"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Category: I do these sorts of things so you don’t have to
Do NOT encourage everyone you meet/know to vote! The Founders were justly leery of too much democracy (which is why they designed the Constitution to create a representative republic with some democratic elements). Always remember Third World County™’s corollary to Santayana’s Axiom:
“In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance”
ONLY encourage those who are well-informed and who have a rational bent to vote. Actively discourage the ignorant, misinformed, DISinformed, and notably brainwashed from voting. Their influence is uniformly negative, no matter their unthinking, uncritical, ignorant political bent.
I am a firm believer in ONLY firing proper “warning shots. The only exception to this rule is if an aggressor is wearing body armor. Or is a zombie. Or is a zombie wearing body armor.
Sometimes, I like to just groan, loudly. It feels good. My Wonder Woman does not usually appreciate this, but when I groaned a bit ago, she joined in–VERY LOUDLY.
I see a common misconception pretty often (Well, it’s common, so I would. *heh*) It goes something like this:
“Preppers are individuals who believe that, in the near future, life as they know it will be challenged or changed due to a major event.”
No, cupcake. “Preppers” are people who think that being prepared to deal with a wide range of emergencies should they occur is just the intelligent thing to do. Heck, preparing in advance to be able to deal effectively with a wide range of possible natural or man-made disasters IF any of them should occur, is certainly better than playing grasshopper and then mooching off others should, say, an extended power outage from a winter storm or a major flood occur.
While I’m sure there are a few tinfoil hat wearers who meet the pejorative criteria stated in the misconception, but I believe them to be the exception, not the rule. Yeh, I know a few whose tinfoil hats seemed to cause brainwave malfunctions leading them to not just go “off-grid” but move to third world countries to escape “the coming collapse of civilization,” but I can count those few on one hand and have fingers left over. 😉
Urm, not if he politics as poorly as he writes. (His writing’s about on a par with Dan #gagamaggot Brown, IMO. OK, maybe a little better. Currently, there is no worse “bestselling” writer than Dan Brown. I found Thor’s stuff merely pedestrian and boringly predictable. Tastes vary, though.)
Thor’s stuff is good enough for made-for-Lifetime “C” movies, though. That’s better than Dan Brown’s stuff which is just stupid.
On second thought. . . There were plenty of stupid people around to vote for both The Trumpery and The Queenie Cacklepants Cylon in 2016, and it takes a certain kind of stupidity to find Thor’s books at all readable, so. . .
*sigh*
Someone, please save us from the ambitions of mediocre writers and conmen and corrupt pols. #gagamaggot
For some inexplicable reason, Psych (one of the lamest “detective” shows e-vah) is the best thing on TV right now. Yeh, good reason to turn it off, right?
But wait! There’s more! Lassie has a puppy! Yeh, not enough.
“While the heat produced by the capsaicin in hot peppers is actually enjoyable for many in food (in moderation, of course), it is not so pleasant when it comes into contact with the skin, eyes, or ears when preparing the peppers for cooking. Home cooks are especially at risk for “jalapeno hands,” or the prolonged stinging and burning of the skin after it comes into contact with the capsaicin-rich oils of the pepper when slicing or chopping fresh hot peppers. The “jalapeno hands” effect can last for hours as the oil containing the capsaicin is not easily washed away. But this risk should not be a deterrent from cooking with these peppers, you just need to be prepared.”
I’d just bet this guy also gets humongous bruises from sleeping on a pea hidden under 10 or 20 mattresses, too.
Sure, capsaicin on one’s hands transferred to one’s eyes can sting a wee tad, but it causes no damage, and the pain–what there is of it–abates after a while. But “burned” skin elsewhere, in much less sensitive areas (well, much less sensitive on normal humans who’ve evolved, we are told to have skin that will protect them from such minor insults), indicates a genetic flaw that The Darwin Effect should be allowed to eliminate. Please. *heh*
Wear gloves when prepping capsaicin-loaded peppers? Nah. I’drather lick my fingers and then wash them. If I fail to wash well enough and end up with capsaicin transferred to my eyes or other *cough* “sensitive” *cough* areas, no problem. My genetics don’t belong to what very well ought to be (if it isn’t for sure) an evolutionary dead end.
. . .all the ignorant, emotional, lie-filled arguments by anti-gun, anarcho-tyrannist statists and wild, slavering, stupid calls for gun confiscation kinda irk me. In light of that, here: a .30-caliber, DIY, fully-automatic air rifle.
Make it in your garage. Completely unregulated, as far as I know, in any of the federal firearms laws, because: air rifle. It is not a firearm.
And that’s just if someone doesn’t decide to get their hands on various pieces of low-quality steel and emulate third world home “gunsmiths” the world around and manufacture themselves an AK-47, since it was designed for ease of low-tech reproduction, of download any one of the widespread sets of plans for making one’s own AR-15, go out along the highway collecting aluminum cans, forge and machine a receiver, etc.
Yeh, that very thing has been done by some guy in his own garage and back yard.
Idiots just irk me, and these willfully stupid, electively-ignorant, anti-gun, anarcho-tyrannist statists wildly screaming for gun confiscation, are just that: self-made idiots.
Oh, the “I’m not a gun nut” comment? Currently, entire “arsenal” consists of an 89-year-old revolver. I’d be happy with a couple more firearms, but right now, I just do not need them, and the lil revolver is enough for my current use. This is only possible, because I live in a county that is about as safe as Switzerland, probably because most folks are armed. *heh*
But.. . I will admit I am a “knife nut.” “Never bring a gun to a knife fight” might be something I would think, and even say. . . *heh* OK, just kidding. It’s always good to have both at hand in a “bad actor” scenario, but at or within arm’s length, I’m MUCH more likely to do serious damage with a knife, even with my teensy lil Spyderco Squeak Sprint1, a really, really small knife.
1Thanks again to my Estimable Son-in-Law. I use this knife–and those given to me by Son & Heir–daily, many many times daily.
Some of the absolutely stupid things some writers do baffle me, but at least I have found a way to be amused by them.
Recent “Dan Brown wannabe” book where the writer apparently felt even less desire to get anything right about any of his premises than Brown typically does went Brown even further by finding… unique ways to misuse plain English ( for example, misused “infallible” when groping for “unflappable”), have an “expert pilot” grab the “steering column”. . . on a helicopter whose propellers were making enough noise to keep the writer from thinking, “Maybe I ought to do my homework on helicopters before making a fool of myself in print.”
Hilarious.
Another? How about a fun-filled romp through a zombie apocalypse book filled with things like super-competent, manly-man hero filling up a late-model vehicle with gas and then “topping it off” after the pump clicks off. “Manly-men” know that can harm the vehicle’s evap system, cause the vehicle to run poorly, and even lead to hard starting or failure to start. In today’s world, it’s an easy fix (though sometimes complicated) to repair an evap system. . . IF one can narrow down the part or parts damaged by topping off, and costs can range from $10-$200, depending on several factors. In a zombie apocalypse scenario, having to repair the evap system on one’s go-to vehicle is sub-optimal.
But that’s OK, cos the book was chock full of this kind of stupid stuff, so reading it as a farce (OK, OK, skimming it, cos it wasn’t really worth reading *heh*) was. . . OK.
The problem with all these hilariously stupid books–not bad or “suckitudinous” books, just stupidly executed–is that the errors of logic, fact, grammar, punctuation, and usage they embody are just reinforced in whatever uncritical readers glom onto them. *sigh* There were once literate editorial staffs at tradpub houses to correct some of these problems, but even there, the quality of literacy in tradpub editorial staffs has waned.
Oh, well. At least I can laugh at and mock such things, and such amusement is worth something as the world generally goes to hell in a handbasket.
