Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blog Mirror. Show all posts
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: All the men were well shod in good looking riding ...
Lex Anteinternet: All the men were well shod in good looking riding ...: A ll the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook. I learned that the boots were mostly made by a boot maker named H...
All the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook.
All the men were well shod in good looking riding boots, except the cook. I learned that the boots were mostly made by a boot maker named Hyer, of Olathe, Kansas, and were generally black in color. All had seventeen inch tops, with a two or two and a half inch heel, slanted well forward, so that the weight of the foot came forward of the heel, and consequently the stirrup was held under the arch of the rider’s instep, as it should be.”
John K. Rollinson, in his 1941 memoir, Pony Trails In Wyoming: Hoofprints of a Cowboy and U.S. Ranger.
Sunday, December 7, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.
Lex Anteinternet: Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchr...: The Angelus by Jean-François Millet I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time. Ways which, really, are too stro...
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Turning our backs on American Careerism. A synchronicitous trip.
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The Angelus by Jean-François Millet
I experience synchronicity in some interesting ways from time to time. Ways which, really, are too strong to put up to coincidence.
Sometime last week I saw this post on Twitter by O. W. Root, to which I also post my reply:
O.W. Root@owroot
Nov 29
Sometimes I have wondered if I should write about being a parent so much, but I've realized that it's one of the most universal things in the whole world, and one of the most life changing things for all who do it, so it's good to do.
Lex Anteinternet@Lex_Anteinterne
Nov 30
It's also, quite frankly, one of the very few things we do with meaning. People try take meaning from their jobs, for example, which are almost universally meaningless.
My reply, was frankly, extremely harsh. "[A]lmost universally meaningless"?
Well, in fact, yes. I was going to follow that up with a post about existential occupations, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it when I heard some podcasts and saw some web posts that synched into it. I've been cat sitting recently and because of that, I've been able to catch up on some old ones (note the synchronicity of that. . . the tweet above was from November 29/30, but the podcast episode was from June). The podcast episode in question is:
People to Catholicism Today? ⎮Flannel Panel - Christopher Check
That episode discusses a very broad range of very interesting topics, and it referenced this one amongst them: Catholicism Is So Hot Right Now. Why?
I haven't listened to the second podcast, but the first is phenomenal.
These are all linked?
Yes they are.
I've noted here on this blog and on Lex Anteinternet that the young seem to be turning towards social conservatism and traditionalism. It's easy to miss,. and its even easy to be drawn to it and participate in it without really realizing it. This is different, we'd further note, than being drawn to the various branches of political conservatism. There's definitely a connection, of course, but there are also those who are going into social conservatism/traditionalism while turning their backs on politics entirely, although there are real dangers to turning your back on politics.
What seems to be going on is that people are attracted to the truth, the existential truths, and the existential itself.
Put another way, people have detected that the modern world is pretty fake, and it doesn't comport at all with how we are in a state of nature. It goes back to what we noted here:
I think what people want is a family and a life focused on that family, not on work.
As noted above, most work is meaningless. That doesn't mean it's not valuable.
Very few jobs are existential for our species.* We're meant to be hunters and gatherers, with a few other special roles that have to do with the organization of ourselves, and our relation to the existential. Social historians like to claim that society began to "advance" when job specialization, a byproduct of agriculture, began, and there's some truth to that, but only a bit, if not properly understood. That bit can't be discounted, however, as when agriculture went from subsistence agriculture to production agriculture, i.e., agriculture that generated a surplus, wealth was generated and wealth brought in a great perversion of social order. Surplus production brought in wealth, which brought in a way for the separation of wealth from the people working the land, and ultimately ownership of the land itself. Tenant farming, sharecropping and the like, and agricultural poverty, were all a byproduct of that. When Marx observed that this developed inevitably into Feudalism, he was right.
Agriculture, originally, was a family or family band small scale deal. While it's pretty obvious to anyone who has ever put in a garden how it worked, social theorist and archeologist got it all wrong until they made some rather obvious discoveries quite recently, one of the most obvious being that hunter/gatherer societies are also often small scale agricultural ones. How this was missed is baffling as Europeans had first hand experience with this in regard to New World cultures, most of which were hunting societies but many of which put in various types of farms. Even North American native bands that did not farm, it might be noted, were well aware of farming themselves. Even into the present era hunter/gatherer societies, to the extent they still exist, often still practice small scale farming.
It turns out that grain farming goes way, way back. But why wouldn't it have?
Additional specialization began with the Industrial Revolution, and that's when things really began to become massively warped for our species, first for men, and then with then, with feminization, for women. We've long noted that, but given the chain of coincidences noted above, we've stumbled on to somebody else noting it. As professor Randall Smith has written:
It’s important to understand that the first fatal blow to the family came during the Industrial Revolution when fathers left the house for the bulk of the day. The deleterious results that followed from ripping fathers away from their children were seen almost immediately in the slums and ghettos of the large industrial towns, as young men, without older men to guide them into adulthood, roamed the streets, un-mentored and un-apprenticed. There, as soon as their hormonal instincts were no longer directed into work or caring for families, they turned to theft and sexual license.
Randall Smith, A Traditional Catholic Wife?
So, in the long chain of events, there was nothing wrong at all about farming. There was something wrong about the expropriation of the wealth it created, and that fueled the fire of a lot of development since them. That first set of inequities ultimately lead to peasant revolts in Europe on occasion, and to a degree can be regarded as what first inspired average Europeans to immigrate to various colonies. . . a place where they could own their own land. . and then to various revolutions against what amounted to propertied overlords. The American Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and the Russian Revolution all had that element to them. Industrialization, which pulled men out of the household, sparked additional revolutions to counter the impacts of the Industrial Revolution, with some being violent, but others not being. The spread of democracy was very much a reaction to the the evils of the Industrial Revolution. Unfortunately, so was the spread of Communism.
Money has never given up, so the same class of people who demanded land rent in the bronze and iron age, and then turned people into serfs in the Middle Ages, are still busy to do that now. As with then, they often want the peasants to accept this as if its really nifty. People like Donald Trump, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are busy piling up money and concubines while assuring the peasantry that their diminished role in the world is a good thing as its all part of Capitalism.
It is part of Capitalism, which is a major reason that Capitalism sucks, and that there's been efforts to restrain its worse impulses since its onset, with efforts to limit corporations at first, and then such things as the Sherman Anti Trust Act later on.
All that's been forgotten and we now have a demented gilded prince and his privileged acolytes living off the fat of the land while people have less and less control of their own lives. Most people don't want to glory in the success of Star Link of even care about it, but people feed into such things anyway, as the culture has glorified such things since at least the end of the Second World War, the war seemingly having helped to fuel all sorts of disordered desires in society that would bloom into full flower in the 1960s. A society that grew wealthy from the war and the destruction that it created, saw itself as divorced from nature and reality, and every vice that could be imagined was condoned.
And we're now living in the wreckage.
I think this is what is fueling a lot of this. Starting particularly in the 1950s, and then ramping up in the 60s and 70s, careerism really took hold in American society, along with a host of other vices. Indeed, again, as Professor Smith has noted:
The “traditional Catholic family” where the husband worked all day and the wife stayed home alone with the children only really existed – and not all that successfully – in certain upper-middle class WASPy neighborhoods during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Working in an office all day is not necessarily evil (depending upon how it affects your family). It’s just modern. There’s nothing especially “traditional” about it.
Most careers are just dressed up jobs, not much else. Nonetheless people have been taught they need to leave their homes, their families, they're very natures, in order to have a career, sometimes abandoning people in their wake. They're encouraged to do so, to a large extent.
Indeed, I dare say, for most real careerist, nearly always abandoning people.
And average people are sick of it.
That's why young men are turning towards traditionalism of all sorts. They're looking for something of value, and they're not going to find it behind a computer in a cubicle. And that's why young women are reviving roles that feminist attempted to take away form them.
They mean something.
Footnotes:
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: A Blog Mirror Post: Do it yourself, was "How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap Humility, thy name is Aldi."
Lex Anteinternet: A Blog Mirror Post: Do it yourself, was "How to G...: Rockwell's World War Two era illustration of one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, this one being Freedom from want. This came from a...
A Blog Mirror Post: Do it yourself, was "How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap Humility, thy name is Aldi."
Rockwell's World War Two era illustration of one of Roosevelt's Four Freedoms, this one being Freedom from want. This came from a March 6, 1943 Saturday Evening Post illustration although it was completed in November, 1943. Rockwell was inspired by a Thanksgiving dinner in which he photographed his cook serving the same in November, 1942. The painting has come to symbolize Thanksgiving dinners. Interesting, compared to the vast fare that is typically associated with the feast, this table is actually fairly spartan.
This is a really good article on grocery shopping.
How to Grocery Shop on the Cheap
Humility, thy name is Aldi.
I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction, but this blog post is, I'll note, really good.
And I love the kitties featured in the article.
Anyhow, it ought to be obvious to anyone living in the US right now that groceries, that odd word discovered by Donald Trump in his dotage, are pretty expensive. Less obvious, it seems, is why that is true. Again, not to overly politicize it, but the common Trump Interregnum explanations are largely complete crap. It's not the case, as seemingly suggested, that Joe Biden runs around raising prices in a wicked plan to destroy the American lifestyle for "hard working Americans". Rather, a bunch of things have contributed to that.
To start with, the COVID 19 pandemic really screwed up the economy, and we're still living with the impact of that. One of the impacts of that is that certain supply chains somewhat broke and have never been repaired. Added to that, global climatic conditions are impacting crops in what is now a global food distribution system. Weather has additionally impacted meat prices by impacting the Beef Cattle Heard in the last decade, which has been followed up upon by the visitation of cattle diseases, and poultry diseases, that have reduced head counts. That definitely impacts prices. The Administration, however, believing that the country exists in the economic 1820s, rather than the 2020s, fiddles with inflation causing tariffs on a weekly basis, which raises prices on everything. And finally the ineptly waged Russian war against Ukraine has impacted grain supplies world wide. It reminds me of, well. . . :
Then I watched while the Lamb broke open the first of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures cry out in a voice like thunder, “Come forward.”
I looked, and there was a white horse, and its rider had a bow. He was given a crown, and he rode forth victorious to further his victories.
When he broke open the second seal, I heard the second living creature cry out, “Come forward.”
Another horse came out, a red one. Its rider was given power to take peace away from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another. And he was given a huge sword.
When he broke open the third seal, I heard the third living creature cry out, “Come forward.” I looked, and there was a black horse, and its rider held a scale in his hand.
I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay, and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”
When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”
I looked, and there was a pale green horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.
Not that dire, of course. . .
Anyhow, this reminded me of an agrarian topic. How can you, dear agrarian reader, reduce your grocery bill?
Well, do it yourself, of course.
What do I mean?
Well, grow it and kill it yourself.
Assuming, of course, you can. But most people can.
Now, let me be the first to admit that this is more than a little hypocritical on my part now days. The pressures of work and life caused me to give up my very extensive garden some years ago. I'd frankly cash in my chips and retire life now, but my spouse insists that this cannot be so. So, in my rapidly increasing dotage, I'm working as hard as ever at my town job.
An Agrarian's Lament indeed.
Anyhow, however, let's consider this. Many people have the means of putting in a garden, and many have the means to take at least part of their meat consumption in by fishing and hunting. Beyond that, if you have freezer space, or even if a friend has freezer space, you can buy much, maybe all depending upon where you live, of your meat locally sourced.
Given as this is Thanksgiving, let's take a look at how that would look.
I'll start off with first noting that there's actually more variety in Thanksgiving meals than supposed, as well as less. This time of year in fact, you'll tend to find all sort of weird articles by various people eschewing the traditional turkey dinner in favor of something else, mostly just in an effort to be self serving different. And then you have the weirdness of something like this:
I suppose that's an effort by our Vice President to be amusing, something he genuinely is not, but frankly, I do like turkey. I like it a lot. A lot of people do. Vance, of course, lives in a house where his wife is a vegetarian for religious reasons, so turkey may not appear there.
Anyhow, what is the traditional Thanksgiving meal? Most of us have to look back on our own families in order to really determine that.
When I was growing up, we always had Thanksgiving Dinner at one of my uncle's houses. My father and his only brother were very close, and we went there for Thanksgiving, and they came to our house for Christmas evening dinner. Both dinners were evening dinners. We probably went over to my aunt and uncle's house about 4:00 p.m. and came home after 9:00 p.m., but I'll also note that this is now a long time ago and my memory may be off. This tradition lasted until the year after my father passed away, but even at that, that's now over 30 years ago.
Dinner at my aunt and uncles generally went like this.
Before dinner it was likely that football was turned on the television, which is a big unfortunate American tradition. My father and uncle would likely have a couple of beers. My father hardly drank at all, so this was relatively unusual. My mother would generally not drink beer and interestingly it was largely a male drink.1 I don't think I saw women really drink beer until I was in college.2 Anyhow, at dinner there's be some sort of white wine, although I can barely recall it. Nobody in the family was a wine connoisseur, so there's no way I could remotely give an indication on what it was, except that one of my cousins, when he was old enough to drink, really liked Asti Spumante, which I bet I haven't had in over a decade.3 Dinner itself would be a large roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, bread, salad, and a marshmallow yam dish. Dinner rolls would also be present.
Desert was pumpkin pie.
Pretty common fare, and frankly, very good fare, for Thanksgiving.
After my father died, Thanksgiving dinner was briefly up to me for a time, as my mother was too ill by that stage in her life to deal with cooking much.4 In light of tradition, I'd probably cook a smaller turkey, although if I had wild waterfowl I'd shot, I'd go with that. Otherwise, mashed potatoes and yams. To drink, for me, probably beer.
After I started dating my wife, Thanksgiving was at her folk's place. My mother in law is an excellent cook, and my wife is as well. Unlike J. D. Vance, I'm not afflicted with vegetarian relatives, and indeed, as my wife is from a ranch family, all dinners very much show that.
On the ranch, Thanksgiving is a noon meal. So is Christmas dinner. Noon meals are generally odd for me, as I don't usually eat lunch, but that reflects a pretty strong agricultural tradition. Big meals are often at noon. Meals associated with big events, such as brandings, always are. So it makes sense.
Thanksgiving there shares a common feature with the ones that were at my aunts and uncles, in that usually somebody offers everyone a drink before dinner, while people are chatting. Unlike my aunts and uncles, however, somebody will usually offer people some sort of whiskey.
Their Thanksgiving Dinner has a very broad fare. There's a large roasted turkey, but there's also a brisket. Both are excellent and everyone has some of both. There's salad, mashed potatoes and two different types of stuffing, as some of us likey oyster stuffing, and others do not. Cranberry sauce is handmade by one of my brothers in law, who is an excellent cook. There are other dishes as well, and there's a variety of desserts. Homemade dinner rolls are served as well.
So, that leads to this. If I were cooking a Thanksgiving Day dinner, what would it be.
It's be simple compared to what I've noted for the simple reason that I'm simplistic in my approach to dinner in general. I had a long period as a bachelor before being married, and I know how to cook, but my cooking reflects that bachelorhood in some ways.
The main entre would be a turkey, or perhaps a goose, which I'll explain below.
Two types of stuffing, for the reasons explained above.
Salad.
Mashed potatoes (but with no gravy, for reasons I'll explain below).
Bread.
Yams.
Pumpkin pie and mincemeat pie.
To drink, I'd probably have beer and some sort of wine. I'd have whiskey available before dinner.
Okay, if that doesn't meet the Walmart definition of a Thanksgiving dinner, that's because nobody should buy things at Walmart. . . ever.
So, in applying my localist/killetarian suggestions, how much of this could I acquire while avoiding a store entirely?
Almost all of it.
Starting with the meat, I always hunt turkeys each year, but I don't always get one. If I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner, however, I'd put a more dedicated effort into it. Turkey hunting for me is sort of opportunistic, and given that I do it in the spring its mostly a chance to try to get a turkey while getting out, usually with the dog (although poor dog died in an automobile accident earlier this year, he only every got to go out for turkeys). If I put in more hours, which I should, I'd get one.
If I can't get one, however, by this time of year I definitely can get a goose.
Which, by way of a diversion, brings up J. D. Vance's stupid ass comment above. If your turkey is dry, that's because you cooked it wrong. And if wild turkey is dry, that's because the cook tried to cook it like some massive obese Butterball.
Tastewise and texture wise, there's no difference whatsoever between a wild and domestic turkey. People who say there are say that because one of them, if not both of them, were cooked incorrectly.
Which is true of goose as well. Goose tastes very much like roast beef, unless the cook was afraid of the goose and cooked it like it was something else and ruined it.
Anyhow. . . I can provide the bird myself
So too with the vegetables, mostly. When I grew a garden, I produced lettuce onions and potatoes. One year I grew brussels sprouts. Of these, only the lettuce either doesn't keep on its own or can't be frozen in some fashion. I could grow yams, I'm quite confident, even though I never did.
Now, on bread, I can bake my own bread and have, but I can't source the ingredients. So those I'd have to buy. I could likely figure out how to make my own stuffing, but I probably wouldn't bother to do so, unless I wanted to have oyster stuffing. I would have to buy the oysters.
I'll note here that I wouldn't make gravy, as I really don't like it. My mother in laws gravy is the only gravy that I like. Otherwise, there's no excuse for gravy. I put butter on mashed potatoes, and I always have.
But I buy the butter.
I'd have to buy marshmallows for the yams too.
That leaves something to drink. I know that some people will distill their own whiskey as a hobby, but I'm not about to try that, and I"ve never brewed beer. If I ever lived solely on what I produce myself, mostly, I'd take it up. I clearly don't have the time to do that now.
Dessert?
I'm fairly good at making pies. I like pumpkin pie, but I've never grown pumpkins. I could give that a shot, but I'd still have to buy most of the constituents. My grandmother (father's mother) used to make mincemeat pies, but I've never attempted that. The real ingredients for mincemeat pies freak people out, I"d note, those being, according to one granola website I hit and may link in, the following:
Old-Fashioned Mincemeat Pie Recipe:
1 lb beef (I used ground beef from grass-fed cows) *
¾ teaspoon salt (I like using Real Salt)
1 ½ lbs apple, peeled and chopped (about 3 cups)
⅓ cup suet or tallow or coconut oil, or butter or coconut oil *
1 Tbs ground mace (or ½ Tbs nutmeg if you don't have mace)
8 Tbs (½ cup) dried currants (or substitute raisins if you choose)
Which brings up a lot of stuff I'd have to buy. Everything but for the beef, as I too have beef from grass fed cows that I knew personally.
All in all, pretty doable.
Cheaper?
Well, if you are an efficient agrarian/killetarian, yes.
Footnotes:
1. My father normally only bought beer during the middle of the summer, and sometimes to take on a fishing expedition if somebody was going along. Otherwise, it just didn't appear in your house. The only whiskey ever bought was Canadian Whiskey, and a bottle of it would last forever. We often didn't have it at all. . . indeed, normally we did not. He only bought it when I was very young, if we were having guests.
This is interesting as in this era offering a drink to guests was very common. A different aunt and uncle liked Scotch and would offer it to guests, but my father hated Scotch.
When I was young, my parents would occasionally buy wine, but it was almost always Mogan David. Clearly were were not wine connoisseurs.
2. This probably seems odd, but it's true. I saw women drink beer so rarely that it was a shock when I was a kid to see a woman drinking a beer. They just normally didn't.
Indeed, by the time I was a teenager a girl drinking a beer sort of made her a "bad girl", but not in the Good Girls Don't sense. Rather, that was in the rowdy party girl sense. Or so we thought. We knew this, but we really didn't know any beer drinking girls as teenagers.
In college things were different, but the reputation that college students have for partying didn't really match the reality, at least for geology students. As an undergraduate in community college we might very occasionally go out for a beer, and that was almost always the collection of us who had graduated from high school together when everyone was home. For part of the last year of community college I had a girlfriend and I can remember being in a bar with her exactly once, when she was trying to introduce another National Guardsman to her sister. Otherwise, that relationship was unconsciously completely dry.
At UW as an undergrad most of my friends were geology students, like me, and the discipline was so hard there really wasn't any partying. Sometimes a group of guys would go out for a beer, but that was about it. Early on I recall there being a party of geology students who had all gone to community college together in the freezing apartment that one of us had. There were some beers, but generally, we just froze. A girlfriend who was also in the department and I went to a Christmas party the year I graduated, which was a big department affair and there was beer there, but that's about it.
In law school the story wasn't much different, frankly. Indeed, it wasn't until I got out of law school, and started practicing law, that I encountered people who really drank heavily.
3. To be honest, as a person always should be, when my mother's illness began to advance dramatically, she began to drink heavily. It was a problem that my father and I had to deal with. The oddity of it was that she had never done that when she was well.
As an added element of that, when she was well she took a wine making class. The wine she made was absolutely awful and she was the only one who would drink it, but because it was so bad, she'd fortify it with vodka to make it tolerable. That acclimated her to drinking. She gave it up completely as she began to recover just before my father died.
4. While she recovered a great deal, she never fully recovered. She was also an absolutely awful cook. As my father's health declined in the last year of his life, I took over cooking from him.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Twenty-third Law of Behavior
Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior: Having recently delved into laws of history; we now, without proper qualification or training, delve into sociology. Well, maybe we actual...
Yeoman's Twenty-third Law of Behavior: "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly" Oliver Bullough.
Certain societies worship wealth, but this rule is invariably true, although there are plenty of individual exceptions.
Wealth corrupts, it simply does. The New Testament councils that "Love of money is the root of all evil", and while some people acquire vast wealth simply because they love work, quite often it's mixed in with the love of money. Beyond that, money at some point both blinds people to the consequences of their own actions, and to the realities of that.
The corruption of money keeps people working in positions they should yield to younger people who are kept from moving up, and therefore kept at a fiscal and societal disadvantage. It leads to the destruction of land, people, and the environment. And big money nearly invariably brings in extra corruption on a personal level.
Big money attracts sycophants who assure the wealthy person that his actions are benign, or that he's smart, and deserves to be the exception to the rule. It reduces people to objects, and allows people to believe that their personal destruction of others is merited.
“No one can serve two masters.m He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." Matthew, Chapter 6.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations
Lex Anteinternet: Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations: Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations 9780300155525 This includes the excellent essay The Idiocy of Urban Life, which I...
Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations
Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Essays and Provocations 9780300155525
This includes the excellent essay The Idiocy of Urban Life, which I've occasionally cited here under its original The New Republic name, The Cows Revenge.
Friday, November 7, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Planning for little emergencies
Lex Anteinternet: Planning for little emergencies: Planning for little emergencies : Because we never know when we, or someone else, will be in need, it's best to live life ready to share...
Friday, October 31, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus* Watch Part 1.
Lex Anteinternet: Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. I...: Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. Martin Luther King Jr. Ignoramus, Latin for we ...
Yes, this is off topic, but frankly we've reached the point of such blistering ignorance in Cheyenne that this really can't be ignored by the residents of the state.
Ascendant Ignorance in the Age of Donald Trump. Ignoramus* Watch Part 1.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Ignoramus, Latin for we do not know.*
Etymology of the word Ignoramus.
October 31, 2025.
Claims ‘chemtrails’ poison citizens spur Wyoming lawmakers to advance ‘geoengineering’ ban: Claims ‘chemtrails’ poison citizens spur Wyoming lawmakers to advance ‘geoengineering’ ban Nano particles released from Department of War jets are sterilizing soils, blocking sun, lawmakers hear from Wyomingites and YouTuber before backing bill.
What the f***?
"Chemtrails" for those who are unfamiliar with this, is a conspiracy theory. As Wikipedia summarizes it:
The chemtrail conspiracy theory /ˈkɛmtreɪl/ is the erroneous belief that long-lasting condensation trails left in the sky by high-flying aircraft are actually "chemtrails" consisting of chemical or biological agents, sprayed for nefarious purposes undisclosed to the general public. Believers in this conspiracy theory say that while normal contrails dissipate relatively quickly, contrails that linger must contain additional substances. Those who subscribe to the theory speculate that the purpose of the chemical release may be solar radiation management, weather modification, psychological manipulation, human population control, biological or chemical warfare, or testing of biological or chemical agents on a population, and that the trails are causing respiratory illnesses and other health problems.
Uff.
The fact that this passed committee suggest that every member of this committee needs to return to kindergarten save for Barry Crago and Karlee Provenza
So who is on it?
Bob Ide
Barry Crago (voted no).
Taft Love
Troy McKeown
Laura Pearson
John Winter
Dalton Banks
Bob Davis
John Eklund
Steve Johnson
Pepper Ottman
Karlee Provenza (voted no).
Mike Schmid
Tomi Strock
Apparently global warming coming up with some blaming that on chemtrails. How ignorant can a person be? It's amazing that they actually will acknowledge that its occuring, and man made, but has to be caused by some bat shit crazy conspiracy theory.
Don't vote for anyone on this list after this, save for Provenza and Crago. You can judge them on their merits otherwise, but they didn't fall for this whacky shit or tolerate it.
Simply amazing, and depressing.
Footnotes:
*I'm using the word Ignoramus in its original English connotation, as derived from the Latin. I.e., an ignorant person.
Not a stupid person.
To willfully believe something stupid is ignorant, particularly when done by intelligent people. Some of these people are undoubtedly highly intelligent, and I don't know that any of them are stupid, but they're willfully voting for something that is just a weird silly conspiracy theory.
And that makes it all the more shameful.
Related threads:
The ascent of the ignorant.
You really don't have to vote for people who voted yes on something so stupid.
Monday, October 27, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem. Outrage over our Gilded Overlords.
I've posted a fair amount on this story.
Lex Anteinternet: An East Wing Post Mortem.: Comparative air photos posted by CBS News. Put up under commentary and fair use exception. I've never seen the East Wing of the White ...
One of my old friends, whose become a hardcore right wing populist, while also interestingly being a hardcore corner crossing advocate (the two are in fact mutually exclusive), posted this on his Facebook feed:
The President, and "your President" decides to renovate the Whitehouse, with donations and on his own dime mind you, and he is “Destroying Democracy?” Some of your hypocrisy cancels your outrage. I’m so sick of this crap. It’s just another reminder that the other side has nothing to offer Americans other that staged outrage over bull. TDS much??
Some on the far right have completely swallowed that this is "staged outrage". The irony is that the exact same people were outraged about everything that Joe Biden did, and Barack Obama did. Some of that outrage was because they were told to be.
And here's the next thing. The ballroom is probably not going to be completed before Trump leaves office. Frankly, as the matter is now in litigation, there's going to be some delay. If a judge is really upset, which is unlikely due to the way courts work, there's precedent for returning the structure ot the status quo ante before anything goes forward, which would in and of itself likely take years.
That's unlikely of course, but there's going to be a district court ruling and then an appeals court ruling. All that will take six months on a project that would normally take several years to complete.
But that's not the point.
The next President, unless its J. D. Vance, is going to take this down, it it gets built If its a Republican like Thomas Massie it'll gleefully be torn down. If its a Democrat, it's also coming down.
Let's make it clear.
The ballroom, if its built, or however much of it that's built, will be taken down and erased from the public memory.
At that point in time, will those who support Trump in whatever he does state: The President, and "your President" decides to renovate the Whitehouse, with donations and on his own dime mind you, and he is “Destroying Democracy?”
Not hardly, even if no public funds are then used. They'll be outraged about how its "destroying" the legacy of a "great" president.
So why does this bother me?
Well in part because I'm an agrarian and this entire project is an insult to agrarians.
Ballrooms are the high school basketball courts of the super wealthy A place where the extremely wealthy can meet and mingle and do those things Trump noted, have drinks in the foyer, etc. The kind of place where you can talk shop and meet with the rich and powerful, and heads of state. Maybe have the Saudi king over, or rub elbows with guests like Prince William. . . or maybe Harry and Jeff Epstein. It's a public building, no matter whose tribute is used to pay for it, but you can't book your wedding reception of bar mitzvah reception there.
Because you are a peasant.
The entire concept of a massive ornate public building like this is that you peons will love it because you love to bask in the glory of your benighted leaders. And those benighted leaders, having been born into wealth, really believe that. You love them as they love themselves, and you are happy to serve the glorious benighted.
That's the antithesis of the American concept.
Here's what the White House grounds should return to, and I'm not joking.
And in fact, for the most part, it should be.
Sometime last week I was somehow the recipient of a real estate brochure entitled "Land".
I didn't get around to looking at it until today, even though I knew what it was going to be. Agricultural land turned into the playgrounds of the rich.
That should end. People who hold agricultural ground, or even large blocks of ground, should have to make their livings from it and nothing else. The wealthy holding such ground hurts those who would make a living in this simple manner.
We live in a new Gilded Age. That age gave rise to the Progressive movement and swept into office people like Theodore Roosevelt. Something like that needs to happen again.
Yes, I'm outraged over the East Wing coming down for a ballroom, and the very concept of a ballroom outrages me. I'm outraged that common people have fallen for outright lies and believe everything Donald Trump tells them. I'm outraged that the extremely wealthy are running the show on everything while, at the same time, our Gilded masters tell us to hate the poorest of the poor. I'm outraged that Congress will not do its job. I'm outraged that our military is being ordered to murder people in the Caribbean. And I"m outraged that our local politicians tell us to support this crap when they do so, in at least 2/3s of the instances, as it keeps them in their elected jobs.
Monday, October 20, 2025
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America. Memo to Future Historians: This Is Fascism, and Millions of Us See It From Chicago to Portland, James Comey to Letitia James, and so much else—this is no longer America.
Friday, October 17, 2025
Blog Mirror: Making the ‘original energy bar’: The chokecherry patty
Something not really addressed here is that chokecherry pits are poisonous.
Making the ‘original energy bar’: The chokecherry patty
Foothill Agrarian: Getting to Know a Place
Foothill Agrarian: Getting to Know a Place: For some time, I’ve thought a great deal about how long someone needs to really know a place. To know its geography, for sure, but also to k...
Friday, October 3, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: A bankrupt policy. Trump shafts American consumers and does so again for 大豆
Lex Anteinternet: A bankrupt policy. Trump shafts American consumer...:
A bankrupt policy. Trump shafts American consumers and does so again for 大豆
I had a draft post at the time of the last election I never published why farmers and ranchers routinely vote to have themselves shafted by voting for the GOP. Democrats typically have farm policies that actually benefit farmers, including preserving the lands. Republicans tend to be in favor of land rape to benefit the wealthy.
I really have no good explanation for it.
Well, no surprise, soybean farmers are getting pounded by Trump's tariff polich. D'uh.
Trump's trade battle with China puts US soybean farmers in peril
I love this quote from one soybean farmer:
“Overwhelmingly, farmers have been in President Trump’s corner,” said Ragland, the president of the soybean association. “And I think the message that our soybean farmers as a whole want to deliver is: ‘President Trump, we’ve had your back. We need you to have ours now.’”
Well, I'm a type of farmer, a livestock farmer, and frankly Ragland, screw you and the John Deere you rode in on. You are getting just what you deserve.
Trump bets the soybean farm on tariffs | Wall Street Journal
But, have no fear, socialized farming through the GOP will come to the rescue. Trump is going to take $10B from the national sales tax, i.e., tariffs, to bail out farmers.
So, the American consumer is getting taxed, as in the end it's us who pays the tariffs, to bail out soybean farmers.
Good old free enterprise at work there.
Farmers are getting stiffed by Trump's taxes, and will continue to get stiffed by them, and he hopes to balance the table by handing over money the American public handed over via tariffs.
A better plan would just be to let soybean farmers go bankrupt.
Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Monday, September 22, 2025
Courthouses of the West: A Broken Profession
Courthouses of the West: A Broken Profession:
A Broken Profession
This is a follow-up to something I posted here just the other day, taking the blog away from its comfortable place of depicting courthouses, into the nature of the contemporary practice.
Courthouses of the West: Things in the air. Some observations with varying ...: This blog is supposed to be dedicated to architecture, basically, although matters pertaining to the law do show up here. Very rarely is th...
Here, I'm doing it again.
The CLEs above were on my mind to such an extent, and indeed they still are, that I've discussed them with several other lawyers I know. Turns out some of them are on meds for anxiety. I would never have guessed it.
There's something about this that really disturbs me,. although I don't fault them any one of them a darned bit. Some of them seem to love their careers and are really good at what they do. What bothers me, however, is that we seem to have developed a profession that has to heavily rely upon chemicals just to get by.
Just going back to the earliest of human mind altering chemicals, it's reported that between 21-36% of lawyers engage in problem drinking at hazardous, harmful, or potentially alcohol-dependent levels. That's pretty disturbing, as that's between 1/5th up to a little over 1/3d of all practicing lawyers. Some studies suggest that 36% of Minnesota's lawyers and judges drink at a dangerous level, and if that's not disturbing enough, some studies suggest that 41% of Canadian lawyers do. Around 10% of lawyers have a drug abuse problem, but that probably includes a lot of them who have an alcohol problem.
Not good.
There's really no way to know how many lawyers are on anti anxiety medications. Probably a bunch. It's obviously much, much, better that people dealing with anxiety inducing situations seek medical help than crack open a bottle of Henry McKenna and poor yourself several shots.* It's also better than smoking a joint or whatever else people are doing in the illegal drug categories, although obviously these days marijuana is sort of in a weird still illegal but not enforced much category.**
The laws approach to all of this has been to reach out to lawyers and offer "help". But perhaps what should be obvious, but doesn't seem to be, is the profession itself needs the help. If this percentage of its professionals, including its best and brightest, need chemical help just to get by each day, there's something existentially wrong in the profession. All the CLE's on mindfulness in the world aren't going to fix that.
Footnotes:
*Henry McKenna is an Irish Whiskey named after lawyer and distiller, Henry McKenna.
**Marijuana is still a scheduled illegal drug in Federal law and students imbibing in it can risk admission to their State bars. Likewise this can be true for people seeking a career in law enforcement.
Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we ...
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we ...: Wyoming’s economic issues are more urgent than we realize : On paper, the Equality State appears to have good annual growth, but pockets of ...
Monday, September 15, 2025
Monday, September 1, 2025
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 1, 1945. Truman addresses the...
Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 1, 1945. Truman addresses the...:
The lyrics to This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie were published. The song had been written in 1940, but not released. The recording would not be released until 1953.
In my view, it's one of the greatest American folk songs.
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Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, September 1, 1945. Truman addresses the... : The lyrics to This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie were publis...
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Lex Anteinternet: A deeply sick society. : A deeply sick society. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We ... -
I've had a really hard time caring about this story (and, due to the subject of the post below, caring about anything, really, but this ...
