Thank you for posting this, Chris, and the “counter example”. Good to know there are people like Jay Withey out there. I’ve been shaking my head over the nurse and wondering why someone in her family or anyone that she called wasn’t able to get out and help her, but I also can’t understand not having warm clothes in your car “just in case”. I live in San Diego and keep a flannel lined quilted picnic blanket and an umbrella in my trunk, along with emergency signal lights. I need to get a new set of snow chains, don’t have any for my current vehicle’s tires. I just donated my old set of chains to Goodwill, never opened. Tragic and absolutely senseless that people can allow themselves to be this uninformed.
Yeah, the Weather Channel had been warning about this storm for days and I’m sure that the local stations were talking about it some. Some people have been removed from reality for too long. Bad things happen sometimes when the real world creeps into your shell.
It is bizarre isn't it? I live in Georgia and there is almost always a coat in my truck, just cuz. I get that timing and intensity were a little unusual but Buffalo has a lot of blizzards I think. Why would you be totally unprepared in late december?
Wait, so your phone doesn't protect you from blizzards and subzero wind chill? You mean there's not an app to make you feel warm when you decide to ditch your coat because you figured you'd be warm enough in your car, since cars never ever break down or get stuck in a blizzard? The real world is even worse than I imagined! I cannot wait till I can get a brain implant wiring me into Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse, where it's always warm and sunny!
Counterpoint: legends speak of ancient Tibetan techniques that enable body temperature to be controlled by the mind. Those proficient in the arts could sit naked in a Himalayan blizzard, snow evaporating before it touched their burning skin. Perhaps such abilities could be unlocked by Neuralink.
"Alexa, activate warmer body temperature" only unironically.
Not anymore interested in body Hacking by Tibetan lamas than by big tech llamas.
The Game of Life has rules is the way I look at it. We want to play a good game within the rules not strap a jetpack on in the middle of a footrace. It violates the spirit of the game.
I've been down that road. I've been the 'out of the box' guy, the paradigm shifter. I think the goal of the game must be more satisfying than that.
I would love very much to be able to hit a great tennis shot again, not that I ever hit an objectively great shot I only mean by that a shot at the limit of my abilities that I had to do everything right to hit, but I know that hitting it with a servo arm and targeting computers would not bring the thrill back. I couldn't say exactly what things count as 'against the spirit of the game' but I know it when I feel it.
In the Metaverse, I will have such skills (and more) without any of the asceticism or spiritual disciplines endured by any such yogis. "No pain, no gain" will be a thing of the past, in this virtual world where Mark Zuckerberg is god, able to bestow blessings and supernatural empowerment via the latest software update. What could possibly go wrong!
I realized the answer when I was writing to John Carter just above. With Zuckerberg at the wheel it should have been obvious, his game won't be any fun.
Tibetans, the actual ones and not the Han replacements for tourists in Lhasa, are genetically adapt to live at altitude and in the cold. I sat in a 60F room listening to a teaching and even with the fans going full blast on the Lama he was sweating. The yogic practices notwithstanding, Tibetans love the cold.
I hate to be that guy (okay I don't) but, one can't help but wonder what a guy from the Congo - much less an entire Congolese community - is doing in a frozen hellhole like Buffalo in the first place. Part of the answer, obviously, is that managerial theorycels take it as a priori true that humans are fungible, that there's no notable difference between people from an equatorial jungle and people from northern Europe, so why not send the former to a place formerly occupied by the latter? Surely the Congolese will do just fine in that environment.
And of course, then there's the collapse in social trust revealed by people slamming doors in one another's face in the middle of a blizzard. I wonder if that could be related to the presence of, just for example, a Congolese community in what was formerly a pretty homogeneous city? Paging Dr Putnam, Dr Putnam to bowling aisle 7....
Then there's the looting that happened in the middle of a freaking blizzard. I'm sure that has nothing to do with anything else though.
Definitely something to be said for being part of an actual community. Here in central Florida, we received a text message from the youth pastor where my daughter does youth group when Ian (at that point a tropical storm) came through our community. He offered his help (and the help of others from the church) to anyone who was experiencing difficulty. And I know a large crew from the church drove from house to house the day after the storm, helping to clear debris, salvage items from flood-damaged homes, etc. Ditto for my daughter's track coach (from the local public school), who messaged the whole team asking if anyone needed help, then headed over to the local shelter to serve food to people who had evacuated their homes.
Trying to wrap my head around people literally refusing to help people in a blizzard. I’m mad at humanity quite a lot, but that’s a pathological level of social detachment.
And YES. So glad to see you back around, Mr. John Carter!
I wonder if they really did refuse help. I don’t wonder that there was looting and people are reluctant to open their doors to strangers when they see rampage on TV where they live.
If the stranded don’t like it they can call the SPLC, or ACLU, or perhaps BLM.
Folks, if I can get Folksy, if the security and emergency organs and military and police (and I believe I mentioned before we’re all coming from the same families) if they get a call from strangers, you might not get a response. There’s the Chauvin effect, which has Uvalde results.
As it happens it’s wise for you and your family to enlist in one or more of the above. Forget the plans you had for Kids, or yourself. This is the part where you learn how to stay alive.
Sorry. 🇺🇸 You wanted a 3d world country and you’ve got one.
In the 3d world you don’t call the cops unless its a relative.
Buffalo has big time Chauvin/Uvalde effects going on. The good news is there won’t be police brutality or war crimes to offend your conscience.
The bad news is the police and military aren’t coming, unless you’re with us.
The looting is definitely part of the picture, and part of the breakdown of trust and reason. It's not an accident that you get looting in the place where people don't know to wear a coat in a blizzard. It's all just a total breakdown of ordinary behavior.
The erosion of the western high trust culture is observable despite the glimpses of the repressive and oppressive America from the time before Obama. In our new enlighten era trust is what we are told we get from the government and not our neighbors especially if unvaxxed.
Sure seems as if the phone is a big part of the problem. I spent most of my growing-up years in PA, and we never didn't have a windshield scraper, a towel (to put under the tires), and various other snow readiness things in the trunk of each car. Never. And we never left the house between December and February without a coat at least *with* us. Yeah, we often wouldn't wear it in the car, but we'd have it with us, because not to do so would be stupid. Then again, we didn't have phones back then, which I guess some people think will magically summon the help fairies. I run in the dark, and I can't tell you how often people have asked me whether I run with a phone. A phone? What good would that do? I run with bear spray, and yes, I've had occasion to use it. It once saved my life. A phone in that situation would have done jack. (And incidentally, when I had completed the encounter and ran to a gas station, where I used their phone to call the cops, the cops turned out to be worse than useless.) And as an early-morning runner who used to live in a cold place, I know there is no such thing as "too cold"; there is only "improperly dressed." I have running clothes that I've used down to -6 Fahrenheit and in eight inches of snow. And that time when it snowed 36 inches in 24 hours? I shoveled that day, instead of running. These are not the actions of a uniquely brilliant woman; they're common sense. One side note on the home health aide who froze to death in her scrubs: This country is in a bad place and heading to a worse one when it comes to taking care of elderly people... It's likely that young woman faced termination if she didn't turn up for her shift as a $16/hour toileting assistant for someone else's grandfather. I don't know what the answer is, but I've seen this situation up close, and it's bad.
While I am NOT going to "make fun" of these people for going out practically naked into a storm in BUFFALO, mind you - I do have to ask why they didn't buy milk for their babies ahead of time.
Needless to say, this makes me wonder anew at how many people are actually doing ANYTHING to prep for, shall we say, unforeseen consequences. A blizzard in upstate NY doesn't even qualify.
I live in Los Angeles, and I have blankets and water in the trunk of my car. And stormproof matches in the glovebox. And three months of canned and freeze-dried food in a closet. This seems like normal behavior, but apparently not.
Honestly, a box of beef jerky and a few very good blankets would be all you really need. My grandmother lived her entire 85-year life in Buffalo. She had a high school education and a meager income, and never once was she unable to face a snowstorm. I will also say that the hype over this particular storm ("most deaths ever!!!") seems like the work of the climate change industrial complex; a couple of dozen people died, largely because of bad decisions they made (and possibly some resource constraints, which may have been related to earlier, larger bad decisions). If we counted up all the drunk-driving fatalities among people who could certainly afford Uber, I wonder how long it would take to top this particular death count.
Well your grandma was obviously a white supremacist who used her privilege to ride out snow storms. Some people couldn't live a grand capitalist life like her and had no other options but to brave that global warming backlash superstorm to steal TVs and liquor.
I read the same article from the WSJ earlier and was struck with how ill-prepared the people mentioned were for impending bad weather in a city whose climate is notorious for such occurrences during winter. And to launch into the teeth of such a storm apparently without thinking. Still sad for their demise. Their loved ones will miss them. As for the peoples CDC, Wow. Just wow. Not sure we can live together in the same country with these loons. I beginning to think exiling Marxists and fellow travelers would be an appropriated and beneficial public policy.
Regarding the first item, there are a lot of people who appear to think that life is a sort of video game with unlimited respawns. I am constantly astonished by the number of people walking around deeply immersed in their cell phones. I have no idea what could be so engrossing that you’d sacrifice situational awareness but perhaps that’s just my inner DS.
Running around in Buffalo in December wearing a track suit is just a variation on that form of solipsism. That outfit can get you killed in 20 minutes, no blizzard required.
Also, quoting a YouGov poll is barely above quoting the SPLC.
In day to day life, I don't use much of what I learned in Air Force Survival School but there's one sentence I live by: "Dress to survive, not to arrive."
When I'm out, I don't wear flip-flops or sandals; I wear shoes. Just in case I have to walk.
If it's cold, I have a coat. If it's sunny, I have a hat. I have a blanket in the car in the winter. I carry a small flashlight with me.
It's the nature of things to go wrong and all the phone apps in the world won't change that.
I’m in the parking lot of Walgreens- in Fort Myers, so I’m not going to make any snarky comment about weather but holy crap, people not helping people when they are freezing outside their door, man I just don’t get that at all. And as I type this another ambulance just drove by... So many ambulances these days, and these idiot drivers don’t even get out of the way for them. We really have lost a big chunk of humanity.
Thank you for your perspective- one of my kids went to School in Rochester and it’s also a very dangerous place. I do realize I might think twice before opening the door to a stranger if my husband wasn’t a huge guy or if I didn’t have other protection.
I really enjoy your writings, Chris. I’m intrigued at the connection between the stupidity of not wearing sufficiently warm clothes in a blizzard, and the mutilation of one’s body because they feel like they should be the opposite sex (however such a thing would ever feel). I wouldn’t have been able to link the two on my own, but your wit made it work. *raises a glass of rum*
Regarding the lack of trust in your fellow man being a hinderance to people letting strangers into their homes - I would point to the looting taking place in NY during the crisis. Too many of our citizenry have no moral compass and will exploit any crisis to their advantage. Using violence if necessary. I live in the Chicago area and would be extremely leery of opening my home to strangers. I’d sooner pass them food and blankets than potentially risk the lives of my family. Sorry but it’s come to that.
when i started reading, i didn't quite know where you were going with this but you went, as usual, some place great. here in charleston, SC, we knew the cold snap was coming and spent two days wrapping our plants in frost proof covering (to varying success) and covered our faucet bibs. our furnace couldn't keep up so we had our 3 downstairs fireplaces going the whole time. how did they not see this coming in buffalo?
we've lost our collective minds! finally the NYTimes suggests the importance of keeping your vitamin D levels high- no connection to covid, of course. sure, be as fat and unfit as you like; your 5, 6, 7, 8 doses of mRNA will keep you "safe."
these people "sheltered in place" for two damn years and suddenly, they had to go out for emergency milk in their skivvies during a blizzard? sorry, no pity
Of course we must separate ourselves from these bodies as an essential step towards transhumanism. Interesting that the "trans movement" just happens to work so well in this regard.
One thing that struck me from very early on in 2020 was how divorced people were from their own bodily sensations, insisting that they didn't even notice having a mask (or two) on for hours at a time, no discomfort at all. Just the other day, a friend of my husband came to visit, face swathed in a heavy N95-ish mask, and when I demanded he take it off (I've made it clear I will not tolerate that nonsense in my home) he declared that, oh, he had just forgotten he had it on.
I know maskeraiders who claim they're in the habit of wearing the mask and put it on as unmindfully (ha! if they ever take it off) as they do when grabbing their car keys when leaving the house. Poor poor sheep.
I think you're absolutely right connecting transhumanism to the trans-movement. Maybe I'm paranoid but it seems like every bit of what's wrong with this country is because we're being nudged and herded to enter the pen the nudgers have built for us.
I think about this a lot. Like the body is literally a machine that can be hacked, rewired, upgraded, rebooted, terminated... we aren’t people anymore. The transhumanists are making inroads without actually merging us with computers like we assumed was the design. First they strip you of humanity, tell you food and nature and other people are bad for you, then rebuild you into something else. You have a neurological or physical disability? No you don’t. You have an identity. Or a culture. There’s no standard of physical functioning anymore.
Yes, our bodies pay for personal decisions, or policy impositions, but decisions begin in the mind. Personal responsibility, practicing common sense, planning and being prepared are routine daily modes of living, or not.
Counterexample:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/stranded-motorist-made-way-safety-new-york-blizzard-made-sure-dozens-o-rcna63688
Thank you for posting this, Chris, and the “counter example”. Good to know there are people like Jay Withey out there. I’ve been shaking my head over the nurse and wondering why someone in her family or anyone that she called wasn’t able to get out and help her, but I also can’t understand not having warm clothes in your car “just in case”. I live in San Diego and keep a flannel lined quilted picnic blanket and an umbrella in my trunk, along with emergency signal lights. I need to get a new set of snow chains, don’t have any for my current vehicle’s tires. I just donated my old set of chains to Goodwill, never opened. Tragic and absolutely senseless that people can allow themselves to be this uninformed.
Yeah, the Weather Channel had been warning about this storm for days and I’m sure that the local stations were talking about it some. Some people have been removed from reality for too long. Bad things happen sometimes when the real world creeps into your shell.
Or they aren’t from Buffalo and/or didn’t think a snowstorm applied to them. And oh by the way imagine sitting in a snowdrift in your electric car.
It is bizarre isn't it? I live in Georgia and there is almost always a coat in my truck, just cuz. I get that timing and intensity were a little unusual but Buffalo has a lot of blizzards I think. Why would you be totally unprepared in late december?
A travel rug used to be a thing routinely kept in a car. Way back.
Not only is this 27-year-old guy a hero, he knows how to use "whom" correctly!
My hat is off to him.
God bless him!
Wait, so your phone doesn't protect you from blizzards and subzero wind chill? You mean there's not an app to make you feel warm when you decide to ditch your coat because you figured you'd be warm enough in your car, since cars never ever break down or get stuck in a blizzard? The real world is even worse than I imagined! I cannot wait till I can get a brain implant wiring me into Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse, where it's always warm and sunny!
"Alexa, activate warmer body temperature."
Counterpoint: legends speak of ancient Tibetan techniques that enable body temperature to be controlled by the mind. Those proficient in the arts could sit naked in a Himalayan blizzard, snow evaporating before it touched their burning skin. Perhaps such abilities could be unlocked by Neuralink.
"Alexa, activate warmer body temperature" only unironically.
I do not seek to test this theory.
Not anymore interested in body Hacking by Tibetan lamas than by big tech llamas.
The Game of Life has rules is the way I look at it. We want to play a good game within the rules not strap a jetpack on in the middle of a footrace. It violates the spirit of the game.
What if inventing the jet pack is the goal of the game?
God I'm in a contrarian mood today.
I've been down that road. I've been the 'out of the box' guy, the paradigm shifter. I think the goal of the game must be more satisfying than that.
I would love very much to be able to hit a great tennis shot again, not that I ever hit an objectively great shot I only mean by that a shot at the limit of my abilities that I had to do everything right to hit, but I know that hitting it with a servo arm and targeting computers would not bring the thrill back. I couldn't say exactly what things count as 'against the spirit of the game' but I know it when I feel it.
In the Metaverse, I will have such skills (and more) without any of the asceticism or spiritual disciplines endured by any such yogis. "No pain, no gain" will be a thing of the past, in this virtual world where Mark Zuckerberg is god, able to bestow blessings and supernatural empowerment via the latest software update. What could possibly go wrong!
I realized the answer when I was writing to John Carter just above. With Zuckerberg at the wheel it should have been obvious, his game won't be any fun.
Tibetans, the actual ones and not the Han replacements for tourists in Lhasa, are genetically adapt to live at altitude and in the cold. I sat in a 60F room listening to a teaching and even with the fans going full blast on the Lama he was sweating. The yogic practices notwithstanding, Tibetans love the cold.
I hate to be that guy (okay I don't) but, one can't help but wonder what a guy from the Congo - much less an entire Congolese community - is doing in a frozen hellhole like Buffalo in the first place. Part of the answer, obviously, is that managerial theorycels take it as a priori true that humans are fungible, that there's no notable difference between people from an equatorial jungle and people from northern Europe, so why not send the former to a place formerly occupied by the latter? Surely the Congolese will do just fine in that environment.
And of course, then there's the collapse in social trust revealed by people slamming doors in one another's face in the middle of a blizzard. I wonder if that could be related to the presence of, just for example, a Congolese community in what was formerly a pretty homogeneous city? Paging Dr Putnam, Dr Putnam to bowling aisle 7....
Then there's the looting that happened in the middle of a freaking blizzard. I'm sure that has nothing to do with anything else though.
Grim.
Definitely something to be said for being part of an actual community. Here in central Florida, we received a text message from the youth pastor where my daughter does youth group when Ian (at that point a tropical storm) came through our community. He offered his help (and the help of others from the church) to anyone who was experiencing difficulty. And I know a large crew from the church drove from house to house the day after the storm, helping to clear debris, salvage items from flood-damaged homes, etc. Ditto for my daughter's track coach (from the local public school), who messaged the whole team asking if anyone needed help, then headed over to the local shelter to serve food to people who had evacuated their homes.
John Carter!!!
Good to see u back!
Stay tuned.
Welcome back, John Carter. You’ve been missed!
So happy you’re back!! Last I heard you had the Dreaded Thing! I was worried.
Agreed!! 👍🏻👍🏻
2nd that!
Trying to wrap my head around people literally refusing to help people in a blizzard. I’m mad at humanity quite a lot, but that’s a pathological level of social detachment.
And YES. So glad to see you back around, Mr. John Carter!
I wonder if they really did refuse help. I don’t wonder that there was looting and people are reluctant to open their doors to strangers when they see rampage on TV where they live.
If the stranded don’t like it they can call the SPLC, or ACLU, or perhaps BLM.
Folks, if I can get Folksy, if the security and emergency organs and military and police (and I believe I mentioned before we’re all coming from the same families) if they get a call from strangers, you might not get a response. There’s the Chauvin effect, which has Uvalde results.
As it happens it’s wise for you and your family to enlist in one or more of the above. Forget the plans you had for Kids, or yourself. This is the part where you learn how to stay alive.
Sorry. 🇺🇸 You wanted a 3d world country and you’ve got one.
In the 3d world you don’t call the cops unless its a relative.
Buffalo has big time Chauvin/Uvalde effects going on. The good news is there won’t be police brutality or war crimes to offend your conscience.
The bad news is the police and military aren’t coming, unless you’re with us.
🩸 In
🩸 Out
The looting is definitely part of the picture, and part of the breakdown of trust and reason. It's not an accident that you get looting in the place where people don't know to wear a coat in a blizzard. It's all just a total breakdown of ordinary behavior.
Yes, but also normal human behavior to bar the door to strangers.
In 2008 Americans voted to “make America more like the world.”
Congratulations.
The erosion of the western high trust culture is observable despite the glimpses of the repressive and oppressive America from the time before Obama. In our new enlighten era trust is what we are told we get from the government and not our neighbors especially if unvaxxed.
Sure seems as if the phone is a big part of the problem. I spent most of my growing-up years in PA, and we never didn't have a windshield scraper, a towel (to put under the tires), and various other snow readiness things in the trunk of each car. Never. And we never left the house between December and February without a coat at least *with* us. Yeah, we often wouldn't wear it in the car, but we'd have it with us, because not to do so would be stupid. Then again, we didn't have phones back then, which I guess some people think will magically summon the help fairies. I run in the dark, and I can't tell you how often people have asked me whether I run with a phone. A phone? What good would that do? I run with bear spray, and yes, I've had occasion to use it. It once saved my life. A phone in that situation would have done jack. (And incidentally, when I had completed the encounter and ran to a gas station, where I used their phone to call the cops, the cops turned out to be worse than useless.) And as an early-morning runner who used to live in a cold place, I know there is no such thing as "too cold"; there is only "improperly dressed." I have running clothes that I've used down to -6 Fahrenheit and in eight inches of snow. And that time when it snowed 36 inches in 24 hours? I shoveled that day, instead of running. These are not the actions of a uniquely brilliant woman; they're common sense. One side note on the home health aide who froze to death in her scrubs: This country is in a bad place and heading to a worse one when it comes to taking care of elderly people... It's likely that young woman faced termination if she didn't turn up for her shift as a $16/hour toileting assistant for someone else's grandfather. I don't know what the answer is, but I've seen this situation up close, and it's bad.
Well phones can turn smart appliances on and off...so it's obvious they can provide energy to support you in any climate catastrophes!
🎯
"help fairies" is SO right on
While I am NOT going to "make fun" of these people for going out practically naked into a storm in BUFFALO, mind you - I do have to ask why they didn't buy milk for their babies ahead of time.
Needless to say, this makes me wonder anew at how many people are actually doing ANYTHING to prep for, shall we say, unforeseen consequences. A blizzard in upstate NY doesn't even qualify.
I live in Los Angeles, and I have blankets and water in the trunk of my car. And stormproof matches in the glovebox. And three months of canned and freeze-dried food in a closet. This seems like normal behavior, but apparently not.
Honestly, a box of beef jerky and a few very good blankets would be all you really need. My grandmother lived her entire 85-year life in Buffalo. She had a high school education and a meager income, and never once was she unable to face a snowstorm. I will also say that the hype over this particular storm ("most deaths ever!!!") seems like the work of the climate change industrial complex; a couple of dozen people died, largely because of bad decisions they made (and possibly some resource constraints, which may have been related to earlier, larger bad decisions). If we counted up all the drunk-driving fatalities among people who could certainly afford Uber, I wonder how long it would take to top this particular death count.
Well your grandma was obviously a white supremacist who used her privilege to ride out snow storms. Some people couldn't live a grand capitalist life like her and had no other options but to brave that global warming backlash superstorm to steal TVs and liquor.
Ikr? It's Buffalo for crying out loud!!
🙌
If you're a coffee drinker. don't forget a camp stove. Can't solve problems without caffeine! :)
hey i live in LA too, gimme ur address so i can follow u to safety when the Big One hits ;)
Meet me at Buckhorn. Bring whiskey!
done!
Sounds like a bug-out out bag for the day you've finally had it in LA!
You have everything to survive except for a box of masks.
I hope you never need help if you're marooned in LA without a mask kit in your car.
Cuz you're screwed
i have a plague mask i bought in Venice, hope that counts!
I'm in a whole different state, but I'd be down with a plague mask. I kinda wish I had one, they're cool.
why would clever ever need one?
look at that snout on his screen handle!
clearly he's ready for the culling
You better hope he doesn't come to get you, Ryan! 😉😊😋
I hope it has a long beak. Lord knows there's enough miasma in LA to kill everyone on earth!
Plus I hear the longer the beak the better...if you want to stay fashionable in 23'.
Cheers Clever!
LOLOL
A blizzard in upstate NY (I live here) is normal weather.
🎯 That's why, though it's horrible anyone died because of the blizzard, I think Darwin did his thing.
🙌
I read the same article from the WSJ earlier and was struck with how ill-prepared the people mentioned were for impending bad weather in a city whose climate is notorious for such occurrences during winter. And to launch into the teeth of such a storm apparently without thinking. Still sad for their demise. Their loved ones will miss them. As for the peoples CDC, Wow. Just wow. Not sure we can live together in the same country with these loons. I beginning to think exiling Marxists and fellow travelers would be an appropriated and beneficial public policy.
Another good one Mr. Bray!
I'm proud to say we survived winter here in Florida by turning our A/C off for two days.
It's a miracle my family made it through!
"We will rebuild."
Regarding the first item, there are a lot of people who appear to think that life is a sort of video game with unlimited respawns. I am constantly astonished by the number of people walking around deeply immersed in their cell phones. I have no idea what could be so engrossing that you’d sacrifice situational awareness but perhaps that’s just my inner DS.
Running around in Buffalo in December wearing a track suit is just a variation on that form of solipsism. That outfit can get you killed in 20 minutes, no blizzard required.
Also, quoting a YouGov poll is barely above quoting the SPLC.
In day to day life, I don't use much of what I learned in Air Force Survival School but there's one sentence I live by: "Dress to survive, not to arrive."
When I'm out, I don't wear flip-flops or sandals; I wear shoes. Just in case I have to walk.
If it's cold, I have a coat. If it's sunny, I have a hat. I have a blanket in the car in the winter. I carry a small flashlight with me.
It's the nature of things to go wrong and all the phone apps in the world won't change that.
I’m in the parking lot of Walgreens- in Fort Myers, so I’m not going to make any snarky comment about weather but holy crap, people not helping people when they are freezing outside their door, man I just don’t get that at all. And as I type this another ambulance just drove by... So many ambulances these days, and these idiot drivers don’t even get out of the way for them. We really have lost a big chunk of humanity.
There’s looting in Buffalo at the time people refuse to open doors.
Perhaps you’ll get your chance to be a better humanity, you might even live to tell about it.
Thank you for your perspective- one of my kids went to School in Rochester and it’s also a very dangerous place. I do realize I might think twice before opening the door to a stranger if my husband wasn’t a huge guy or if I didn’t have other protection.
You can always answer your door with your gun in your hand.
That's probably a felony in NY...
Keep it behind your back.
BTW; I'm just north of you in Sarasota.
Let me know if you ever want to go tarpon fishing. Just bought myself a rig.
Veve - our winter was two days last week.
Perhaps we should visit these places to provide guidance on how to survive global climate COOLING!...:)
I really enjoy your writings, Chris. I’m intrigued at the connection between the stupidity of not wearing sufficiently warm clothes in a blizzard, and the mutilation of one’s body because they feel like they should be the opposite sex (however such a thing would ever feel). I wouldn’t have been able to link the two on my own, but your wit made it work. *raises a glass of rum*
Regarding the lack of trust in your fellow man being a hinderance to people letting strangers into their homes - I would point to the looting taking place in NY during the crisis. Too many of our citizenry have no moral compass and will exploit any crisis to their advantage. Using violence if necessary. I live in the Chicago area and would be extremely leery of opening my home to strangers. I’d sooner pass them food and blankets than potentially risk the lives of my family. Sorry but it’s come to that.
But if you have a mask on, it's OK to participate in lootathons.
when i started reading, i didn't quite know where you were going with this but you went, as usual, some place great. here in charleston, SC, we knew the cold snap was coming and spent two days wrapping our plants in frost proof covering (to varying success) and covered our faucet bibs. our furnace couldn't keep up so we had our 3 downstairs fireplaces going the whole time. how did they not see this coming in buffalo?
we've lost our collective minds! finally the NYTimes suggests the importance of keeping your vitamin D levels high- no connection to covid, of course. sure, be as fat and unfit as you like; your 5, 6, 7, 8 doses of mRNA will keep you "safe."
these people "sheltered in place" for two damn years and suddenly, they had to go out for emergency milk in their skivvies during a blizzard? sorry, no pity
Of course we must separate ourselves from these bodies as an essential step towards transhumanism. Interesting that the "trans movement" just happens to work so well in this regard.
One thing that struck me from very early on in 2020 was how divorced people were from their own bodily sensations, insisting that they didn't even notice having a mask (or two) on for hours at a time, no discomfort at all. Just the other day, a friend of my husband came to visit, face swathed in a heavy N95-ish mask, and when I demanded he take it off (I've made it clear I will not tolerate that nonsense in my home) he declared that, oh, he had just forgotten he had it on.
I know maskeraiders who claim they're in the habit of wearing the mask and put it on as unmindfully (ha! if they ever take it off) as they do when grabbing their car keys when leaving the house. Poor poor sheep.
I think you're absolutely right connecting transhumanism to the trans-movement. Maybe I'm paranoid but it seems like every bit of what's wrong with this country is because we're being nudged and herded to enter the pen the nudgers have built for us.
I think about this a lot. Like the body is literally a machine that can be hacked, rewired, upgraded, rebooted, terminated... we aren’t people anymore. The transhumanists are making inroads without actually merging us with computers like we assumed was the design. First they strip you of humanity, tell you food and nature and other people are bad for you, then rebuild you into something else. You have a neurological or physical disability? No you don’t. You have an identity. Or a culture. There’s no standard of physical functioning anymore.
It’s absolutely wild.
Yes, our bodies pay for personal decisions, or policy impositions, but decisions begin in the mind. Personal responsibility, practicing common sense, planning and being prepared are routine daily modes of living, or not.