Month: July 2024

I’m not sleeping well again. This might be a symptom of MS, or it might be something else, entirely.

Katie Herzog posted an unpublished story to Blocked & Reported about how she has trouble seeing things in her mind’s eye (Link, but it is behind a paywall). “aphantasia“

She talked about something that’s an identified condition for people who have no “mind’s eye.”

I had one. As I’ve approached legal-blindness, I note that the things I see in my dreams have largely decreased with my vision-level awake.

It’s a fascinating concept. A lot of Katie’s research was from Digg^H^H^H^H^HReddit. I emailed it to my doc to discuss later this week.

I should go try to sleep some more.

But of the Army sort. Credit to discussion on this on Substack.

I did listen to the Charli XCX album on Apple Music. Emphatic “meh.” I do kinda enjoy some of her other music.

Obviously, the previous entry was written before Joey Bideness (Say that like you’re from Brooklyn; h/t Chris) was told to decided to go back to the duPont mansion or his beach condo in Rehoboth permanently.

I’d planned to vote for Joe, but it’s probably not going to matter at this point. Maybe I’ll do it anyway, along with Jersey Dave Smith as VP. (And that one’s because the Mises Caucus destroyed the Libertarian Party…)

I had a ton of stuff I wanted to write about, but I’m actually trying to do the work, and stay away from that compulsion.

But I still find my mind wander to what I’m going to do this fall/winter.

Can it be football season, already?

Glance to see if there’s anything interesting in DC that month, and not seeing anything.

Yes, the Liz Phair concert was really the highlight of last year.

A lot of stuff on my mind.

After nearly a week in the other swamp of the Southern Landmass.

Not as markedly different a world as it was during the lockdowns, but, in a way, refreshing getting away from the Beltway Swamp.

Some discussion of future plans. These aren’t easy discussions; but, it is somewhat comforting that guideposts are better set.

There are some similarities to Hillbilly Elegy, which I did just finish listening to, but the realities aren’t the same with my family, and my parents’ upbringing in Mississippi. (And I reflexively anticipate preening that I listened to it…..but I am nearly fucking blind….not that that matters in the least. I’m supposed to just sit on the public dole and vote for the Party of President Biden’s friend, Jim Eastland, until I die…)

Few people dictating how people should behave live really don’t have any connection to life outside affluent areas.

One of the things I was dealing with the past couple of days was something that wouldn’t even be a question in a DC suburb. The subdivision looks vaguely like something you’d see anywhere near one of the major East Coast metro areas. There’s a tool used to build a business, and it’s slightly unsightly. Can’t have that in our pristine neighborhood that was a swamp four years ago.

I could attribute it to happenstance that I’ve been listening to an awful lot of Bill Cunningham lately.

I am not terribly familiar with Cincinnati, but I think I have a lot more in common with them than the people who’ve been ensconced in the major metro areas for their entire lives.

“Where’d you go to school?”

“CNU.”

“What’s that?”

Even in Virginia, I get that a lot. Our most notable alumnus is probably the guy who came up with XKCD.

Though I was definitely experiencing some pretty significant effects of my condition when I was an ROTC cadet there, I was completely out-of-place amongst the cadets from William and Mary. I remember being on an FTX at Ft. AP Hill where they were discussing the boarding schools they’d attended.

I went to three high schools, graduating from Menchville. Bad Newz repruhshent. (Yes, I did see Michael Vick play high school football after I’d graduated.)

But I really find myself recoiling from the prescriptive attitudes that seem to permeate. We are the experts. We are THE SCIENCE. Thou shalt not do anything we don’t like. Unless, of course, it allows us to continue paying less for the behemoth of government we’ve created.

But do I see Vance as an Ivy Leaguer? Not so much. I see him as what he became to get out of Southern Ohio/Kentucky — A Marine.

That would probably draw more derision from the scolding class than anything else. Why would you go do that when you can party for years on someone else’s dime?

Apologies, naturally, for the disjointedness here. You can blame MS brain fog, but I’m also juggling back-and-forth among several foci.

So, back to the discussion on The Fifth Column Substack. And the overwhelming desire for Cincinnati Chili for dinner has subsided.

Do I agree with Senator Vance’s (and Donald Trump’s) fixes?

Um.

No.

As I wrote in a recent entry, I’m still kind of the you-broke-it-you-bought-it mindset. And there probably won’t even be a Libertarian on the Virginia ballot.

The only thing I’m looking forward to in November is being able to cast a ballot for the Swabbie pilot running against Antifa Dad.

Not going to really elaborate on what’s going on, but I’m not in my normal place this morning.

I still stand by what I last wrote; I think the party in power deserves full credit for the impending problems.

That an ActBlue donor might have disrupted that yesterday doesn’t do a lot to change my take.

You broke it, you bought it.

The shooter was twenty years old, and a registered Republican. I don’t know a ton about the politics in Western Pennsylvania, but it might be a case of you really need to be a member of the dominant party to vote in the party’s primary. I live in a city in Virginia that’s been Blue since the Northern Aggressors left in 1877. All of the local elections are basically the Democrat Primary.

But rest assured I’m going to look askance at you if I know you ever donated a penny to ActBlue.

After seeing more political bits:

• The government is too big to fail

This was a big SCOTUS ruling at the end of last week after the President’s epic debate performance. The decision overturning “Chevron Deference.”

So much of what happened under Obama and Trump was based on the idea that the regulatory agencies can make whatever rule they wan;t. the bureaucrats are the experts.

I really wonder how much of the out-of-control Federal spending is directly-related to agencies spending stolen money to enforce whatever expert rules they crafted. The experts say you can’t have a gas stove. It is, after all, bad for children’s health, AND it belches carbon into Gaia’s atmosphere.

I really don’t know how much of the agencies’ budgets are dedicated to enforcement of whatever regulations THE EXPERTS have invented.

I know, I know, I haven’t bought the credentials to question their conclusions. Moreover, how dare I think that everything should expire at some point?

Are you an anti-government extremist?

Given my very-skeptical past with religion, being called a “Christian Nationalist” doesn’t really work, either.

• You broke it, you bought it

Despite many accusations from extended friends and family, I never voted for President Trump. Not once. The only time it’s ever really crossed my mind was following the conviction in Alvin Bragg’s show trial in Manhattan. That almost made me forget his deranged speech to the LP National Convention.

There really isn’t anything there worth considering, though. Even that absolute miscarriage of the legal system might well be tainted by inclusion of testimony protected by Presidential immunity. Credit to the Al Frankel network for hitting on this.

I don’t know what evidence, exactly, was presented at trial, but if any of it was actually protected by EP, the verdict has to be vacated. There’s still disagreement about this. I do think the interpretation the New York statute probably conflicts I kind of suspect that a non-unanimous verdict is at odds with Ramos, but, again, it’ll have to snake through years of appeals before we’ll ever know.

The inflation in prices should be expected. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have absolutely exploded spending based on interest rates that don’t even cover, you know, food, fuel, housing, and equities.

Spending, since Y2K, has massively outpaced tax revenues.

It has to stop; the math just doesn’t work. Boomer largesse is coming to its messy end.

So, I support Biden and/or Harris. They’re responsible for this, and I’d rather see them in office as at all collapses. Yes, it might be easier to blame Trump, but there’s thirty years’-worth of politicians who deserve the scorn.

Might as well be Joe.

It’s not like there’s anyone with voting for from the LP.