in an article: it seems the Canadian army has too many white males.

    Now I understand that if you must be on social media in Australia, you’re going to need multiple forms of I.D. Also part of this new law is your liability as a user on sosh media; if you speak out of place that’s legal jeopardy. This, from the land of actual Covid Camps. All those year we thought the brave Aussies were helping fight the Naughtzees in the Med and North Africa, they were actually taking notes on how to be totalitarian bastards.

    If I had my way, 90% of the medicos in America would slow boat it to Australia and stay there. Forced. Isolation.

  • anonymous May 13, 2023, 4:45 PM

    About 15 years ago we were in Australia and watched with horror as American “coaches” were instructing union leadership regarding the importation of homosexuality. On a later trip, we saw several people who had been trained by Americans in the fine art of “community organizing”, in particular the art of shaming anyone who didn’t agree with them.

  • jd May 14, 2023, 5:52 AM

    Great story, Ghost. Thank you! Good for Mother’s Day too.
    She did it for her Mother!

  • jd May 14, 2023, 5:56 AM

    Ghost,

    Great story, especially for Mother’s Day. She took the trip to fulfill her mother’s wish to see the Pacific Ocean. Thank you for posting it!

  • ghostsniper May 14, 2023, 1:33 PM

    Happy Mutha’s Day to all you mutha’s out there.

    My mother passed on 12 years ago and since that time all the rights and benefits bestowed to her in years gone by have been transferred to my wife, the mother of our son. Today is also the “Summer of You” for my wife as well.

    I gifted her a pair of tie dyed clogs for traversing from house to pool, and a big white chaise lounge with a heavily padded and colorful full length pad. Though it’s a little overcast, it is warm, so she is enjoying both at this very moment. Shannon is in the pool too. She was reluctant at first to get in but once she did she doesn’t want to get out.

    I also gave my wife 39 hand selected gladiolus bulbs of assorted colors (1 for each year we’ve been married) that she will plant at some point along the ridge in our front yard, and one of them auger deals that is plugged into a cordless drill for planting them. She’s been wanting one of them for years. In the 17 years we have lived here she has planted hundreds of various bulbs, in little thatches randomly all through the woods around our crib. Little bolts of color all over the place.

    Tonight for supper we will split a very expensive grouper flank prepared properly on the grill and which has been swimming in a specially blended marinade in the fridge for the past 6 hours. I will also conjure up her most favortist grub in all the world, my legendary 4 cheese mac-n-cheese with hormel bacon bits. After I yank it out from under the broiled it will have a hard crusty, cheezy coating on top. Later, if there is room in Bellyville, we may sit on the porch and watch the creatures in the yard while cleansing our pallets with a lovely triple flavored rainbow sherbet (lime, orange, raspberry). DAWGEEZ!!!

  • Anne May 14, 2023, 9:45 PM

    I have now had two comments not show up. Has anyone found out what causes comments not to show up?

    • Casey Klahn May 15, 2023, 4:49 AM

      Yes, the filter is hyperactive these days, Anne.

      Ghost, thank you for the Mom’s Day story. Yesterday we had both kids, 20 & 21, in Spokane to tour grand mansions on the West bluff of the city, and to tour the Three Generations of Wyeth exhibit at the museum. A hot day, and our honored wife/mom unit was really happy with the love and the event.

      My son got a lesson in old school environmentalism seeing how the grand mansions are laid out for summer and winter, and the compass points. Now I want that summer bedroom more than ever.

      My family got an education in how three generations of good and great artists express themselves differently. N.C. is a favorite of many and he fulfilled his roll of illustration art like a boss. One painting of marines going ashore on a hot Pacific beach, under fire, was well crafted and memorable, as well as one of a fisherman at the wheel of a small Maine boat, called “Nine Bells”. Interestingly my wife and son loved the worst N.C. Wyeth painting in the exhibition. Go figure (the expert in me never stops learning and changing).

      Andrew Wyeth, the super famous and great American master didn’t disappoint, and I got to see a couple of his best masterpieces. The reason he floats above everyone, including his family of artists, is that his ideas are subtly expressed in each painting, without resorting to pandering. He’s a master abstractionist stem to keel.

      Jamie, the contemporary Wyeth, son and grandson, has elements of each father and consequently is lost on the beach, having missed the boat entirely. He’s a good painter though. His early work is very good, then he starts thinking.

      Oops. I didn’t mean to write this essay in the reply section but need to run to work. I’ll leave it be.

      • ghostsniper May 15, 2023, 9:46 AM

        Lucky dawg. I’ve been known to inhale old skool architecture and building. Same with honest art.

  • ghostsniper May 15, 2023, 3:27 AM

    Didya notice that in Gerard’s “hippy” pik ————–>
    his shadow is overshadowed by Lola’s “big hair”.

  • Bob Clark May 17, 2023, 4:12 PM

    Thank you ghostsniper for the posting about Annie Wilkins who decided not to listen to her medical team. Wonderful.

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