Health – Page 9 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Smoking, Orphans, and the French

“Yes. Give him his cigarettes. It won’t be the nicotine that kills you, Mr. Bond.” – You Only Live Twice

An early but failed attempt at a cigarette advertisement as they ran out of orphans too quickly.

(This is a retread, I have the sniffles tonight (and got started late). It’s from November of 2018, so, I wonder where the heart disease is going now that 12-year-old kids are having heart attacks?)

Heart attacks were unknown before 1900 – probably because 97% of people before 1900 died in surprise buffalo stampedes and dysentery on the Oregon Trail®.

But I recently learned something that fascinated me. Heart disease has plummeted during the last fifty years. Here’s the graph. I found it here (LINK), with a h/t to Mangun (LINK):

So, heart disease is plummeting. But I thought we were getting fatter?

Not good. There’s a lot of Oreos® and regret in that graph . . . .

According to the NIH, we are getting fatter. But we’ve (more or less) eliminated heart disease as a cause of death. Huh? I would have thought that heart disease would have increased during that time period abetted by a high-fructose corn syrup diet, increasingly sedentary lifestyle, Netflix®, the Internet, and reliance on every modern convenience. Oh, wait, that’s just me.

Not saying being fat is healthy – it’s linked to a large number of issues including very large pants. But not so much heart disease. So what changed between 1900 (effectively zero heart disease) and 1965 (when heart disease peaked) and today?

Cigarettes (graph is from the CDC).

Sure people smoked before 1900. Mark Twain smoked the equivalent of the population of Honduras in cigars every day. And people smoked pipes, often while cultivating manly mustaches that looked like creatures from an H.G. Wells novel. But cigarettes? Not so much, as cigarettes were French, and even back in 1900 no one liked the French. 54 cigarettes per year per person were smoked in the United States in 1900. In 1965, the peak year for heart attacks was also the peak year for cigarette smoking, when Americans smoked 4,259 cigarettes per person, per year. And they looked so very cool, except for the heart attacks. And the berets.

Also, Watson, an amazing fact: Kermit The Frog has the same middle name as Jack The Ripper. Not a coincidence I think . . . the game is afoot! Let’s catch a Muppet® murderer!

The difference between cigars (or pipes) and cigarettes is that no sane person inhales pipe or cigar smoke. Again, not saying that either of those things are particularly healthy, but it appears that pulling the chemicals from combusting tobacco into your lungs is a bad thing. I mean, not as bad as being an orphan, but bad.

Also, can an orphan eat legally in a family-style restaurant?

Could it be other things, like statins? Nope – they were late to the party, and there are significant debates about if they’re good for you at all. Aspirin may be a factor in the lowered death rates, but it really seems like smoking cigarettes . . . might be bad for you.

As usual, I am compelled by my lawyer to tell you I’m not a doctor, and that pesky court order requires me to tell you that I’m not allowed around pumpkin pie when there’s lighter fluid nearby, but my conclusion is probably pretty innocuous: don’t smoke cigarettes, unless you want to die early of a sudden heart attack and save more Social Security money for me.

Don’t Fear The Reaper

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste and California get all the lawyers? New Jersey picked first.

When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way.

The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?”

John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.)

The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)

Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.

Weird. You can get salmonella from chickens, but not chickenella from salmon.

No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.

I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet.

I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?

A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.

I tell you, when the King died, that left me all shook up.

Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us.

And I’m not sure I care.

Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.

I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.

If you don’t like Hillary, you should move to Benghazi. At least you know that there, she’ll leave you alone.

What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today.

I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.

Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today?

Hell no.

That’s YOLO. The idea that “You Only Live Once” is a free pass to act in any fashion has corroded society. It’s really at the root of many of the problems we have today. It is, in many ways, the absolute inverse of the philosophy I’m trying to describe. YOLO seeks to elevate hedonism and the passions of the moment as the highest good. YOLO is Tinder® times Planned Parenthood© times SnapFaceGramInstaChat® times Rwanda®.

I wonder if Hindus consider YOLO offensive? (not my meme, as found)

It’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life.

So, not YOLO.

One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.

For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.

Why was Karl Marx buried at Highgate Cemetery? He was dead.

I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.

The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.

So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way.

Oh, wait . . . .

I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything.

Deception: The Media Is Soaking In It

“Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It’s a good start.” – Batman Begins

Thankfully he wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m certain that few had any idea of how the Internet would change the world. Oh, sure, some did. In one of the zillion versions of Ender’s Game (or the never ending stream of sequels) Orson Scott Card wrote about the Internet, in the 1980s, I think. In his version, people could make carefully reasoned arguments and other people would listen to them and be swayed.

Ha! Instead we have Twitter® with its 280 character limit, and meme warfare.

I actually don’t mind meme warfare being the place where ideas are injected into society, primarily because the Right memes pretty well, and the Left can’t meme at all.

That is, of course, what the Left is worried about. When the Internet began to gain popularity in the mid-1990s, it was a Wild West. It was first created, page by page, by people who were passionate about something. The programming was easy, and the hardest thing was to get noticed, since the search engines and directories were rudimentary. I used at least three, depending on what I was searching for, because one was good for technical stuff, one was good for “normie” stuff, and the last one, as I recall, wasn’t good for much at all.

On the Internet, you can be whatever you want to be, so why do so many people pick “stupid”?

Then came the Media®. At first, they didn’t really know how to use it, so they’d just put their written stuff out there, since video would swamp most dial-up connections. But everyone knew it was going to be big, which is why AOL© merged with Time-Warner™ even though all AOL® presented was just a single way to get to the Internet.

But the problem for the Media™ and .GOV was that the Internet had shattered their ability to carefully script a single narrative. It had also destroyed their ability to memory hole or gloss over big stories. Now those passionate people could chronicle entire events that the .GOV would rather you forget, or, better yet, never even know about. The carefully crafted defamation of everyone who believed in something outside of the Approved Narrative as a Conspiracy Theorist began to crumble.

People say it’s a small world, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to paint it. And in that small world where communication had drastically lowered the time for information to come out, and also made it harder for the information to be erased. The Genie of information, once out of the bottle, couldn’t be put back in.

Does anyone know what an ink blot test is? I Googled® it, but only found pictures of my parents yelling at me.

The Wild West continued. Google® had a corporate slogan of Don’t be Evil® and Amazon™ would sell most any book that was it was legal to sell. And the established Media© and .GOV still had no real understanding of how to control what people see and hear and remember. The Internet was built to be decentralized, and hard to control.

I think, from what I see so far that the strategy has been to do at least five things:

Throw Lots of Content Out

Oddly, even though the major news sources keep firing journalists, they keep making more stuff. What kind of stuff? Clickbait, really. Stories with little informational content, stories about celebrities, top 10 lists of best/worst/etc. (fill in the blank). These aren’t news – they’re entertainment. Heck, one browser I have on my phone has (it looks like) computer-generated compilations of posts from Reddit®. The idea is to distract. And if the algorithm is good enough, heck, maybe that person will forget what they were looking for in the first place.

Marginalize and Trivialize

This is one that’s carried on from the past. If I had written a post about MK-Ultra (where the CIA essentially acted like the worst possible mixture of Jeffrey Dahmer and the DMV) in the 1960s, it would have been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” at best. The idea isn’t to contradict, it’s to hit the person making the accusation with personal attacks, and make it sound like they’re a nutcase. And when the facts come out? Minimize them – make them sound unimportant, “Oh, that tear gas we used at Waco? Well it may be flammable, but only in super-high concentrations. We won the war. Go back to sleep.”

So, Alex Jones was right again, eh?

Control Discussion

How many people that you interact with are . . . real?

I’ve recently gotten robocalls that are very sophisticated, so much so that they nearly get through the uncanny valley of sounding right. But what if the sound wasn’t an issue? In a Twitter® comment it isn’t. It is known that a significant percentage of Twitter® users are bots – programmed to interact. Why would anyone go to that level of trouble? Because they want to sell you something – an ideology, a candidate, or PEZ™. They’re also useful to make it seem like there’s a consensus.

People are wired as pack animals, and generally want to be a part of the group, to not be left out. Plus, a group of bots can drown out viewpoints and ideas and bury them in a sea of text. On a related note, how many conversations are taking place on the Internet that are nothing more than one bot talking to another?

Control Access

Most people come to this website either directly or from other blogs. The web search traffic I get is amazingly low – most days less than 3% of my traffic. That’s new. I used to get more traffic from search engines (20%+) but after July or so of 2020, Google™ shut the valve, and traffic dropped. Likewise, I know that this site is banned by corporations. Why? Maybe my ideas are considered to be . . . dangerous.

A related question is this: just how many website hits does Google® really have? I searched for Civil War Weather Report and noted I wasn’t on the first page. I jumped ahead to page 18. If you’ll note, on an earlier page, Google© claims that there are 34,800,000 results. But when you get to page 18, well, there are only 174 results. I know I’ve written nearly 40 Civil War Weather Reports. Funny that I didn’t see ‘em all in this list . . .

Note that Amazon®, which for a long time would not ban any legal book, now bans hundreds if not thousands of books merely because Amazon™ disagrees with their ideas.

Just Keep Lying

It seems to work for the FBI, Bill Clinton, and the CIA, so why not expand it to the Media®? That’s just what they do. These pictures will help illustrate the problem:

So, in the end, it has been established that the Media© wants to control you. The only remaining question so that we can put the pressure where it needs to be is this: who controls the Media™?

Unplug Yourself From Things That Drain You. And Kardashians.

Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. – The Matrix

Okay, it’s not great. The other one was, “What do you get when Keanu Reeves does ‘shrooms? Neo-sporin.” See, I saved you from that.

Unplug yourself.

I mean, don’t stop coming here. That would be silly, because you definitely want to associate yourself with someone who has the amazingly good hygiene and stellar good looks that I do. I mean, unplug yourself from places that make you mad.

Consciously, most of my posts, while letting you know the unvarnished Truth with a capital T* (*really, as best as I know it), are meant to poke fun at it. It might make you think about things that you really don’t want to think about. I understand. I’m still sorry about that Kardashian meme.

Honestly, dating a Kardashian would be like dating a wookie®.

Well, obviously not that sorry.

Back to the Truth.

Most people that I talk to have an Agent Smith (from The Matrix, not that pesky ATF guy who keeps asking if the stuffed dog I have is filled with Tannerite, because, let’s face it, the only thing that ATF agents love shooting more than kids is dogs) moment.

No, the Agent Smith moment I have with friends goes like this: I talk about facts. They nod. I talk about actual events. They nod. Then I bring up a premise that is inescapable: “So, we agree gravity exists.” Nod. “And I’m holding a coffee mug over a 1,000 foot (4.3 Celsius) cliff.” Nod. “And if I drop it, it will fall down, and shatter into a million pieces, and it will never be able to be put together again.”

Then Agent Smith takes over the conversation. “Well, I don’t want to think about that.” The conversation is over. There is a step that they cannot take. It’s like me trying to convince them that a constant diet of candy corn, Twinkies®, fried Snickers® bars, and drinking the fluid from a chocolate fountain that 359 kindergarteners have been putting their booger-soaked fingers into isn’t a good diet.

This is what happens when you follow the USDA food pyramid.

I recall having a conversation several years ago with a guy on the Left. “Yes, John Wilder, I agree. Massive immigration is destroying every one of the values in our country. But strawberries might be more expensive if we didn’t allow them in.”

My response was rather simple, “So, you, a guy on the Left, wants to pay people less so you can have cheaper strawberries? Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay people more, pay less than 1% of what you make in a month to pay Americans enough to give you strawberries?”

Agent Smith took over his mind. “Umm, well, I don’t understand those things very well.”

I took him to the ledge, but he refused to look over.

But, hey, he saved $0.35 this week.

That’s the Truth. And, I assure you, the Truth is your friend.

What is Truth? Step on a scale. Look down. The number is the Truth. Try to pick up a weight. If you can, you can. That is Truth. The Iron never lies. The scale never lies.

I was working with a person who noted I had lost some weight. He asked me, “How can I lose weight?”

My response was simple: “Weigh yourself. Every day. The scale doesn’t lie.”

The look on his face was amazing. I think he wanted me to tell him, “Believe in aliens, bigfoot (bigfeet?) and the Loch Ness Monster, drink seven shots of Hershey’s® chocolate syrup ever night, and you’ll lose 27 pounds a week.” When I told him to weigh himself, his face fell.

He didn’t want the Truth. And I didn’t follow up with, “By the way, I also rarely eat between Saturday night and Friday,” because that would bake the gourd of most people. They don’t want to know that losing weight sucks, that it requires amazing work and walking into the house at night after work and telling The Mrs., “No dinner for me, I’m fasting.”

I’ve been doing this whole Intermittent Fasting thing. Bums me out. I did it at least nine times today.

People want pretty lies. Yet, the healthiest thing for them is the Truth. Just before I started writing this, Frequent Commenter Ricky emailed me a story that said that, per FDA guidelines, water could not be labeled as, “healthy”. So, enjoy all the Gatorade®, Pepsi™, and Coca-Slop© that you want. It doesn’t have fat in it, so, according to bad science dating back to before I was born, it’s better for you than water.

Nope, the Truth sucks. People are awful. Bad guys win – a lot. People get old. And then they die. All of us die. And, the FDA lies. But, most of you come here regularly. Can you handle the Truth? Yup, you can. And you seek it. I think most of you understand that.

But there is a group of people who are trying to demoralize you. The easiest way to win a battle, per George S. Patton, Jr., is to make the enemy afraid of you. Yet, they wouldn’t have to do any of this if they had won.

They haven’t won. They are desperate to win, yet you and I remain, stubborn, like islands in the middle of a hurricane. We live. We persist. And we will win. That’s what scares them the most.

Why am I so stubborn? I’m not telling you.

So, when you see something that makes you feel like all is lost, remember, that’s them whispering in your ear. The want you to think that you can’t win, even though everything that is right, beautiful, and True is on your side. When you see this sort of demoralization?

Turn it off.

Don’t go back. Not because you’re afraid of opposing viewpoints, but because you refuse to have your emotions manipulated. Never, ever, let Agent Smith inside. Seek the Truth. It’s there. Unless it’s a Kardashian that isn’t hairy.

That’s a lie.

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.” Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died. I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this: people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it. Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around. My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.” These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool. In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people. I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille. And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all. The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them. In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted. Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption. I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class. How do we know they’re obscene? YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude. When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms. In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities. The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia. That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance. I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired. Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery. So, yeah. Blame Canada. I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this. Not all women, of course. I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women. But Canada says it’s okay. And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children. And there’s nothing bad that can come of that. Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism. I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true. Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood. How can I prove this? THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN. It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming. Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

Yup. Martha’s Vineyard. Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right? Well, no. Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous. Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there. But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours. Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real. It destroys families. And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers. Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits? Continents burn.

I guess that works for me. I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine. They can soak in it.

Me? I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me. And? Go Netherlands! You guys rock!!!! (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)

Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done

“Santa Maria! Captain, you cannot punish the crew like this. They will mutiny!” – Sealab 2021

The big problem with the French Revolution is that lots of folks lost their heads.

Have a long way to drive tomorrow, so here’s a repeat. Enjoy!

One winter, while hunting elk up on Wilder Mountain, we had, well, an issue. We were about fifteen or twenty miles in from the nearest pavement, and headed home.

It was overcast. It was lazily spitting snow, with a breeze that was slowly picking up. Looking to the west, where there should be a resplendent sunset, the sky was dark, heavy, and pendulous with brooding storm clouds that blotted out even a hint of the winter Sun.

That was when the problem hit. Pa Wilder, while driving over a “road” that was little more than a common path cut by four-wheel-drive vehicles over the course of decades of hunting and firewood gathering, drove over a small branch that had fallen in the road. Not a problem, right?

Well, it was a problem. In this case, the branch had the stem of a broken off limb, sticking straight up. Pa drove the GMC Jimmy® right over that sharp shard of limb.

In the span of a dozen or so feet, we had lost not one, but two tires. It penetrated the center of each tire, poking a hole the size of a half-dollar coin in each.

Amazingly, we had lost another tire already that day, already.

Ahhh, I remember this trip. Those were the Goodyears®.

We now had a four-wheel drive with five tires and three flats. In winter. As a blizzard approached and night was setting in. And all of this was in country where it could easily hit -40°F as night descended.

I bring this up to say that we had a mission. Our mission at that point in time was to get home. There were several challenges, and I’m pretty sure if most people were in the backcountry as a blizzard was descending that the last person they would choose would be a 12-year-old boy to be a guy on the team.

Which is sad.

Children can have missions. Children can face danger. Children can do important things. We forget that because we’re in a society that doesn’t give children important things to do, mostly. Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were as young as 14.

I hear the Russians just canceled their Penguin Army program. Now all they have left is Navy Seals.

To be clear: Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were 14. A midshipman is an officer. If you were unaware, the Royal Navy wasn’t a social club, and often those boys fought in wars. As officers.

So we forgot that boys can be given real, substantial responsibility. But there’s also the chance that we forget something else: that each of us is on a mission. And each of us has a role to play.

We currently are in a place where freedom is an increasingly precious and rare commodity. It’s not just in the United States – Trump may have said, “Make America Great Again” but down under they seem to be following the “Make Australia A Prison Again” plan. And Canada?

I love our Canadabros that come by regularly (Canada is the second-largest readership here), but Canada seems to be determined to become the Soviet Above the 49^th Parallel, led by that Tundra Trotsky, Trudeau.

Pictured in background: the only two Canadians Justin’s mother didn’t have sex with.

It seems like in this day and age we all have a mission. Just like 12 isn’t too young, 80 isn’t too old.

Frankly, we need all hands on deck. The size of the mission is the largest on the North American continent since 1774. I almost wrote that the idea was to preserve the Constitution and the Republic. Seriously, I’d love nothing more than to write that.

I’d love for that to happen. I’d love for us to come together. I’d settle for the laws to look like they did 90 years ago. Heck, even 70 years ago. That would be preferable to today.

A reversion, sadly, is impossible.

Whatever will come from tomorrow will not look like the past. It may be a shadow. The Holy Roman Emperors weren’t Roman. And the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t the Roman Empire.

And I hear that soon enough he’ll be sending ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire, too. Can’t you just sniff the leadership?

Or it may be something entirely different.

I think it will be entirely different.

And that’s where you come in. Yes, you.

You have a mission to create a new nation here. It won’t look like what we have today – it simply cannot, since we have created a situation that is at the far end of stability, but more on that Wednesday.

I assure you, you play a part. The initial conditions of what happens are crucial to the final outcome. If George Washington had wanted to be King? If Thomas Jefferson had been a Martian Terminator Robot like the one that keeps triggering my motion detector lights at night even though the sheriff won’t believe me?

Things would be entirely different.

And you are important. Your actions in the next decade are critical to the creation of what will come after. Do we want a nation that will be based on slavery, control, and that eternal boot stamping on a human face?

I’d vote no. If you’re a regular here, I’m betting that’s your vote, too.

I think everything he wrote was Orwellian.

If so, let me shout as loudly as I can: You Are Not Done. This is Not Over. What is it that you can do to create a world where freedom beats slavery? What can you do to create a world where children can run free from the indoctrination of an all-powerful, all-regulating state?

There’s a lot.

Our nation was, thankfully, built on the consent of the governed. Most things that local government provides, we want. To quote Python, Monty:

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

To be clear: the Federal government does very little to make anything in the list above better, and often does a lot to make them worse. Except for the interstate highways. Those are actually pretty cool.

But I will tell you – you are the seed of the future of this country. You are the seed of the future of this continent.

Never cross a Scrabble® player. They’ll send you threatening letters.

You are the seed of the future of this world. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The time is coming, and coming quickly where great injustices will be attempted. And you are the seed to make what comes after better for humanity. Would the world rather live in 1950’s America or 1930’s U.S.S.R.?

The choice is stark.

Your mission is clear. How will you act to make your county, your state, your country one where free men can walk?

It’s up to you.

Back to the mountain.

For me, it was a game. That’s the advantage of being 12. Pa Wilder and my older brother (also named John due to a typographical error) and I wheeled the tires so we had two good ones in front. We locked in the hubs on the four-wheel drive.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to drive up a mountain path in a car with only two tires in a snowstorm as it got darker every minute. It doesn’t work very well. The flat back wheels couldn’t push the Jimmy® up the hill.

That’s where I came in. It was my job to take the winch cable, run up the hill, and loop the cable up the base of a tree. Pa would then use the combination of the winch and the two front tires to pull the Jimmy© up.

Tree by tree, cable length by cable length, we worked pretty flawlessly as a team to get the Jimmy™ to the top of the hill. Thankfully, for the most part it was downhill from there. Although Pa was driving on the rims, we got it home.

Don’t let the jack slip on your foot when you’re changing a tire. You might need a toe.

Was there danger? Certainly, there always is. We had snow, so we had water. Ma would have called the Sheriff not too long after dusk, and even though the mountains were a labyrinth of roads, people had seen us. We also had matches, hatchets, wool blankets, gasoline, and a mountain’s worth of firewood to keep us warm.

But we also had a mission. Each of us served our purpose, and we got home.

Pa was a bit raw about having to buy two new rims and three new tires for a day’s worth of not seeing any elk, though. For the record, I never saw a single elk when hunting with Pa. I’m telling you, that man knew how to hunt. Finding? Sometimes I think he just wanted a good drive in the woods and hike with his boys, teaching them about living. Teaching them about missions, and the part that they play, whether they know it or not.

In this life, we all have a mission, and we all play a part in it. I can assure you that your part is not done, because you’re above ground, breathing, and reading this.

I hate to repeat something so trite, but in this case, it’s true: you are not done. This is not over. And the whole world depends . . . on you.

It’s up to you. You will create the future.

So, go do it.

The Backlash Against Journalists Begins

“Let them have the cabbage. We here at I.N.S. will feast on journalistic filet mignon.” – The Night Stalker

An honest journalist walked into CNN®. The network head asked, “What are you doing here?”

I guess Trudeau had enough of people being mean to journalists. I mean, we know that Justin Trudeau is the most tolerant person in Canada, right?

But he’s the most qualified person to be prime minister, right?

Huh. Perhaps not. But certainly, he has the best in mind for his people.

Well, thankfully the vaxx is helping people stay alive. I mean, it’s not like mortality is up by double (or nearly double) in the ages from 25-55. Oh, wait . . . .

I wonder how people will react to that?

Certainly, that didn’t happen, that journalists and the press wanted awful things to happen to people that had a different opinion. I mean, is there any evidence of that?

I guess after that, I’m getting the subtle hint that they might not like folks who were somewhat suspicious of a new technology unleashed with minimal testing.

But at least the vaxx works.

I’ll let Sam Hyde have the last word.

Government Nutrition Advice: About To Get Worse

“Janine, someone with your qualifications would have no trouble finding a top-flight job in either the food service or housekeeping industries.” – Ghostbusters

What celebrity loves cereal the most and is always prepared to eat it? Reese. With her spoon.

It sounds like how you would describe my hair.

“Tufts.”

Weirdly, it’s also a college in Massachusetts, which has very little to do with my hair. The last time I was in Massachusetts, I was looking for a lumberjack dressed like a patriot – I heard they had a Boston Lager©.

But back to Tufts®. It turns out that when famous showman P.T. Barnum wanted to give a college money, he chose them, I’m guessing because he likes a good joke. Although P.T. Barnum didn’t really say, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” it looks like Tufts© has adopted that phrase as their motto.

And the suckers that Tufts™ is currently targeting is . . . us.

American “official, government-approved™” nutritional guidelines have been a mess for all of my conscious life. Food quadrants. Food pyramids. Food tetrahedra. Actual government policy since 1969: “The same 1500 calories of sugar is better for you than 1500 calories of steak” – which came from after nutritionists (from Harvard™, no less!) in the 1960s got paid off.

My friend turned vegan – it was like I’d never seen herbivore.

I think that the results over the last fifty years have plainly shown that the government-suggested diet is awful. And I think that, further, the cheapest foods that many people consume on a daily basis is equally awful, but more on that, later.

The first conference on nutrition was held in 1969, and you can see how well that has worked out by all the skinny and fit people wandering around. The idiot in charge of this is a spell-check challenging person by the name Dariush Mozaffarian. To me, his name sounds like the founder of a Jamaican cannabis religion, but, no, he’s the head of a group that’s working with Joe Biden to further enrich big food companies no, make people fatter no, “build bigger backsides”.

I’ve seen the preliminary results of the mess that they’re likely to introduce. It’s called a Food Compass. The “compass” combines “9 domains and 54 individual attributes” to produce a single number between 1 and 100. I’m not kidding, and they claim to have done this evaluation on over 8,000 foods.

1 is “bad”. 100 is “good”. I don’t know if that makes it much of a compass, but I can already see that this is headed south. Instead of “don’t eat crap” it’s now going to be some ludicrous phrase like “Follow the Food Compass™ to Health®” and then Kamala will giggle like she’s been hotboxing ether with Hunter.

Yup, this is likely going to be official government policy – and one of Mozaffarian’s papers is titled, Mandating front-of-package food labels in the U.S. – What are the First Amendment obstacles?, so that should make you certain that there’s no threat of government force to mandate everyone. Oh, wait, this is Biden. His world consists only of mandates, pudding pops, and looking for fresh hair to sniff.

If The Mrs. made whiskey, I’d love her still.

Thankfully, Hair Plugs University®, oops, Tufts™ put a list of some of the foods that they had rated. I had a batch of comparisons I was going to make but decided I’d just put out a list so you could judge how well the compass works for yourself. I want to remind you, that these numbers came directly from the Tufts’© website:

Tomato Juice, 100
Cheerios™, 95
Almond milk, 86
Orange Juice, 78
Chocolate-covered almonds, 78
Soy milk, 71
Potato Chips, 69
PowerBar©, 67
Peanut butter sandwich, 66
Fritos®, 55
Pineapple, canned, heavy syrup, 51
M&M’s™, 44
Chocolate ice cream cone with nuts, 37
Cheddar cheese, 36
Steak, 33

No, I didn’t goof up. This isn’t Bizzaro™ World©. These “scientists” are trying to say with a straight face that eating M&M’s© is better than eating steak. That eating potato chips is healthier than eating cheddar cheese. I could keep comparing, but food analogies are the Cheetos® of conversation.

I keep breath mints in my sleeveless jacket. I call it my Tic-Tactical® vest.

It is clear that these recommendations are going to be very, very bad. On the list as better than cheese and steak (which we have been eating for millennia) is candy. Also on the list are many things that simply have never existed in nature. How does one milk an almond or a soy? Where are the nipples even at?

Part of the problem with highly processed foods (like Cheerios™) is that they are essentially pre-digested. They hit the digestive system harder and faster than their more natural and unprocessed counterparts, which also creates spikes in insulin. Oh, wait, that seems to be a problem that leads to obesity and early death.

As found.

Cheerios© are certainly not as bad as M&M’s©, but both steak and cheese are better. And better for you. Steak and cheese are better, in my opinion, than every food ranked higher by the idiots at Tufts©. It will likely soon be government policy to encourage people to jam their cheeks with food that will kill them.

The food industry is about this: getting the most profit. How to do that? Jam the most calories into a food that tastes good enough to make people come back for more. Health? What’s that? Health doesn’t show up on the balance sheet.

If only someone could solve this problem. If only . . . oh, wait. Want to find physically healthy people with odd beards? Look to the Amish farmers that spend their days eating the food that comes off their farms. The first study I found on the Internet indicated that only 4% of Amish folks were obese.

Huh.

Do you know what drives me buggy? Me horsey.

Now, the Amish are also physically active, too, in most cases. But not in all cases. And they have pies. And cakes. But they don’t have almond milk. Or soy milk.

But when you look at their beards?

Tufts. And I’d trust those tufts over P.T. Barnum’s Tufts™.

Total Recall: Looking Back On The COVID Crisis

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in? I didn’t even know sleep. It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn” – Deadpool

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup. I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman.”

[Wilder Note: I’ve been meaning to dig this post out for a while, especially since something that WordPress did mangled a bit of the original with weird characters. I wrote it originally on March 25, 2020. This was meant as a prediction of what we’d see going through the ‘Rona. It has been wilder than even I would expect, and in many ways I think I undersold what we’d see. That being said, I’m not sure we’re done going through The Cliff phase and into Disillusionment. I’d love your feedback.]

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost. Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target. I call that a win-win. Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See? You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice. When it was lunchtime, I wasn’t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch. Good times. I do have a concern: The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, “nice butt” so I’m thinking of bringing this up with HR. I want to be treated as more than a sexual object. I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derriere, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months. While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do. Certainly, we want to get this all behind us, in the rearview, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop. Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough. I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned? Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis. This provides way in which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the others this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.

This is like the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind. Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind? It’s so nice and cheery. The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

Who would he assassinate for a Klondike® bar? Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis. It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I. Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say no. The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment. With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu? We don’t trust the media very much. Why? They don’t seem trustworthy. Example: when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist. When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNN© and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf: in the end, the wolves really attacked.

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be. It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War. The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was. It’s the spark that lights the fire. When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards. The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently. It is disruptive. It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system. In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant. COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy. Was it poised for a fall anyway? Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts: what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it. When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch. Why? Habit, partially. But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person. It’s more inertia. You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction. COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu. But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States. Italy is locked down. In two weeks, we will know more. In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it. But the rules are new, and unknown. What to do? One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or? One could Panic. Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality. So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time? Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®? Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought? Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

Not all heroes are able to walk. I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show. Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism. Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism is realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required. Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.

There was a family story: Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard. She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover. Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Why ration needles and sugar? To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part. To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going. Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK). Read it all.

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners. My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy. Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order. In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did. Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff. I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff. Is it certain that there is one? No. But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there. I believe we will see it. The new normal will grow from events moving quickly. Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home-cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home-cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough. How deep will it go? As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows. The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so. Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense. 80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments. The average monthly car payment is $800. Me? I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole. But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off. The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through. The second best restaurant didn’t survive. There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses. I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt. Overall loss to the economy? 40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case? Sure. We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good. We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up. That’s the best case. And that’s just in the United States.

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is. If we’re lucky.

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck. We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over. Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal. Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope. The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be. Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves. The length of time Disillusionment lasts? Months to years.

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff. Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly. Rebuilding the economy will take years. If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly? The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive. Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important. Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

So, I guess I’ll get a jump start on rebuilding. Dishwashers on the Internet. Amazing. My only problem is that there’s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time. Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her! They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

The End of COVID, And Mining Salt From Leftist Tears

“That’s the saltiest thing I ever tasted, and I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt.” – Futurama

Think they were crying at CNN® when they wrote that headline?

The CDC® has just sent out the word: Corona-Chan is over. The ‘Vid is over, served its purpose, finished, and, whereas last year Joe Biden wanted everyone who wouldn’t submit to the Vaxx fired, well, now it is over.

Done. Doesn’t mean that at certain places that they still can’t fire you for not having been Vaxxed, but it’s starting to look a bit silly.

There are, apparently, a group of people that have looked on the ‘Rona as one of their base sacraments, nearly an item of worship.

The CDC is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It maketh me to inject mRNA: it leadeth all men with slight fevers to quarantine.
It affirmith my gender: Biden leadeth me in the paths of inflation for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Drumpf, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy heckin’ science and stimulus checks, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of Cheeto Hitler: thou anointest my hair with unnatural colors; my electric car runneth over people.
Surely virtue signaling shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Corona forever.

Except, not. I’m thinking with midterm elections coming up, just like Biden declared victory on inflation, he can declare victory on the ‘Rona. And here in Modern Mayberry I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen anyone in a mask. It’s simply not a thing anymore. Oh, yeah, several vaxxed folks I know have had the ‘Rona. Shocking, that:

But, the Left simply cannot fathom a life without one of their fears, it’s like they’re in some weird, inverted sense, comforted by their fear. Their reaction is telling, so, without further ado, I’ll let them (mostly) tell it in their own terms.

Warning: some of the language is a bit salty – they’re pretty butthurt about this one.

Let’s start with Reddit®