Thread – Observations on the Past and Future

1. The following commentary received from a friend mirrors my own remembrances and thinking exactly. There are more of us than there are of them! Here is what he had to say.

Thread – A Survey of the Current Situation

1. The media (99%), the FBI, and the Justice Department, and most judges in federal judiciary seem fully complicit in protecting those guilty of the most massive corruption and sedition in American history.

Thread – A Very Strange Christmas Indeed!

1. Went to a Missouri Synod Lutheran Christmas Eve service tonight, as we visited our daughter in Billings. The sermon was great; I will attempt to give the message justice.

2. This has been a strange Christmas for many people, if not most or all. No advent services, no Christmas parades, no office parties, no jumping from party to party on Christmas Eve. Fearmongering by the Democrat-media complex that minimizes attendance.

3. Social distancing and the wearing of masks in church. Human to human contact minimized. And so forth and so on. It just doesn’t feel like Christmas this year.

4. Yes, this Christmas has been strange. But then think about how strange the very first Christmas was. Here is the Christmas story from the Bible (Luke and Isaiah):

5. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Thread – Victims of Wokeness

1. The Cancel Culture takes scalps. We’ve seen many examples this year. It’s the real why the likes of Vaseline, the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and other large corporations/business have taken the knee to the mob.

Thread – Possible American Dystopias in 2021

1. Dystopia: an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

2. I read an article the other day that predicted future dystopian possibilities in the US given all that we have seen and what has transpired in 2020. Talk about thought-provoking and frightening! Here are some excerpts.

3.

The general election of 2020 will be the stuff of argument and analysis for many years to come, here and abroad.

3A. Suffice to say here that a panicky over-reaction to the onset of the COVID-19 virus produced economic hardship and social disorder, compounded by months of riots, looting and arson afflicting hundreds of cities (almost all Democrat-governed) beginning in late May 2020.

3B. All of this set the stage for an election won overwhelmingly on November 3rd by President Donald Trump and lost by him in the following weeks to his Democrat opponent.

Thread – Excerpt from a 30 Jan Ross Rant

1. These following is an excerpt from a recent “Ross Rant.” Joel Ross publishes these periodic reports that provide commentary on the changing scene with an eye toward wise future investments.

Years ago I would troll CrossFit/Planet Fitness until I got bored with it and created the “Car Rage” guy. People would say, stop screaming in your car and go back to trolling CrossFit. I didn’t listen.

After screaming in my car for 3 years I started doing other shit......

.... like MeatHead Minutes, Hater Dance Videos, Macho Man impersonations, Podcasting, exposing the hypocrisy of BLM, doing Live Streams nightly on YouTube, etc. People would say, stop doing this other shit and go back to screaming in your car. I didn’t listen....

.... my FB page has grown over 176k new followers since my first George Floyd video in June and all I really post about is current event shit. I posted a “Car Rage” video yesterday and people are saying, stop screaming in your car and go back to talking about politics......

.... moral of this cool story bro is the BEST thing I ever did, is not listen to what anyone told me to do. Be you.

Social Intelligence 101:

If your friend is telling you about an accomplishment, do not try to one-up them by sharing an accomplishment of your own.

Tame your ego.

Sit back and actively listen.

Convo between @tferriss & @naval on modern loneliness:

Naval: In India there's this concept of the extended family where you basically live with your tribe at all times, so when we were young, at our grandmother's place with my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my grandparents,

everyone was there, and it was a warm night so we went out to the backyard and put all these comforters and these little cots out and everyone would sleep in this giant pile with fifteen people underneath the stars...

it was amazing...so there's two things that were great about it: the noise level didn't bother you, if someone's foot was in your face it didn't bother you. When it's family and you're young it all just works and you feel very safe and very happy.

Another thing is that it reinforces how important the tribe is. Modern society gives us incredible flexibility in that we can get away from our crazy family members, we're not destined to die where we are born or to do what our parents did. So we have incredible freedom.

But coming with it is this tremendous loneliness that we try to cover up either through drugs, alcohol, partying, even trying to find a mission like putting people on mars. But the reality is that a lot of that loneliness comes from being disconnected from growing up in your

Just because.

Here's an interesting story about a man you've almost certainly heard of, think you know stuff about, but probably weren't taught any of the good, funny, ludicrous stuff that makes it really interesting.

It's long. You might hate it. I'll take that chance...

In 1588, Spain launched a huge fleet with the aim of overthrowing Elizabeth I and conquering England (sorry Britain, I'm taking about the "it's still just England" era).

At least in part, they did this to stop our pirates from being such a monumental pain in their arse...

As the 130 Spanish ships approached our coast, the English packed our most ancient and decrepit boats with junk, set them on fire, and shoved them into the Spanish lines.

The Armada scattered, and the weather took care of the rest, driving them towards the Dutch coast...

Thus, the great military achievement of the Elizabethan era was settled by a combination of a typical English summer, and an aquatic bin fire.

But somebody had to come out of it a hero, and that somebody was Sir Francis Drake...

The things you know about Drake are practically all false: he didn’t finish his game of bowls before being bothered to defeat the Spanish – that story didn’t appear until some 40 years after the events, and bad weather kept in in Plymouth: not fannying around with ball games...

I have now been sick with #longcovid for almost a year—below, some reflections on my convalescence. (1/10)

While remaining mostly functional, in many ways, I'm more sick in 2021 than I was in 2020. Two weeks ago, when I last felt well enough to walk outside, I managed only 0.7km before the post-exertional malaise came on: brain fog, fatigue, pain in my neck and arm. (2/10)

I was formerly a (somewhat) competitive distance runner. It's not that I'm ignorant of how to push my body, nor the consequences. During my first marathon, I pushed through hypoglycaemia, black and white vision, before having a seizure just over the finish line. (3/10)

Post-exertional malaise is different, sustained, worse. And it comes just as surely from over-doing it at work, or in researching long covid, as from exercise. I used to have so much energy. Where is that man I was just last year? I miss him. (4/10)

The closest I've come to death was in a single-vehicle accident in the remote Pilbara. In the air, in the desert, upside-down, I remember a moment of stillness, of acceptance, of simple knowing that my agency, at that moment, was subordinate to basic physics and biology. (5/10)