article 2 of 2 today, book review

book review, article 2 of 2 today

Book Review

“GRID DOWN The New Reality 2” http://amzn.to/2CYlwN7

By Bruce Buckshot Hemming http://www.snare-trap-survive.com/

And by some other gal, but since each book has a different co-author ( dude!  Are you that much of a stud you keep getting different girlfriends in retirement AND get them to help you write the book?  I’m a bit insanely jealous! ), I don’t bother with them.  This is the last book in the grid down series.  It wraps everything up in a nice bow.  If you remember seven years ago or so, the first book in the series was a big ass door stopper.  Heck, I’ll read Atlas Shrugged again even though I don’t agree with a lot of her ideas anymore, just because it is a nice hefty 1200 pages.

*

I didn’t like Stephen Kings “Under The Dome” all that much and I’ll read it again just because it was a thousand pages.  I like staying immersed in a fictional world as long as I can.  Anyway, the original was so long even I had a hard time finishing it.  Which is a compliment, by the way.  I think Bruce reconfigured it so it is now three books instead of one.  I’ve always had trouble following the chronological order in the titles.  The first book might even been longer than seven years ago, as far as the original publication.  It sure seems longer than seven years, more like nine.  But what do I know?  I can’t remember what dinner was two nights ago.

*

Also, you’ll perhaps remember, this series was one of the first serious self published doomer stories.  He started way back prior to Kindle and before all the quick buck artists started giving authors a bad name ( the current crop is certainly pulp fiction.  But that insults a lot of pulp fiction artists.  They were dedicated professionals, even if poorly paid ones.  Today, 99% of the publishers out there are poorly paid amateurs that are not worth the name.  The worst 90’s ‘zine had better talent.  At least they were passionate rather than lazy, greedy and delusional ).

*

Was the series the best writing out there?  Of course not.  But style isn’t what is important.  There is a lot of very well written perfectly plotted stories from college graduates out there I cannot get past the first page on.  Plot and style are not the important parts of a good story.  You need to be drawn in and live in the world.  That makes a story worth reading.  Which is what this series does.  You escape and enjoy.  And that is what 99% of the other doomer pulp fiction lacks.  It is ONLY an instruction manual with no damn story. 

*

So, what I am desperately trying to convey to you here is that this story was PRE-Kindle, pre-amateur hour, pre-hack saturated market.  It started when books were books and sheep were nervous.  It is a shame it finished up when you could no longer find it from all the trash out there.  Yes, it is true that the series was for review and sent to me.  I make no secret of the fact this slightly colors my perception.  But I’ve refused books before and others I’ve read and done the publisher the favor of NOT reviewing it since it was trash.  If I’m reviewing a book, you’ll know the good and bad, regardless if I bought it or it was gifted.  Another bonus of not relying on advertisers to support me.

*

Okay, having pimped the book ( do you NEED to read the book to finish the series?  No.  Should you?  If you enjoyed the books so far, yes.  I was just as enthralled this time as before, and that is after saying this is one of the weaker ones.  But like I also say, the worst Stephen King is better than the best James Patterson [ talk about helping to kill the traditional book industry, thanks Jim, you twat ].  And, hello, need I remind you, there is the usual survival hacks that make each book a treasure trove of unknown tricks and treats.  Just the fish glue one is worth the price of the book ), I want to have a little fun with it.

*

From the back of the book.  “Is the world coming back together?  Or is the West still too wild to tame?”.  A big part of this story was rumors of the grid being partially restored, of a limited recovery.  One family decides to leave the double top secret Nevada valley to try to chase down these rumors.  They are all whiney, oh, we want the power to be back on.  We don’t want to deal with raiders.  How the hell did these jackasses live this far into the apocalypse?  Thankfully, they are dead soon enough.  Take that, hopium addicts!

*

What I found funny was the main point of this book was the optimism of a recover, yet the optimistic ones went off and got themselves killed.  Okay, not simply a recovery.  ALL failed systems quickly transition to a restored order in all suitable locations.  Anarchy never prevails unless it is on the frontier.  Areas suitable for agriculture always see restored ORDER.  What they don’t see is restored standards of living.  But the standards are what everyone here is hoping for.  Especially the reader.

*

This is why you want to finish up the series, isn’t it?  You want to live vicariously through a recovery.  A recovery of your standard of living.  You can’t handle a solar powered economy.  You want Oil Age living.  You are addicted to luxury.  And yet, those foolishly chasing luxury are quickly dead.  Yet you still root for the recovery!  Foolish rabbits!  Anyway, sorry, I thought that was quite funny.  I am easily amused. 

END

if seneca fell in the woods 1 of 2, article 1 of 2 today

IF SENECA FELL IN THE WOODS?
article 1 of 2 today

If a Seneca Cliff fell in the woods and no one was there to hear it, did it make a sound?  Did the middle class fall off a Seneca cliff and nobody noticed it, not even the middle class?  I would theorize that yes indeed, they did.  This is in and of itself interesting, but it can also tell you that we can’t even notice our own demise.  All of us All Great Seeing prognosticators argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin ( debating what/how/when ) when we haven’t noticed the pin was sold to the highest bidder and it is now private property AND the owner is a strict religious fundamentalist so there is no damn dancing anyway ( cue up theme music to “Footloose” ).

*

We could argue over what constitutes a middle class.  I would stipulate that rather than income, a better parameter would be closer to the original, the class in the middle between peasants and rulers.  The shop owners and tradesmen and such.  Not born and kept into poverty, their livelihood assuring them a bit more freedom.  Remember, the middle class is relatively recent.  Most times, even skilled tradesmen were slaves.  A combination of population decimation from the Black Plague and the necessity of allowing central bankers to fund colonizing the bare assed savages ( so, in other words, the necessity of freeing up a large portion of the economy.  The Dutch were far more successful at the colony game than say, the Russians who clutched too tightly to the serf economy ).

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In this country, I’d say the middle class was only allowed as a result of Unions and their brief rise to power, as a backlash against the robber barons.  Not that the elite had much choice, since slaves and expensive machinery do not mix well.  It is little coincidence that Unions were, mostly, a concession to the workers to avoid sabotage, and lasted through our Industrial Age as it coincided with our colonial conquests and occupations.

*

Once the economy rapidly changed, in one generation, from building to merely cashing in on the earlier colonial gains, the elite now monetizing and manipulating derivatives of goods, Unions ceased to meaningfully exist.  There was no more factories to trash as a means of coercion.   And the middle class was, to a large extent, Union.  But the middle class didn’t die with Unions.  They hung in there until recently.  Then, in one ( perhaps ) engineered financial crash, the middle class lost their house equity ( it “magically” reappeared after about five years, only now with the true unemployment of a third, there is no one to buy the homes at the increased perceived values.  It just made the property tax go up ) and their pensions.

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They don’t think they’ve lost the only savings they ever had, but since the savings were a hallucination anyway, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.  For a time, it was true that you could make a killing on real estate.  This helped the elite, this artificial increase in home costs.  The bankers got more interest on higher loans, the locals got more taxes so the ever after increased revenues from rising property values and unchecked immigration gave them the illusion they could offer a lot of unnecessary workers pensions.  The perceived “free” profits on merely just getting into debt for a mortgage was in some places the majority of economic activity as construction goosed the economically once doomed area.

*

Unions ( by and large ) allowed for a prosperous middle class ( which was-again, by and large-fed by defense Cold War spending ).  There was free college, affordable housing, transportation and medical.  That all ended the day the empire was defeated in Vietnam.  From then on, the middle class hung in there, but always with depleting assets and drops in their wages and diminishing returns.  The wife went to work, but that was largely later negated by the 50% divorce rate, so the household went back to one worker incomes-now households were two people working with the divorced male brings in a quarter of the pay, and the female getting a quarter the pay from her ex and both their jobs earning a quarter of what they once did.

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Then, the middle class kept their lifestyles by taking on huge amounts of debt.  Did you know the pre-Great Depression mortgage was only five years?  Or that a car loan of two years used to be considered irresponsible?  How times of peonage have changed.  How can a couple be considered middle class when they have a literal lifetime of debt?  They are no more free than the peasants.  But let’s just say that for now, the definition of middle class was having a trade you could bargain with.  Since the definition was no longer the protection and return from being Unionized ( blow me, Ayn Rand disciple pukes.  Without police and the right to carry a weapon, women would be freely molested.  Without Unions, workers are financially raped ).

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Workers had a skill, even if now that skill took on a home mortgage length amount of debt to acquire.  At least the worker had bargaining power of a sort, able to move about the country to maximize his wages.  He wasn’t helpless like the factory worker was ( before effective Unionization-which ended along with the factory economy.  The Unions turned to graft to survive and then it was easy to control them.  Kind of like the NRA now ).  But that is no longer the case, is it?  Unemployment is now so bad that workers are stuck in place.  That non-equity home didn’t help.  As businesses now are free to roam around the country, or globe, workers have essentially zero bargaining power anymore.  They have lost income, purchasing power, freedom of mobility, the freedom to avoid debt-all that and more.  What still makes them middle class?  All these factors have been around for fifty years.  What was the Seneca Cliff?  Continued tomorrow.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2FzmHFD )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

blow me, change 2 of 2

BLOW ME, CHANGE 2

Okay, so the ability to change is blocked by our natural programming.  The same programming that makes males predisposed towards violence.  The violence isn’t good or evil, despite all the gnashing of teeth to the contrary ( because all they are doing is making OUR violence good and YOUR violence evil-it is subjective, not absolute ).  It just IS.  That is how it is.  Women are predisposed towards adoptive group loyalty-that doesn’t make them disloyal or indecisive.  It just IS.  They are all survival traits.  Resisting change lowers risk.  Violence protects the tribe.  And imprinting women protect their spawn regardless of power struggles.

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We can easily change, and do, as either individuals or groups, but only after pain.  Pain changes programming.  Robert Anton Wilson, the hippie that dropped a railcar full of LSD and wrote all those cool parodies on conspiracy theories ( Schrödinger’s Cat, etc. ), was great at mind reprogramming.  One example that stuck with me thirty five years after reading it was that whenever he used vocabulary that reinforced a behavior he was trying to change, he would grab a big ass rubber band he always wore and zapped himself.  The negative reinforcement, the pain, brought mental change.

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Now, that is how programming is EASY.  There is a much harder way, which of course is the way we all try to change, which is by utilizing willpower.  Now, to be clear, I’m talking about change that goes AGAINST prior programming.  If, say, you were really poor growing up, changing your habits to begin stockpiling food is easy.  You are already programmed to fear going without food.  What would really be hard would be to NOT insure against inadequate calories.  So the habits we attempt to change, either eliminating one or adding one, are hard only if it goes against core programming.  You can change superficially all the time, just by practicing not being lazy.

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A slob who goes into the military and comes out an OCD clean freak didn’t change out of discipline or instruction.  He changed after an application of pain.  THEN the discipline or instruction became his new programming.  This is why willpower alone is not sufficient.  If you had a painful experience that demanded change, THEN you add willpower to reprogram.  The best example I can think of is the Two Movies In One, Where The First Was Great And The Second Blew Rabid Monkey Testicles, “Full Metal Jacket”.  The fat guy couldn’t adapt to being a Jarhead until he got a Blanket Party.  That severe trauma refocused and reprogrammed him into suddenly having the focus and will to retain his training.

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He had a block against change.  Then he didn’t.  So I am the last person that would tell you that all this change we talk about is easy.  It isn’t.  Rejecting the Oil Age and all it entails isn’t easy.  Not because the WAY to do it is hard.  It is as simple as can be.  The hard part is DECIDING to change.  IF you can flick the switch, wonderful things ensue.  But that switch isn’t meant to flip, without pain and trauma.  That alone explains Pretty Pony Preppers.  They are Oil Age Preppers not because of all the mean things I call them ( morons, lazy bastards, pussies ), but because they cannot change.  I should be all like sympathetic and such, but of course I’m not.  That is human nature too.  I’m mocking another culture.

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All the money in the world, and all the will, will NOT change your basic programming ( for the most part-exceptions prove rules ).  If you don’t truly fear NOT having that food stockpile, not having those weapons, not having the mortgage free hovel, you won’t REALLY be a survivalist.  As an example, I of all people know the extreme danger we are in and the obvious no doubt end we are facing.  Die-off, and soon.  And yet, I’m not out of total danger in my lifestyle choice because I really only ever experienced pain and trauma financially and so I only really ever planned for economic collapse.

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Now, I’m so fearful of once again being poor and hungry that I take economic collapse planning to extreme lengths, true.  And THAT will be very helpful during a full blown die-off.  But helpful isn’t the same as fully prepared, is it?  I should be living in the boonies, as a hermit, NOT in town ready to go live in my rural suburb BPOD with neighbors nearby.  I have all the spaceship/lifeboat stockpile needed to survive on my own but I don’t have ENOUGH protection against the fools out there.  I can justify it.  “Oh, I won’t live much longer.  I’m making every day count, living as I’ve always wanted to but never could, with a loving spouse for companionship”.

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But that is how we roll avoiding change.  We ALWAYS justify it somehow or another.  But if we can change, one small reprogramming can reap rewards ( at this time, I’m fresh out of answers on HOW ).  If all we start fearing is, say, debt.  I mean, so fearful of you on owing anyone anything that it is more painful for you to live in a McMansion than a RV.  Think on how everything would change on just that one fear.  You would have savings that enabled the whole prepper lifestyle.  You would WANT to move out of the city, away from crowds, away from a good paying job.  ONE fear, and your whole life changes. 

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Fear enables reprogramming.  Reprogramming makes all those previously difficult and impossible changes not just easier, but turns them into actual compulsions.  All your compulsions now are cultural programming incapable of EASY change.  The trick is to change on your own, before you are forced to by changing circumstances.  Because by then, it is too late.  The only thing I can think to recommend is that you find that one fear that changes everything else. Fear other people?  Fear imprisonment?  Fear the government?  I’m talking about a fear that is far stronger than any fear of change.  Then, perhaps, you can build and channel that fear, and then actually change.  Good luck-you’ll need it!

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2BRuXRH )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

 

blow me, change 1 of 2

BLOW ME, CHANGE

Humans do not like change.  Change blows.  We would rather stew in a terrible situation than change.  Never a truer phase, “better the devil you know”.  Now, know that resistance to change is simply human nature.  It is how we are programmed.  There is no shame in it, it isn’t a weakness.  But you should also know that if you are able to change, there is an exponential cascade of benefits.  So today we cover why change is bad and why it is also good.  A cool duality. 

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Stasis is a fancy two bit word for balance, but like all two bit words there is a better reason for using it than simply just trying to make myself look smarter.  I mean, okay, I need all the help I can get.  But “balance” alone doesn’t really define a desired state like “stasis” does.  Stasis is achieving equilibrium.  Stasis is removing uncertainty.  It is arriving at a state where things might not be perfect but they are understood.  A known Known ( to make fun of the old bastard Rumsfeld from the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight ).  Now, none of us place the same fear and hatred towards uncertainty that was the historical norm.

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Why was it a historical norm to fear and avoid uncertainty?  Because carbon fuels and carbon fuel accessories are a safety net we never had before.  Today, you can be the worlds biggest dumb ass and ignore all historic precedents.  You can ignore Fat Shaming from your peers, embracing ill health.  You can outlaw Slut Shaming ( used by all the other women as a safeguard against you being a home-wrecker ) and embrace a culture of Hippie Free Love ( ruining any family stability and smart child rearing ).  You can force males to support two families, because there is a surplus for that now. 

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Do you get the idea?  Culture is a tool, THE tool of paramount importance, allowing each group to adapt to the local conditions.  What worked was what became custom and custom was not changed because if it was, you would be embracing a set of behaviors that was counterproductive to survival of the group.  If you suddenly decided that potatoes were a much easier, higher calorie food, great for feeding far more people, and then replaced your traditional diet with them, suddenly you had a famine.  Dumb ass!  Why did you change your cultural diet?  Those foods thrived at sea level with less sunlight.  You used a food needing high elevations for optimal blight prevention.

*

Lack of change, the taboo of embracing uncertainty, didn’t always work.  Man was forced to change from hunter gatherers to farmers.  Nothing but grief there, so the change HAD to be forced upon them by severe climate change.  In war and invasion, sometimes change is forced on to you.  Say, all your breeding stock was captured and you had to upend your traditional marriage customs ( say, by having brother husbands, or by allowing the provision for war brides yourselves ). 

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To simplify, if change is bad because uncertainty can lead to survival traits being abandoned, we avoid ALL change.  You can’t guarantee that the new way will be beneficial rather than catastrophic.  During the Colonial/Oil Age, we had the surplus to try change because if we failed we survived off of the surplus but if the change worked it benefited everyone.  It was a no lose situation.  Without surplus, if you change you could die.  It wasn’t as simple as “but if it works, think of the benefits”.  It was, simply, “if it doesn’t work we die”.  So, the two things to keep in mind is that, once again, the Oil Age IS different this time.  And, culture changes just like people do.

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I would think the most obvious thing in the world is, without oil you can’t have an oil age.  But everyone keeps trying to convince you that we can indeedily-doodily keep most of the benefits of oil, without oil.  This is a good example of resistance to change ( remember, just because we can now safely change doesn’t mean most of us ever will, as it is a basic human program ).  I don’t want to change all that the oil age gives or takes from us, because that is change. 

*

So we engage in mental gymnastics convincing ourselves even without oil we can keep things the same.  Fracking energy independence forever.  Alternate energy fueling the future.  Fusion, colonizing the stars, X new promising just five years down the road technology will save the day.  Fission too cheap to meter, etcetera, etc.  Oil, only possible after the Coal/Steam Age, and coal IS running out ( net energy wise ) and oil IS running out ( conventional high net energy wise ) and without the surplus energy we don’t have an Oil Age anymore, nor can we devolve back to a Coal Age.

*

Since the Oil Age is different, it follows as night after day that you need oil to stay in the oil age.  And if oil is being used up, you cannot be in the Oil Age and if you cannot support an Oil Age lifestyle you must ipso facto live in a Solar Energy economy.  And except for the Empire O’ De Day, that means there is NO FRIGGIN SURPLUS.  Which means you do NOT want to change whatever is working to keep you alive.  You all make fun of Muzzies being stuck in the Tenth Century culturally, but who is going to be more predisposed to a petroleum free future, the bare assed savages or the high tech high oil use Americans who are all like progressive and stuff?

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The other thing is HOW change takes place.  Just as a single person ONLY changes their childhood or previous programming through pain, so does a culture.  No culture changes, in the absence of energy surplus, with FIRST experiencing pain and suffering and loss.  This should be so simple anyone can understand it, without any “yeh, buts…”.  You say, yo, bitches, you’ll easily die in the future from disease.  And how do they respond? “Yeh, BUT…we know all about germ theory now”.  What they mean is that they don’t want any change from the current reality.  Does knowing about germ theory in and of itself build sewers or bring in enough crops to thwart malnutrition leading to less sickness?  Didn’t think so.

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Violent change will change culture ( setting aside SURPLUS changing culture, because we no longer have surplus as a measure of per capita global energy.  From now on, you can ONLY count on less, not the same and certainly not more ).  Just as pain and violence change a persons programming it will change culture.  But that isn’t optimal, is it?  Continued tomorrow.

END ( today's related link http://amzn.to/2EYqPSI )

 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there

 

model dumbass

MODEL DUMBASS

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note: SF, a most generous PayPal donation.  Thank you!
*

Why is everyone adapting the business model of The World’s Biggest Dumbass?  Sure, obviously this is a widespread phenomenon that clearly is part of the grand scheme of things.  As the system implodes the system become dysfunctional.  It is like the parties in Berlin as the Soviets are at the city gates.  Rather than try to escape the leadership just settled down to party like it was 1999 ( I understand that Odessa didn’t pick them to run the rat line to Argentina, as they weren’t of sufficient rank.  But why didn’t they start walking?  ).  You can understand why they did as they did but you have a hard time understanding why they ignored other choices.

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And that is where I am trying to understand the corporate mentality.  I understand that you can get dysfunction and greed and stupidity to pay.  Wal-Mart was, once again, the leader.  Just as they returned to one stop shopping and centralized discounts ( picking up the ball dropped by Sears after they fell in love with the shopping mall stocked with Chinese made clothing model and ignored what had made them successful ) and made a mint ( you cannot blame customers for wanting to save money after over twenty years of decreasing purchasing power ), now they are the first and most successful screwing over their once loyal customer base.

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What I cannot understand is how you can stay in business when you cannot even do the ONE friggin thing you are in business to do.  Here’s a good example, which I just experienced and hence is weighing on me and what I’m violently stewing about.  I was thinking to myself, self, you studly manly brute, you, after Christmas the personal donations went into the toilet.  Frankly, I’m surprised they lasted as long as they did.  I am always astounded when someone sends me $5, let alone the incomprehensible $20.  It really is no way to run a sustainable business.  Too few love you THAT much, and they can only be so generous for so long.

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( I’ve been thinking on an article on if the publishing model for the last 150 years is broken.  By which I mean the mass publication, cheap enough for everyone.  Newspapers are no longer affordable, and really neither is the Internet so that doesn’t substitute.  And, magazines I think were at that juncture prior to newspapers.  Magazines, I can understand being killed by the Internet, more so than I can newspapers.  You no longer need a magazine to discover companies.  At least newspapers are still a good fit for local business.  But, finally my point-magazines are more unaffordable as they go from ad centric content back to knowledge content specifically.

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( Since magazine distribution is a dead model, now we get our knowledge from many different blogs and websites that must all be individually supported.  The ads for those sites are failing and with the advent of Patreon and single company sponsors [ such as the video game company being pimped by the YouTube channel ] it becomes much more expensive per article for the consumer to read a magazine.  There are obviously other factors.  But I think the general trend is a return to boutique publishers, just as services are returning to that model [ for proper service verses half-assed  ].  Even goods are moving away from mass production to custom/boutique/mom & pop.  If you want a good bicycle, you don’t go to Wally, you go to Bike Dudes Bike Shop And Surfer Emporium.  You don’t rely on a big name gun manufacturer to deliver a tack driver.  That kind of thing ).

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And the business that has kept me in business has always been the Amazon ad commission.  The Google ads might have worked up until the ‘08 implosion.  Very generous minions donated all last year while I was getting this whole self employment thing off the ground ( and for that, the biggest hugs and kisses.  But you can stop now.  You did more than enough and I love you all, but I don’t expect it anymore.  It would be unfair of me to do so anyway-I might need you again in the future.  For now, Amazon is doing well supporting me ).  Book sales, well, those ALWAYS sucked.  I get it.  You guys are not freakish slavish dedicated readers such as myself.  You want quick and done.

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So Amazon commissions are the only way to stay in business.  I refuse to do the ads everyone else is doing.  No matter what color of lipstick you put on that pig, you are ALWAYS beholden to your advertisers and change ( or originate ) your content to appease them.  That is no way to write, especially with something as important as survivalism.  But as I’ve already written, Amazon won’t last another twenty years.  They started and continued by promising customer value above all else, which included plowing profits back into the business.  Then they continued both by picking up the slack from Wal-Mart and benefiting from a inflation rocket boosted stock market. 

*

But that won’t last too much longer, and cashing out the kind of money Bezos or Zuckerburg did to me bespeaks imminent death of the company.  I could be wrong.  But I wanted to hedge my bets.  I started looking around for other companies that offered commissions.  My first thought was Sportsman’s Guide.  A great company which I love ( just like Amazon ).  Well, they don’t themselves run a commission program.  They go through a third party company.  Sweet!  Especially since they allow you as a member to sign up with any of the other companies they cover.  I could have a whole batch of prepper crap offered which offered commission.

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Well, guess what?  The company software was so crappy I couldn’t complete the application process.  Hey, I’m terrible with computers, but if I can go through and discover the arcane voodu flavored process of adding my blog articles to the Amazon Author page, some real pocket protector nerd crap, I can be patient enough to discover a sign up process.  Well, no.  It wouldn’t take my password, rejecting that and assigning me a new one and when I tried using that one it wouldn’t accept that.  I tried using my issued ID number instead of my e-mail, I tried all combinations of ID, mail and different password.  No dice.  I couldn’t get past the first page which only asked for two items.  I hadn’t even gotten to the credit card or bank info yet!

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Just like Patreon screwed me by screwing up me signing up on their page.  Simply not accepting the prompted information.  Patreon and this commission company made money ONE way.  Signing up new customers.  And they won’t let you sign up?  How are they staying in business ( and for a FYI, when I went to sign up at Wal-Mart for their affiliate program, they directed me to a page with a grey screen and nothing else.  At least I can understand that.  They don’t care about Internet sales )?  When Amazon made a lot of money on impulse sales, but then larded up their pages with ads for that silly ass talking toaster or whatever the hell it is ( the one that spies on you are reports back to the NSA whatever you are saying-yeh, party like its 1984! ), what kind of business model is that?

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Is Amazon making money from the NSA, just like Microsoft ( you can’t tell me they were giving away their last version of Windows for no reason.  If they aren’t being paid it is because they are doing the evil spying to be allowed to stay in business as they break laws )?  Not only are they hurting impulse sales, the new slow loading pages and sponsored content hiding my searches are a big reason I finally canceled Kindle Unlimited.  Why would you want to screw up KU?  Netflix must buy their content ahead of time.  It costs a lot of money.  Amazon gets all their books for free!  All they need to do is pay out a commission after they are paid first.  It is a gold mine.  Especially since there are so many authors anymore ( thanks, non-hobbyist quick buck artists! ) that the only way to make money is to put your crap on KU ( not that this works for me, but it obviously must for others ).

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Now, yes, obviously I understand making profits this quarter and screw the next quarters viability of the company itself.  This is business as usual today.  But how do you even make THIS quarters profits?  Okay, Amazon is making more on the ads NOW, than will eventual be given to them by satisfied KU readers.  A lot will be so desperate for nearly free entertainment they will put up with the BS.  I get that part.  They must be desperate for money now, to prop up the stock price for the last bonanza cash-out.  But what about the companies that don’t even want me as a customer?  You guys need to wait until AFTER I’m a customer to screw me, not before!  Duh!

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I want your takeaway to be this.  If for-profit companies cannot handle a BASIC infrastructure bringing in new customers, even as they alienate their old customers and lose them, do you really think you should fear any kind of Big Brother oppression which relies on anything digital?  I don’t know if all companies are hacking their competitors, if it is strictly total incompetence as PC snowflakes are hired out of college simply for being Of Color, Transgendered and suitably leftist rather than trained, or if all government and corporate entities are  being hacked by the Chinese so our economy fails faster, but the end result is that Skynet is not exactly a problem anytime soon.

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1st of 2 articles today-guest article

1 of 2 today
GUEST ARTICLE

Book Review: Homemade Guns and Homemade Ammo, By Ronald B. Brown.

I purchased this book at the suggestion of Jim, and I wasn’t disappointed. Minion ghostsniper was nice enough to provide the PDF link, so download it now while you still can.

http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy%20Folder/Gunsmithing/Homemade%20Guns%20And%20Homemade%20Ammo%20-%20Brown%20-%20Loompanics.pdf

The quality of the designs outlined in this book were better than expected, and probably about as good as you’re going to get, assuming at least a minimal skill set, and having access to basic shop tools.

The plans outline the building of a 12ga shotgun as a base design. From there, it’s simply a matter of utilizing varying diameters of pipes for different calibers and gauges. An addendum to the initial plan is to add another barrel to the design, making it an over/under double. The author mentions that this is not without difficulty, but the added work is probably worth it for the quick follow up shot. This chapter also discusses barrel options for necked cartridges, or cartridges that are rimless, and also includes a chart of the pipe sizes required for specific calibers. It probably goes without saying that these designs will be smoothbores, and range will be limited when firing projectiles. One possible way around this is to build a shotgun, and use rifled slugs for increased accuracy at longer ranges. Though in this scenario, you might have to figure out a way to patch the slug to compensate for oversized bores. Also mentioned is a muzzleloading variation on the initial design, should the homebuilder find themselves in a situation where cartridges are scarce at some point in the future. Briefly mentioned is a primitive zip gun made entirely from hardwood. There are no pistol designs in this book, but the knowledge provided should be enough to allow for a pistol variation from the original design.

Later chapters deal with primer construction, as well as homemade gunpowder. I’ll summarize here, because there are about 4 different gunpowder, as well as a few different primer recipes mentioned in the book that will require some skill with chemistry, but the following option is the simplest alternative: Strike anywhere matches. The striking tips make for good primer material, and the remainder of the match head makes for a decent homemade gunpowder. Safety matches will work for gunpowder as well. As an added bit of info, I’ll mention that I have heard before that tree stump remover is mostly (if not entirely) Saltpetre or Potassium Nitrate, the key component to black powder. The book also mentions the Tap O Cap, homemade percussion cap system. This could be a handy item to have should the homebuilder have to resort to the use of muzzleloaders at some point down the road. Bottom line. Even if you don’t reload, save every last cartridge that you fire. If you should ever find yourself with more than you can use, they will make an excellent barter item, even fired, for those that are aware of their value, and are knowledgeable enough to know what to do with them.

Another very useful chapter in this book is “kitchen sink reloading” (i.e. reloading without a press). I also loved the authors makeshift bullet mould made from wooden blocks. It will be short lived, and it won’t mould a perfect bullet, and the by product will require some fine trimming, but it’s also pretty darn clever.

The overall impression here would be that this book assumes that we’re still living in a reasonably functional society, but that perhaps guns, or more importantly ammo, have been heavily restricted, or are difficult to acquire, for whatever reason. With a collapse in mind, it would be a good consideration to read through the entire book, and make a determination as to what weapons you might be considering, and having the proper materials for that particular design. It would also be wise to drill and tap some of the components in advance, while still having functioning grid power, with machinery that will provide more accurate results (i.e. a drill press vs a hand drill).

Probably the most valuable take away from this book is to purchase as many reloading components and brass as possible, while you still can. As you read through the various procedures on how to make these components, it will become painfully obvious as to why.

greatest generation 3 of 3-article 2 of 2 today

GREATEST GENERATION 3
2nd article of 2 today

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So, approved Americans were tribal for a century.  The cracks that began appearing shattering this unity was the leadership selling out all tribal members for short term gain.  They allowed Blacks to work in the factories ( well paying jobs at the time NOT requiring schooling-yeh, believe it or One Size Fits All dill holes, a lot of people cannot benefit from advanced education-trade school and apprenticeships are much better ) and pushed for Blacks to join the tribe.  They mixed Blacks into combat units in Vietnam, essentially forcing draftees who had no desire to fight for Whitey to join with volunteers.  White kids of privilege weren’t forced to fight so the equalitarianism was abandoned for classism.

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Now, you are asking yourself why The Powers That Be could have been such dumb asses.  And you ask yourself why this time things went awry when previous much more crappy crap was forced unto the population ( regulating non-violent personal behavior, stealing the gold and instantly devaluing its replacement 40%, etc. ).  The only answer that made sense to me was that the economy was doing much worse than we understand.  I won’t go off on a tangent on that, because I simply don’t have enough information.

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But why else would the worlds factory ( while also being the worlds leading oil producer ) pull the first emergency action of those we all know so well today?  You know, the Divide And Conquer, the Class warfare, the imposition of federal dictates by force, the flooding of immigrants to reduce pay, the enabling of women to halve pay of men, the enabling and bribing of Blacks, etc.?  The “find a war, any war, to pump up the economy” was of course par for the course and had worked up to that point.  But why the other destabilizing actions?  Surely you understand that intentionally breaking up cultural and social unity was a very bad thing?

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Or was it not even economic?  All signs point to that, yet other than Peak Iron Ore in the late 50’s, I’m hard pressed to find much evidence of that severe of a economic contraction.  The only other trigger to come to my mind was that WWII itself, the very war we used to seize half the world and colonize it ( excepting Africa, of course.  Thank goodness all the old empires ruined themselves trying to tame that craphole ), was the beginning of the demise of our tribal unity.  For those that see a communist under every bed, you should enjoy this theory.

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Remember, WWI was only a war to pull JP Morgan’s nuts out of the fire.  Greed and idiocy mixed and we started playing God for bankers fun and profit.  WWII on the other hand, was a power play to become King Colonial Power.  FDR agitated the Japanese to the point that they believed they had to attack ( just as Germany felt she had no choice with Russia ) while we were still weak.  There was no way the US was going to surrender the Pacific Ocean military control.  We had already taken the Philippines and gained a few islands after WWI, and shown no hesitation interfering with China.  Japan would have False Flag Attacked us if they hadn’t actually attacked Pearl Harbor.

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In other words, kids, the war had nothing to do with Evil Nazi’s.  It had mostly to do with controlling Asia, and as a benefit there was that pesky Depression hurting profits.  So, perhaps we need to set our sites on the lengths to which the elite were willing to go to colonize the world and get our economy out of a REAL Depression ( not a recession like the Fifties ).  First, draft pretty much every single male.  Put all the women in the factories.  There was your first instance of race mixing and female empowerment ( and where did we get these ideas from?  Perhaps National Socialism and Communism, hmmm? ). 

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Granted, the races weren’t mixed in combat, and what is generally viewed as racism was just common sense segregation along the lines of Women Only units, but the problem with a total draft is that afterwards everyone agitates for equality.  This shouldn’t have been a surprise-it’s what killed the caste system after WWI in Britain.  All those previously subjected groups begin to ask why, if they are equal enough to fight ( or work in a fighters stead ) they aren’t equal enough to vote and get equal pay and other nonsense.

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The elite thought that they could end the war having restored the economy and won half the globes free commodities, and return the culture to normal.  But that didn’t happen, did it?  Perhaps the next twenty years was relatively peaceful as the factories went full bore rebuilding the world and fighting the Cold War, but the process of gender and class and race revolution had been started during the last war and was just waiting for the slightest provocation to explode.  And I’m guessing that is exactly what happened in the Recession Of Late 50’s & Early 60’s. 

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Memories were fresh of the past sacrifices and temporary freedoms, and the slightest upending of the apple cart exploded all these grievances and issues, all at once.  And the elite?  Hell, they got away with Social Engineering the last time, with no-so they thought-ill effects.  So drafting Black Ghetto members and forcing them into combat units with Whites ( rather than leaving them in support units as before ), offering returning housewives to the workforce substandard wages, opening the immigration floodgates, offering minorities White jobs, allowing rich kids to avoid service, all those contentious acts which were thought of as mere level pulling to increase profits to the elite, well, they exploded spectacularly. 

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I’m thinking this is a much better explanation for cultural disintegration of such a magnitude for an entire decade than a mere Recession.  The PREVIOUS social engineering birds coming home to roost.  The recession just sparked the tender already there, then all the cultural implosion made the economy worse.  Once the economy REALLY took a hit with the gold window closing and the oil embargoes, that dead cultural unity made things even worse after that.  Hey, this historical revisionism is fun stuff!

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Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page. ***You can make donations or book purchases through PayPal ( www.paypal.me/jimd303 )

*** Unless you are in extreme poverty, spend a buck a month here, by the above donation methods or buy a book. If you don't do Kindle, send me a buck and I'll e-mail it to you in a PDF file.  If you donated, you may request books no charge.   My e-mail is: jimd303@reagan.com  My address is: James M Dakin, 181 W Bullion Rd #12, Elko NV 89801-4184

*** Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for barely above Mere Book Money, so do your part.*** junk land under a grand *  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com *** Wal-Mart wheat***Amazon Author Page
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there