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Home » Open thread 10/2/23

Open thread 10/2/23

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s not just October; it’s October second. I know I’ve said this before, but it’s amazing how fast time goes these days. I even saw a few leaves yesterday that had turned color – the early birds.

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Open thread 10/2/23 — 33 Comments

  3. My trees are turning fast. First the Ash trees, then the Silver Maples, then the Willows, and last the Fruit trees. Thank God they don’t all drop at the same time. I am already starting to blow the leaves onto grass areas so I can mow them up.

  7. The leaves started turning here in Fairbanks, AK a month ago and it snowed last night. may not stick today but it will by the end of the week.
    Im not at all mentally ready for this. :/

  11. At about age 40 I realized that time is non-linear, that time is a ratio to how long you’ve lived. So, when you are 6 years old, it takes 10 times longer to get from the start of school to Halloween than it does when you are 60 years old… and Christmas is a lifetime away for a 6 year old when school starts. Not so for those with 60 Christmases to look back on.

  12. Get ready Megan. When I was a prospector in northern Yukon it snowed on 16 August. Enjoyed sitting around the campfire even more!

  13. Q for the investor class:
    All stock indices are down quite a bit today.
    I expected a bump up due to the avoidance of he “shutdown,” which was going to cost the economy millions and billions and trillions of dollars per day.
    It affects me minimally as I got down to ~5% equities a couple of months ago (humblebrag).
    What’s going on?

  14. Re: Time perception

    One view is that time seems slower when one is younger because there are more significantly different events occurring then. As one ages, there are fewer new different events, so time seems to go by faster.

    Learning French seems to slow my time sense down. The days are packed with new events, albeit small ones, I can’t believe how long ago a week ago feels.

  15. Paul H – good observation. I’m at the 10x spot on the non-linear curve as well. For me, the time compression comes in the length of summer. For a kid in a Kansas elementary school, that summer break seemed to stretch to darn near forever.

  16. The new appointment for California Senator was registered to vote in Maryland. Wonder what her driver’s license shows? I noticed a comment and question on the Fox News website comment section that when filing State Income Taxes in two states, one would file one as resident and one as non resident. What did her last filing list? ( I live in Texas and have no such thing to file. I do have property taxes and sales taxes to pay on my business.)

  18. Kate:

    “Hands across the waters, hands across the seas. Hands across the waters, no Senator Markle.”

    And just like that, an old song pops into the head.

  19. RE: China is afraid

    I’ve posted here before about how China has a problem with the apparently very frequent revenge knife attacks on children–often kindergarteners enrolled in what look like high end private kindergartens–revenge by Chinese society’s usually middle aged losers, against the children of the successful, children who would carry on the family name, and, in the absence of anything like an effective Chinese social welfare system, would care for and support their parents and grandparents in their old age; such attacks aiming to destroy the family lineage, and that security).

    But now it appears that the government of China is afraid to a far greater extent than such attacks would seem to justify and, thus, they are employing paranoid level, very tight control and regulation of the sale of knives, and even of nail clippers.

    According to the example presented in the video linked below, if you want to buy a kitchen knife you go to a store with inch wide, heavy, floor to ceiling vertical and horizontal bars separating you from the salespeople, no knives are actually on display, you pick the knife you want from a computer image, the knife is registered to you (in the video apparently engraved with your identifying information) and there you go, you’ve bought yourself a kitchen knife. *

    Perhaps the Chinese CCP’s functionaries and nomenklatura are afraid that many angry citizens–if they had free access to knives–would like to take a crack at “slicing and dicing” them?

    * See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Qjjs21Ysv8&t=420s

  20. huxley says, “Learning French seems to slow my time sense down. . . . I can’t believe how long ago a week ago feels.”

    I fully expect huxley to write a new version of À la recherche du temps perdu.

    As for the weather around here, it’s Indian summer rather than early frost– the high today is 77 F, with highs of 80 F predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday.

  22. Re: China
    The word is that there are a LOT of Chinese young men coming over the southern border as illegals. Why? to invade or evade? If the Chinese are having a population replacement problem, why are they allowing the numbers of young men to leave?
    I sure wonder.

  23. SueK-
    Conjecturing that the population problem is medium- to long-term; a much more immediate problem is that many/most of these young men have been educated to some degree and feel entitled to middle class jobs and lifestyle, including finding a suitable wife.
    Jobs (that require/make use of an education) and wives are in very short supply in China, leading to significant restlessness in the young men’s cohort. Restless young men are troublemakers, may even pick up a knife or harbor counter-revolutionary thoughts.
    Easier and better to let them leave, maybe even encourage a select tranche of them to seek their fortune in the U.S.
    A small number of them are of course highly trained spies or saboteurs and are easier to conceal in the crowd.

  26. Megan. No snow in Anchorage yet, but there should be snow on the ground by Halloween. I went to UAF. I remember it seemed that the leaves turned yellow one week, fell the next week and snowed the week after that.

  27. For a kid in a Kansas elementary school, that summer break seemed to stretch to darn near forever.

    Roll-aid:

    I can get some of that back by listening to Vince Guaraldi’s jazz piano for the “Peanuts” specials. Or better yet George Winston’s cover:

    –George Winston, “Peanuts Theme Song”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r547zEAGSQk

  28. In the literary realm there is Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine”:
    ______________________________________

    It was a quiet morning, the town covered over with darkness and at ease in bed. Summer gathered in the weather, the wind had the proper touch, the breathing of the world was long and warm and slow. You had only to rise, lean from your window, and know that this indeed was the first real time of freedom and living, this was the first morning of summer.

    –Ray Bradbury, “Dandelion Wine”
    ______________________________________

    I never got over Ray Bradbury.

  29. Re: Anchorage

    Megan, JFM:

    I am reminded of Michelle Shocked’s lovely 80s folkie hit, “Anchorage.” Naturally I tried to link it.

    But there was no YouTube link. Shocked was a leftie, turned Christian. Back in 2013 she mentioned her gay-skeptical congregants and she got cancelled … hard.

    Now I can’t find Michelle’s “Anchorage” anywhere.
    __________________________________

    Hey girl, it’s about time you wrote
    It’s been over two years, you know, my old friend
    Take me back to the days of the *** and the all-night rock’n’rollin’.
    Hey Chelle, we was wild then.

    Hey Chelle, you know it’s kinda funny
    Texas always seemed so big
    But you know you’re in the largest state in the union
    When you’re anchored down in Anchorage.

    –Michelle Shocked, “Anchorage”

  30. I haven’t listened to General Flynn before and it’s an interesting interview, though I wish it had been edited. The original question– why was Flynn considered the most dangerous man in America by B. Obama?

    At around minute 50 you get the answer why so many of us continue to support President Trump. He’s put everything on the line for America. He truly loves America.

    He’s seeing the increasing pace of globalization and the left’s efforts in this country to turn the system to permanent advantage. The law has been so perverted, but I don’t think the Supreme Court has the stomach to even try and set it right. They already know they and their families will be living in protective custody if they do.

    This dovetails with another issue about the WHO. New rules are going to allow the left to abrogate any responsibility for the next Biological Terror weapon released for their use. Our government has ceded power to them that will allow them to hide behind.

    “General Michael Flynn | PBD Podcast | Ep. 300”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJwNE4YQFcg

  33. I understand it’s not a priority in conservative circles to wonder WTF happened to the Left. But, as an ex-leftist, I do.

    Exactly how did the Left swivel away from the concerns of the (mostly) genuinely oppressed to this weird boutique world of mix’n’match identities, bizarrely ranked?”

    I’ve concluded the Elites have beautifully coopted the Old-New-Left by way of the Social Justice Movement’s identity politics. Freddie de Boers is on the case:
    ________________________________________

    I’m a Marxist. Though I’m a fairly unorthodox one at this point, I would still love to see a Marxist revolution. You know, an international movement of workers rising up and taking control of political and economic systems, and distributing resources and labor based on need, while organized under the principle of shared ownership of the productive apparatus of society.

    But with American progressivism focused on identity politics, not class interests, forever wandering from the righteous to the ridiculous, this appears to be an unrealistic dream.

    –“How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement”
    https://www.thefp.com/p/how-elites-ate-the-social-justice
    ________________________________________

    Back in the 60s/70s the Left was perpetually on guard against being coopted by the Establishment to the point of paranoia.

    Now the Left welcomes being coopted. It’s not a simple betrayal. Since the Left took over the academic high ground, the Elites have been indoctrinated into the Left and it became a class distinction. (Witness the BBC.)

    And now the Elites have eaten the Left.

    Kinda brilliant in its way .

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