Blog Archives - neoTerra

It's Time

6/29/2024

At first, I thought this was a fake, but then I found the article on the Time website. WOW!

Less than two months months ago Progressive Media was touting fierce, fiery Dark Brandon. Now, they are running for the escape hatch. www.nytimes.com/2024/03/07/opinion/biden-state-of-the-union.html

I've been reading a great deal about Socialism over the past year. It seems that every Socialist "experiment" involves:

Purging or killing the current elites and replacing them with new elites
Divide and conquer to pit social groups against each other (i.e. diversity)
Discarding the rule of law and due process to eliminate rivals
Counter purges to silence (or murder) dissenters
Counter-counter purges to silence (or murder) the previous purgers
Rinse and repeat until the nation descends into either tyranny or anarchy

I wonder if the Democrat Party has now reached a point of such diversity and animosity that they will start attacking each other.

DON'T PANIC ... (Unless you're a Democrat).

Random Thoughts - A Crazy Week

6/28/2024

Actually, it's only Friday so the week isn't over ... but I can't wait!

Primaries, SCOTUS and The Debate ... Oh My!

Primary Results
Let's start with some primary antics from AOC and fellow "Squad" member Jamaal at a rally in the Bronx. Please note these are elected Congress-persons in the House of Representin'. They are quite literally just one step away from Idiocracy. YIKES!!

I'll put AOC up first ... she has some entertaining dance moves.

Next, let's watch the inspiring performance by Jamaal Bowman, who's main claim to fame is pulling a fire alarm to delay a vote in Congress (hmmm, shouldn't that be a crime??)

Fortunately, people are starting to reject such bullshit and Jamaal lost his bid for re-election to a moderate Democrat. This gives me some hope, perhaps people on both sides want more moderation (and unity) instead of relentless extreme division.

In related news, two Dems in Colorado have been replaced by more moderate candidates.

SCOTUS
The Supreme Court is working furiously to complete it's work before the traditional summer break. There have been several important decisions this week and one, in particular, is a major victory for "We The People".

I'm referring to their decision to overturn the 40 year-old "Chevron" doctrine.

The Chevron decision (from 1984) compelled judges to defer to the interpretation made by un-elected federal bureaucrats in situations where the law was unclear. I do not see this as a partisan issue since both parties have allowed vast overreach by federal agencies over the years.

By overturning Chevron, it is now up to judges, rather than bureaucrats to interpret grey areas in the law. This will compel Federal Agencies to follow the law and will require them to go back to Congress if they seek greater authority than what Congress originally defined.

Unfortunately, Progressive Democrats are unhappy with this decision. Senate Majority Chuck Schumer said, "In overruling Chevron, the Trump MAGA Supreme Court has once again sided with powerful special interests and giant corporations against the middle class and American families."

It is amazing to me that the leader of the Legislative Branch would be so angry, hateful and divisive about a decision that returns authority to the Legislative Branch. I don't believe that Mr. Schumer is irrational ... I believe he is simply anti-American.

The Debate
The first Presidential Debate of 2024 was last night. I watched the whole thing.

I was disappointed that neither candidate talked about future policies ... they each tried to exaggerate (or defend) their past record.

I cannot comprehend that a poll of likely voters indicates that 33% think that Biden won the debate. The indoctrination and brainwashing must be powerful, indeed. Dishonest Progressive media (but I repeat myself) is urgently proclaiming that Trump lied throughout the debate while they whitewash the multitude of lies and distortions from Mr. Biden.

I won't bore you with specific moments from the debate ... the final 45 seconds says it all.

Actually, Jill's performance following the debate is even more cringe-worthy. Like she's congratulating a 3 year-old.

    "Joe! You did such a great job! (wild applause)
     You answered every question! (more applause)
     You knew all the answers!"

Climate Calamity - Back On Deck

6/26/2024

The Boogeymen of Doom
By now, y'all know that I love to mock the relentless Doom Propaganda from the Left by giving the boogeymen comical names (always with alliteration). It's summer so Climate Calamity is up to bat. Of course, Persistent Pestilence (COVID-xyz and H5N1 Bird Flu) is still on stage along with Fearsome Fallout (WW3 over Ukraine).

It's an election year so we should expect the Democratic Socialist's propaganda machine to be cranked up to ELEVEN.

Climate Calamity
Yesterday, the Washington Post (which can't be accused of actually practicing journalism) published an article that claims "fossil fuel burning has cooled the planet while warming it ..."

Yes my friends, Evil Fossil Fuels are simultaneously cooling and warming Mother Terra "presenting problems for the future." Of course, the problems are always in the distant future. You can't make this shit up!!

Apparently, the folks who read WaPo are too ignorant to realize that the threat of Global Cooling (because of Evil Fossil Fuel) is just recycled bullshit from 51 years ago. It was predicted by the experts and it never happened. I must applaud WaPo's audacity, I would be too embarrassed to recycle any theory that was so utterly and provably wrong.

Sidebar - You may be tired of hearing this but there is no such thing as Climate Science. Science is a rigorous process where theories are formulated to explain reality and then experiments are done to confirm or disprove the theories. Reality is the ultimate arbiter of truth.
No global experiments can ever be done on planet Terra to test the theories so all we have is Climate Speculation ... NOT Climate Science.
Thus, there is no such thing as a Climate Scientist. There are Climate Celebrities and there are Climate Grifters ... but not a single actual scientist.

Those who are so willfully ignorant that they ignore history are doomed to be deceived by the same lies over and over. In the meantime the Democrats with their Green New Deal, their hyper expensive and unreliable transition to "green" energy and their war on American prosperity are crushing the lives of working people.

Conclusion
As I said, it's an election year so we will spend the next several months up to our eyeballs in bullshit.

Please imagine a carnival carousel with the various Boogeymen of Doom going round-and-round in the news and in media "Opinion Pieces" from "concerned experts." Somehow, when you lose interest in Climate Calamity then Fearsome Fallout magically appears at center stage ... an intentional and relentless cycle of fear and anxiety.

There is a simple solution ... DON'T PANIC!

Happy Solstice - Update

6/19/2024

DAMN! ... I just did a post on the arrival of summer and here's Dem Governor Kathy Hochul spewing lies and fear ... about Summer.

I will summarize so y'all don't have to listen to six minutes of Climate Hysterian BULLSHIT.

First off, she states that extreme heat is the leading cause of weather related deaths. This is absolutely FALSE. Even experts that embrace the Global Warming BS accept the established actuarial fact that many more people die from cold (hypothermia) than from heat every year.
phys.org/news/2020-08-cold-weather-accounts-temperature-related-deaths.html

She states that it's not a natural event for New York and that temperatures will be at levels "never seen in our lifetimes". This is pure BULLSHIT. The predicted temps will be in the upper 80's and low 90's ... Yep, that's pretty hot ... but it's not unprecedented. In fact, temps in New York go over 100 once every five years. The longest stretch of heat waves in New York occurred between 1948-1957 when the city was MUCH smaller.
thestarryeye.typepad.com/weather/2012/07/a-history-of-triple-digit-heat-in-new-york.html%20

Good grief, she is activating the National Guard because some areas don't have air conditioning ... while she simultaneously has a war on energy that drives the cost of AC ever higher.

She has issued an Air Quality Alert because (in her own words) the Canadian wild fires last year resulted in the worst air quality. LAST YEAR.

Anyways, my friends, heat can be deadly and Gov Hochul is right to remind people to stay hydrated and keep an eye on family, friends and neighbors.

Stay cool and ...

Happy Solstice

6/19/2024

Tomorrow, June 20th, is the longest day of the year (here in the Northern Hemisphere) and the astronomical start of Summer. YAY!!

Of course it would be silly to believe that warm weather is simply normal for Summer ... NO! It's because of Climate Change ... and Climate Change is because of Evil Fossil Fuel and Farting Cows ... and Evil Fossil Fuel is because of Greedy Capitalism. (Ooops, China is building a new coal-fired power plant every week.)

To demonstrate that the annual return of Summer weather is the fault of Evil Fossil Fuel, the good folks from Just Stop Oil decided to vandalize Stonehenge this morning. Clown World at its very finest!

The irony is truly comical. Stonehenge has been used to mark and celebrate the seasons for thousands of years ... long before the use of Evil Fossil Fuel.

In related news, the UK is being blasted by a 26 C "heatwave"... let me translate ... that's 78 degrees American.

AI Steve

6/16/2024

In my sci-fi novel the Democratic Socialist World Order (aka The Order) is not ruled by a human, Big Brother, tyrant. It is ruled by an overarching AI.

To conceal (or at least obscure) it's existence, the AI presents itself as scores (perhaps hundreds) of different personas such as Freud, Mother Gaia, Siri, Cortana, and even your personal MateMatch advisor.

We have now entered the world of The Lattice almost a decade ahead of schedule ... there is now an AI Bot officially running for Parliament in the UK. It's name is AI Steve.

AI Steve tells potential voters that it can "Humanize Politics" Of course it would!

This isn't the first time that socialist Euros have presented an AI candidate. Two years ago the Danish Synthetic Party (you can't make this up) offered a candidate named Leader Lars.

I contend that AI Steve is different. Leader Lars is a Big Brother persona while AI Steve can masquerade as just one of many "individuals".

You can have a friendly, personal chat with AI Steve at "his" website ... "he" never sleeps so you can have a humanizing conversation 24/7.

The Future
Hundreds of AI personas ... all just manifestations of a single "benevolent" dictator that monitors your every action. Artificial politicians, influencers, psychologists, match-makers ...

Distract, obscure, deceive and control.

A Mandatory Session With Freud 4.3

The Rational Prepper - Canning

6/13/2024

I've been doing some rainy-day canning this spring.

Pressure Canning
Pressure canning is still a challenge and I have difficulty getting all the jars in a batch to seal :-(

Liquids seem to be the most difficult ... I recently made a batch of pasta sauce and only 3 of 5 jars sealed. The failed jars are still thoroughly cooked and will keep in the fridge for a few weeks, but it's disappointing.

Dry Canning
I've been using mylar bags for preserving shelf-stable dry goods like rice and beans. Properly stored, dry goods will stay fresh for 10 years or more.

Recently, I discovered a great vacuum sealer for canning dry goods as well as salt and sugar.

When I opened the last bag of Basmati rice from 2018, the aroma and consistence was still perfect. It will take a few months for us to use 5 lbs of rice so I transferred the rice into jars. I was happily surprised that the vacuum-sealer worked perfectly every time and I've now used it to seal many jars of pickling salt (which was getting hard and lumpy).

As an aside, I use leftover jars from Classico pasta sauce for dry-canning. My friend, Jane, warned me that these jars shouldn't be used for pressure canning because the stock-persons at the supermarket use box cutters to slice the boxes open. If the jars are scored they could burst in the pressure canner, but they are perfectly safe for vacuum canning.

I buy Classico whenever there's a really good sale. If you reuse the Atlas jars the pasta sauce is almost free.

The Next Scamdemic

6/11/2024

Election Year Boogeyman
It's a Presidential election year and things look good for Conservatives. THEREFORE, we need a new, very scary pandemic.

As y'all know from my many posts on the Boogeymen of Doom, the Elites need a steady stream of fear and distraction to keep the sheep in line.

Climate Calamity and Fearsome Fallout (War) just can't cut it in an election year. People will not agree to being locked in their home for some vague or distant threat. Nope, the Dems need a clear and present danger to make the sheep demand hygienically safe mail-in-ballots.

Enter our recurring champion, Persistent Pestilence (aka Pandemic). While COVID is always in the competition, this year's nominee is H5N1 Bird Flu.

100% Fatal !!!
H5N1 has been around for decades. In April of this year there was a human infection in the US which is now designated as A/Texas/37/2024 (cuz it occurred in Texas).

A scientific study by our esteemed CDC determined that the strain is 100% Fatal ... among ferrets.
www.cdc.gov/flu/avianflu/spotlights/2023-2024/ferret-study-results.htm

Please folks ... stay indoors until November 5th (when the pandemic will suddenly disappear) and please request a mail-in-ballot for your ferrets.

The Rational Prepper - Apocaloptimist

6/9/2024

Summer is almost here so it's a good time to talk about some Spring projects.

Victory Garden Expansion
The Victory Garden was a disappointment last year, but I decided to expand the garden anyway. Over the past several weeks I've added a 9x18 section to the east of last year's garden.

Since the ground slopes up to the east I decided to use 1' high containers rather than the 2' containers in the original garden. The back half of this section already has 18-24 inches of topsoil so no containers are needed.

Of course, the electric fence had to be extended to keep Bambi and Yogi out. The wildlife is so inconsiderate. The posts are set in concrete. Like last year, I ran three stands of electrified wire and then attached rabbit fencing. Installing the rabbit fencing is really tedious but it keeps the raccoons out and strengthens the fence.

This expansion more than doubles the size of our growing area. However, this is NOT a garden that could sustain us in an apocalypse. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm an apocaloptimist ... I'm prepping for continued inflation and the decline in quality of 'industrial' vegetables.

If I feel ambitious, I'll add a similar extension to the west (left) next year.

The Guardians of the Garden
We now have two whimsical guardians at neoTerra! We have a tactical garden gnome with a rocket launcher (He's small but deadly!) and a fierce Gargoyle (to ward off evil spirits and demons).

We've had the Gargoyle for many years but he was lost in the weeds. I decided to upscale an expended Starfleet photon-torpedo casing as a pedestal so he now has a place of honor.

Unrivaled

6/6/2024

With all the dismal events in the world ... the Kangaroo Trump Trial, the unrelenting invasion at our Southern border, rampant crime and homelessness, wars raging in Ukraine and the Middle East ... I thought it might be a good day to post something positive. YAY!

Global Power - On the Seas
Let's start with news (from yesterday) that Russia is sending a (small) fleet of warships to the Caribbean as a gesture to poke a pointy stick in Joe Biden's bleary eyes.
apnews.com/article/russia-ships-caribbean-ukraine-b43c5b448f5803e2c8c1466e4ad7516d

Of course this sounds like we're on the Eve of Destruction, But it's really just the Russians letting Biden know that he stepped over the line when he authorized the Ukrainians to use US long-range missiles to attack targets in Russia ... killing Russian civilians. (Please note I'm not defending Russian aggression in Ukraine ... I am merely stating that Biden has improperly authorized a non-NATO country to utilize US strategic weapons).

Imagine how we might respond if Russia gave long-range missiles to Mexican drug cartels and they began attacking Tucson.

The Russians are legitimately pissed ... but the reality is that the United States remains unrivaled in military power, in spite of Joe's best efforts to destroy military morale.

Unrivaled
Although the Chinese Navy is the world's largest in number of ships, and warmongers want you to be terrified, it is no match for the US. I've written about this in past segments of 'Unrivaled' but this awesome new graphic from Visual Capitalist highlights the reality.

Friends, I'm not saying that there's no possibility of WAR. I'm saying that the real enemies of our rights, freedoms and prosperity are here at home, in the Oval Office, the Senate, the Mayors of major cities and the Governors of 'Blue' states.

China and Russia have little incentive and insufficient capability to attack the United States. Particularly when Biden and the Democratic Socialists are doing it for them.

Future Power - In Space
Next I'd like to talk about two recent developments in Space (the final frontier).

Why is Space Important
100 years ago, the British Empire ruled the waves and thus ruled the World.

I believe that over the next 50-75 years we will go through an enormous transition.

In most respects, it won't be as transformative as the Agricultural Revolution that freed humanity from starvation and led to farms and villages. It won't be as transformative as the Industrial Revolution that freed humanity from the worst of manual toil and concentrated humans in cities.

Perhaps it will come to be known as the Abundance Revolution though it may come to be known as The Second Serfdom..

In the near future the nation that rules Space will rule the World. The reason is simple ... planet Terra is about 71% oceans so, historically, whoever controlled the oceans controlled an area vastly larger than any other nation ... they could rule the World.

The United States is only the 4th largest by land area. But the oceans are larger than all other nations combined.

Just as oceans were vastly larger than nations, Space is vastly larger than the entire Earth (actually infinite). People once imagined that the ocean was a dangerous liquid desert inhabited by demons (and a few delicious fish). They were wrong.

Today, far too many people imagine that Space is a dangerous empty desert and, therefore, worthless. They are wrong. Space is quite literally filled with energy and resources beyond human comprehension.

Unrivaled
It is disappointing that the United States abandoned the quest for Space following the last Apollo mission 52 years ago. (Two entire generations if you follow The Fourth Turning.) That said, the United States is the only nation to ever make it to the Moon ... we were unrivaled ... we decided (did we really) that pandering to welfare in the present was better than aspiring for prosperity in the future.

Today
Despite the shameful decline in American education, we are still leading in Space. Just this week there were two historic events.

Yesterday, the Boeing Starliner finally made it's first crewed flight, taking two American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Although this is a great success for Boeing/NASA, it is also an embarrassment for America because the project (started in 2014) is more than four years late. The entire Mercury->Gemini->Apollo project to get to the Moon took ten years. NASA/Boeing have taken ten years (and Billions of $$) just to get to orbit.

That said, I wish Godspeed to Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who successfully docked with the ISS today.

The optimistic side of this story is that SpaceX (Elon Musk) beat Boeing by four years, sending American astronauts from American soil in 2020 on the Dragon spacecraft (Ms. Terra and I were there!) Although SpaceX received about half as much money from NASA, they had to develop the Falcon rocket from scratch while Boeing/ULA were able to use surplus, cold-war Atlas-Centaurs.

But, even more amazing is the successful launch of the SpaceX Starship earlier TODAY. Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built (even larger than the Saturn5/Apollo that went to the Moon more than 50 years ago) and is being developed mostly on Elon's dime.

There have been three prior Starship attempts ... each one going somewhat further. Today, the fourth attempt was a complete success, with the spacecraft returning to Earth.

I hate to say this, but it is Capitalism at it's finest. A private company, driven to excellence succeeds, where bureaucratic mediocrity fails despite massive taxpayer funding.

OK ... you are probably thinking "SO, Mr. Terra. We sent a couple of rockets up this week. How the heck is that UNRIVALED??"

I'm glad you asked! Let's look at the bigger picture (I like bigger pictures). Based on the quarterly report from Bryce Tech, SpaceX has launched more spacecraft than everyone else on Earth ... by a wide margin. They launched 20x more satellites than the Chinese (in distant 2nd place).

Seriously, SpaceX launched 525 satellites while ULA (heavily subsidized by NASA) managed 7.

Even MORE amazing. It wasn't a bunch of little pip-squeak satellites vs a few big ones. Nope! SpaceX put more material/mass into Space than everyone else combined.

Conclusion (For Today)
It is my belief, from much study, that humanity (or inhumanity) advances it's technology and knowledge in only two ways: through exploration(frontiers) or wars. A government can pursue either one or the other to stay in power. One is the path to individuality and self-reliance and the other is the path to dependence and servitude.

Frontiers compel us to work together and become one tribe striving against the cruel challenges that Nature poses against our mortal survival. We learn, we adapt, and we prevail ... together. Unity.

War compels us to fracture into a thousand diverse tribes fighting against the cruel challenges that other Humans, who we've been taught to hate, pose against our individual survival. We learn, we adapt, and prevail ... against our neighbors ... against people we don't even know Diversity.

I'm an optimist. I think we Americans are headed for a decade-long shitshow, but I think that Elon/SpaceX will get to the Moon and Mars.

In Space, our Frontier beliefs will eventually prevail over the Democratic Socialist Globalist Elites.

There will be another New World. Another neoTerra. More prosperous and more free. Unfortunately, I'll not live long enough to become a founder of the USAB ... The United States of Asteroid Belters.