Month: December 2024

This might be the most important case regarding the Second Amendment since Heller.

Kolbe v. Hogan

This case started when the Fourth Circuit Court issued their opinion in Kolbe v. Hogan. Fourteen judges sat, en banc to hear a challenge to Maryland’s “assault weapon ban”. Only four of the judges found that the Second Amendment protected the right of The People to acquire, posses, and use “assault weapons”.

Judge King wrote the opinion of the majority. They start with story telling.

You can always tell that an opinion will be a great legal work when the opinion starts with stories of events taking place, outside the legal system. In this case, they decide that the most professional way to start an opinion is by telling their version of the evil Bushmaster AR-15 type rifle that killed so many children at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The entire reference to human autonomy is “a gunman” Everything else is the action of those evil “assault weapons”.

They go on to list other mass shootings, all done by evil black rifles.

Using the standard tap dance of the time, the lower court found that the law implicated the Second Amendment and then decided the government should win, so selected “intermediate scrutiny.”

A three judge merits panel of the Fourth Circuit split for The People, vacating the lower court’s rulings and telling them to “do it over, using strict scrutiny.”

The Fourth Circuit could let this stand, so the en banc vacated the merit panel’s opinion and heard the case.

The en banc Fourth Circuit then decided that the proper position wasn’t strict scrutiny, nor even intermediate scrutiny. No, they decided that “large capacity magazines” and “assault weapons” don’t even implicate the Second Amendment because they are “like” “M-16 rifles.”

Bianchi v. Frosh

This Second Amendment Challenge was started as one of the many cases attempting to get another Second Amendment case before the supreme court. It was a direct challenge to Kolbe.

As such, the case barely paused for a rubber stamp at the district level. The district court, correctly, ruled that they had to follow the superior court, the fourth circuit, and found for the defendants (bad guys).

The gist of the court’s opinion was: This question has been asked and answered by the circuit court. You lose.

The plaintiffs filed an appeal, as planned.

This went before a three judge merits panel. That panel did the same thing the district court did. “The en banc has been asked this question and they answered. You lose.”

On December 20, 2021, the plaintiffs filed a petition for a writ of certiorari. At that point, this became one of a half dozen Second Amendment cases waiting for a writ of certiorari.

In the end, the Supreme Court chose to hear New York Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen.

Justice Thomas wrote the opinion in Bruen and it was powerful.

On Aug 1st, 2022, certiorari was granted in Bianchi. The Supreme Court vacated the opinion of the Fourth Circuit and remanded the case to “do it right”.

Moving at lighting speed, the Fourth Circuit merit’s panel scheduled and heard the case on Dec. 6th, 2022.

And then nothing. For over a year, nothing.

Then on January 12th, 2024, the Fourth Circuit granted a rehearing en banc. Nobody had requested a rehearing, the Fourth just decided to yank it from the merits panel’s hands before they could issue their opinion.

Reading between the lines and often on the lines, it was clear that the merits panel was going to issue an opinion favorable to The People. The dissenting judge refused to provide the dissenting opinion, keeping the opinion from being published.

The en banc Fourth Circuit heard oral arguments on March 20th, 2024.

The plaintiffs filed another petition for writ of certiorari, but it was denied because the case was still in an interlocutory state.

In a surprising move, the Fourth Circuit published their opinion in only 5 months. It was as bad as we expected.

The majority opinion with respectful consideration and benefit of Bruen” upheld their original judgement. They found that they had done it right in Kolbe and that “assault weapons” are outside the ambit of protection of the Second Amendment.

Snope v. Brown

This case has been going on for so long that the AG of Maryland has changed, and might change again before this case is heard. The original lead plaintiff has left the state of Maryland, making David Snope the lead plaintiff.

The petition for writ of certiorari was filed August 21st, 2024.

The state, waited to the last minute, then filed a motion to extend the time to respond. This should have been a no-brainer. They knew this case was going to be appealed. This is just the state intentionally stalling.

By September 23rd, all the plaintiff and amicus curiae supporting the plaintiff had been filed. Not a single filing by the state.

On October 9th, the state requested another 30 days. This was limited to just two extra weeks. This is a big win for The People.

The Supreme Court is now in the 2024 term. This runs from August 2024 through June 2025. All briefings and arguments need to be completed in time for the court to come to a decision and write their opinions before the end of the term.

This means that any case that will be heard in the 2024 term must be granted cert. before the end of January. With final briefings filed by November 12th, the case is conferenced for December 13th. If the state had gotten a 30-day extension, the case might not have been conferenced until mid-January, pushing oral arguments into the 2025 Term.

Remember, this was before the election. The state was hoping that they could push the case into the next presidential term and hope for a more favorable to the state Supreme Court.

In every case before the Supreme Court, the most important part is making sure the question presented is representative and will focus the opinion correctly.

Here is how the state put the question:

Wow, that is difficult to parse. I think it might be a question, there is a question mark at the end of the paragraph.

Translation:

1. Is Maryland’s assault weapon ban consistent with Heller?
2. Did the Fourth Circuit faithfully apply Bruen?
3. Is there a need to resolve a conflict among the lower courts?

I was once a teaching assistant for a computer science professor. His examines were horrible. He thought I was there to proctor the exam. Instead, I took the exam. Scored my answers against the answer sheet outside in the hall. Then told him which questions he would be throwing out as bad questions.

He loved to add negatives to his questions. I can’t even write a question the way he did. It wasn’t uncommon for one of his multiple choice questions to have four or more negatives in it. I taught the students to count the number of negatives. If it was an odd number, then it is a true negative. If it was an even number, then it was a positive.

This increased the grades of all the students significantly.

As normal, the next lecture was students challenging questions on the exam. After the second challenge, he took my list, read it to the class stating, “These are the questions that Chris said to remove. I’m going to remove them.”

He gained 75% of the lecture time back. After the next exam, he didn’t even let the challenges start. He read the list of questions that were being tossed.

This “question” reminds me of attempting to decode Dr. Reed’s exam questions.

Compare the state’s convoluted “question” with the plaintiff’s question:

Hmm, that is much easier to parse.

Conclusion

We should know by mid-January if this case is granted cert. If it is, you can expect all the usual suspects to jump in with amici curiae briefs. Some will be fun reading, most will be emotional blackmail.

The subject of vaccinations is of importance to me because I strongly believe in childhood vaccines. Robert F. Kennedy has plans for vaccines, and the Left is in a tizzy over it, so I wanted to discuss it a bit. But first…

A bit of background on me. My first daughter was born in the 90s, and as a dutiful parent, I took her in for her first set of shots when I was told to. She got her shot, and about 30 minutes after she got it, she started screaming. Not crying, but screaming, that sound that causes parents to run to the ER. I thought at first it was just a bit of lingering pain from the shot, so I did warm washcloths at the vaccination site, baby Tylenol, snuggles, breastfeeding, all that stuff. The screaming continued. She barely breathed. It was just a continuous scream, like the sound out of a piece of machinery. I called my doctor, and in the middle of that call, she stopped. Other than the fact that she was exhausted from screaming for a couple of hours, it was like nothing happened. She was bubbly, happy, eating again… My doctor suggested that we wait until she was older to get any further vaccinations, because that was definitely Not Normal.

I ended up not getting any of her childhood vaccines. I was too afraid that she would end up screaming and in pain again. By the time my daughter was about 3 or 4, Dr. Andrew Wakefield published a study that made claims he had proven that vaccines caused autism. I skimmed his study, but at the time I was not a good researcher, nor was I an experienced adult. I assumed that Dr. Wakefield wouldn’t have been published if his study wasn’t good. I decreed that my child would never be vaccinated again.

Of course, that didn’t happen. To get my kid into school, I had to get her vaccinated. I didn’t live in the States at the time, and my option was to lie and say I was a member of a religion that didn’t allow vaccinations. That was the only exception allowed. I didn’t lie, and my kid got vaccinated, in a truncated schedule that allowed her to enter kindergarten with her peers. She was fine, and she’s not autistic.

We now know, of course, that Dr. Wakefield’s study(1) was critically flawed, and that vaccines do not cause autism. In fact, not only is there no causation, there’s not even any correlation. His study and one other made some extremely bad jumps in (lack of) logic and the scare of the late 90s and early 2000s was enacted. I was caught up in that. I did not want my later children to be vaccinated, because my memory of my first child’s experience, along with my emotional reaction to the study, put me into a froth. My partner explained that the study was wrong, and sent me off to learn more about it.

That led to one of my first true research deep dives. I had to educate myself in order to understand a lot of what I was reading. I didn’t want to depend on experts, because it was an “expert” who had misled me the first time. By the time I was done, I was not only willing to get the kids vaccinated, I was demanding we do so.

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In 2017, Mr. Wilson was arrested for trespass. When searched, it was discovered he had a firearm on him. He did not have a license to carry.

His case was heard in the lower courts of Hawaii, later it was appealed to the Supreme Court of Hawaii.

There, the court found that because he had not attempted to get a carry license, he could not claim a Second Amendment defense. They then took multiple nasty shots at the Supreme Court of the United States and in the Bruen opinion.

Mr. Wilson then filed a petition for writ of certiorari. On the 9th of December, that petition was denied.

Justice Thomas wrote respecting the denial of certiorari. Justice Alito joined him. Justice Gorsuch also wrote a statement.

No justice wrote to say they would have granted cert. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch all agreed that cert. should be denied.

Oh my, the Hawaii Supreme Court was spanked, hard.

The Second Amendment litigators were also chastised. Thomas et al. have stated clearly, “We are not going to grant certiorari on cases that are still in an interlocutory posture.”

As a Second Amendment litigator, stop appealing during the interlocutory phase. If you win, great. You can find in the appeals. If you are going to lose, lose as quickly as possible, then appeal.

Appealing TROs and preliminary injunctions just delays getting a win. I’m not even sure it is worth asking for TROs and preliminary injunctions. Again, it is just a delay.

In the jurisdictions where these battles are being fought, the appeals courts are not on our side. If you request a TRO and it is not granted, the appeal to the circuit court will lose, but it will add months of time to the process, and it increases the costs as well.

If you request a TRO, and it is granted, the state is going to appeal. Having appealed, the circuit court will stay the TRO, the case then will be scheduled for oral arguments months later.

We are much better off moving to final judgement as quickly as possible.

For your Christmas pleasure:

Originally from Neptune’s Daughter.

I adore sausage gravy and biscuits. They’re the ultimate comfort food. The biscuits are a wee bit sweet, and the sausage gravy is a bit spicy and savory and creamy, all at once. I always make mine with an egg, though you can do what you want with yours.

Ingredients for the sausage gravy:

• 1 lb ground sausage meat (Jones or Jimmy Dean work well)
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 to 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1 to 2 cups of milk (regular, cream, or non-dairy is fine)

In a large pan, brown your ground sausage meat over a medium heat. You want it to be thoroughly cooked, but not crispy or burned. Drain off the fat, and reserve it (pro tip: add a lining of tin foil to a bowl and strain your fat into it… after, use what you want by spooning it out, then discard the rest, wrapped up in the foil). Remove the sausage and set aside.

Add 2 tablespoons of the fat back into your pan and add in the onion. Saute over a medium heat until the onion until becomes soft and opaque. Add in the garlic and stir continuously for about 30 seconds to a minute. You want the garlic to be fragrant, but not brown or crisp. Add extra fat if necessary.

Sprinkle the onion mixture with the flour, and stir with a wooden spoon until it’s incorporated and clumpy. If it’s very loose and saucy, you may need a bit more flour. If it’s all white and not mixing into the onion, you may need a bit more fat. The idea is to make a roux.

Lower your heat to just below medium. Pour in your milk very slowly, about a quarter cup at a time, and stir gently and constantly with a wooden spoon. Work on getting rid of any lumps or bits of unincorporated flour to ensure your gravy comes out smooth. Continue to add your milk until the gravy is a good consistency for you. You want to end up with a smooth, fairly thick gravy that is easy to stir and has no lumps.

If your gravy “breaks,” meaning it separates into lumpy bits and oily liquid, you can fix it. Add warm water a tablespoon at a time and whisk vigorously in between. This should allow your gravy to emulsify again, and get creamy. The water must be warm, not hot or cold, for this to work.

Once your gravy is how you like it, add the sausage back in and stir to mix it well. Set aside until your biscuits are done!

Now it’s time to make the biscuits!

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My first fiber switch turned out to be a L3 managed “switch”. Way cool. But I purchased a cheap switch and found that it completely undocumented.

It has taken me a while to figure things out.

The configuration GUI is an What You See Is All You Get type. There is enough there that you can get the switch up and running, but not enough to fully configure the L3 Switch.

To accomplish that, you need to use the CLI. Not a problem, I like CLI’s.

Of course, there is no documentation but for tab completion and very limited help screens.

I get it mostly working.

After playing with the Free Range Routing Suite (FRR) for a while and getting OSPF working on all of my hosts and the primary router, I was feeling pretty confident.

It seems that FRR took their configuration model almost directly from Cisco’s CLI. The number of times I used a Cisco help page to determine how to configure an OSPF setting is remarkable.

The new L3 switch turns out to have a Cisco like configuration language. And what isn’t Cisco like, is FRR like. Neither Cisco nor FRR, but close.

Today I had a tremendous success, I moved a ceph host from the physical network to the OVN network.

This included moving that segment of the network to a new subnet. And everything sort of worked.

The issue turned out to be a routing issue.

The correct answer is to turn on OSPF within the new physical router. It does support it, after all.

Having played with the damn thing for a few hours, breaking my network multiple times, I was about to give up when I happened to notice a strange value for a setting.

That setting? MTU, of course.

Even though every interface shows an MTU of 9000. Even though jumbo frames are turned on and using a 9000 byte frame.

Even though an MTU of 9000 is very much supported, the MTU of the “VLAN” was set to 1500.

Now, Cisco VLANs are not the same as a tagged VLAN. A tagged VLAN acts like a separate physical network. They are where you place interface settings. These VLANs can then be assigned to a physical port.

The physical port’s MTU overrides the VLAN MTU. This means my jumbo packets from host to host work.

The problem is that the VLAN MTU is maxed out at 2000 bytes. This seems to only affect the OSPF traffic and not the physical interface. But I’m dead in the water or I need to figure out how to do this differently.

Still, I didn’t pay an arm plus a leg for this physical router. I’ll get it to work.

In general, people are idiots. In groups, they have a combined IQ of less than 70 and the common sense of a three year old.

Daniel Penny is a US Marine who stepped up and protected the people on the subway. He held a homeless, violent, man until the man could be arrested.

He was then interrogated for hours without a lawyer because the police interrogating him established a relationship, by being an ex-marine.

It is often said that there is no such thing as an ex-marine or a former marine. You are a marine for life. There are exceptions, the cop who interrogated Daniel Penny is an ex-marine.

Having charged and arrested this hero, they are now trying to screw him over, yet again.

Prosecutors have wide latitude in what they charge. One of the standard tricks is to bring multiple charges for the same crime, over charging at least one.

Humans like to think they are being fair and reasonable. One of the oldest and most famous instances of this is when a man was taken before a Roman Governor to be “sentenced” for claiming to be a king above Caesar.

The Governor refused to kill the man, instead sentencing him to be whipped. Even though I’ve found nothing wrong with him, he still had the man flogged. When the mob insisted he be put to death, the Governor replied, I told you — he’s not guilty! I find no reason to condemn him..

The complete tale can be found in John 19:1-25.

In other words, to appease people, an innocent man was flogged.

Prosecutors overcharge in expectations that the jury will often find the accused not guilty of the most serious charge, but to appease the prosecutor, will find the accused guilty of the lesser charge.

They can go home, secure in the knowledge that they didn’t sentence a man to 20-life but only 5 to 10. (made up numbers).

Not really internalizing that 5 to 10 is still too much for an innocent person.

The Jury deadlocked. Some members of the jury found that Daniel was not guilty of second-degree manslaughter, some insisting that he was. When they reported a deadlock, the judge charged them to work harder.

The prosecutor then did Daniel a dirty. He requested that the second-degree manslaughter charge be dismissed.

Why is this dirty pool?

If the Judge accepts the motion to dismiss the second-degree manslaughter charge, then the deadlock goes away. If the deadlock goes away, then the jury will have to deliberate over the second charge of criminally negligent homicide.

Human nature will make it easier for the jury to return a guilty verdict on the lessor charge.

The judge should have declared a mistrial. Instead, he accepted the motion to dismiss. He released the jury until Monday.

On Monday, they will start deliberation on the second charge.

I hope that they deadlock on the second charge as well.

One of the ways the left “wins” arguments is by changing the meaning of the words they use.

So, what is healthcare?

Healthcare is anything that is caring for your health. That is the skills of a doctor or health professional. The medications you might take for high blood pressure or pain. It is setting a bone or removing a tumor.

Healthcare is about your mental and physical health. Everything from a band-aid to a heart transplant, and everything in between, is health care.

What is access to healthcare?

This is about your ability to get healthcare.

If you are in a vehicle accident, they pick you up, carry you to the hospital, and take care of your injuries. That is access to healthcare.

You are having trouble breathing, walk into the emergency room, they put you on a nebulizer, admit you, and take care of you until you can walk out the door. That is access to healthcare.

You cut your toenail too short, and it becomes an ingrown toenail, badly infected. You walk into the urgent care, and they take half your toenail off and write you a prescription for an anti-biotic. That is access to healthcare.

You think you have a sinus infection, you call your doctor’s office. They schedule you to see your doctor or another later that day. That is access to health care.

Your doctor thinks a skin growth might be cancerous. He refers you to the dermatologist, two weeks later, you are seen, and a biopsy is taken, tested, the results are back to you and your doctor 15 days after first being seen by your doctor.

Being able to get a doctor is part of access to healthcare. So is the ability to get medical tests done in a timely fashion.

In Montreal, CA in 2021, it took 862 days, on average, before you were assigned a family doctor.

As of 2042, on Friday, most of the hospitals emergency rooms in Montreal are over capacity. Most of the over capacity hospitals have had patients on stretchers for over 24 hours, some for over 48 hours. They don’t even bother to give wait times.

A different website gives wait times ranging from just over an hour to more than 6 hours.

The website I found with wait times for US hospitals shows about the same for Boston hospitals. But, a data point that I have is that my local hospital has a listed wait time of 2.2 hours. My personal experience at that hospital is that wait times are generally much less than that. You are normally seen by a triage nurse within a few minutes of arriving.

You can have good healthcare, good access to healthcare, or some mixture of the two.

In the United States, no person can be turned away from an ER because of their ability to pay.

Paying for Healthcare

Paying for healthcare is where things start to get very complex. When a friend came down to visit from Canada, she was horrified with how medical payments were done, here in the states. On the other hand, when she got sick, she was seen by a doctor within 15 minutes of arriving at an urgent care facility. She left with antibiotics, in hand. She had paid in full for her medical service, around $100.

She agreed that her access to healthcare, in the states, was better than it was in Canada. She felt that the quality of her healthcare was better in the states, and she was surprised at how little it cost.

The first issue with healthcare, is that you have no ability to shop for services. Until recently, with the creation of boutique medial services, you didn’t know how much accessing your doctor was going to cost.

I had a slow leak in the rim/wheel of the truck. Not an issue, every other week I gave it another shot of air.

It finally decided to become a fast leak. I called my guy, asked how much to move the current tire to a new rim. He told me. I ordered a new wheel, took it and the truck to him.

At the end of the morning, my truck had a new rim and the cost was within $5 of what he quoted me. The difference being a choice to replace the valve stem.

I came out of my doctor’s office, asked what the cost was. Paid in full. Then three weeks later, gotten a bill for more because they hadn’t coded the office visit correctly. They ate that extra after I made complaints to the administration.

If we agree I have paid, in full, then they don’t get to change the bill later.

Regardless, there is no real way to find out the prices of different procedures, ahead of time.

The next issue with healthcare costs is that the person paying for the procedures/visits is not the person who is getting the procedure. There is no reason for you to shop around when somebody else is going to pay. You will always choose the best quality you can find.

So what about payments?

You can pay at the point of service, or you can pre-pay.

“Point of service” is paying when the service is performed. If you go in to have your car serviced, you are expected to pay for that service before you leave. That is payment at the point of service.

The few times when some vendor or service person has said, “I know you, you’re good for it, come back tomorrow and pay.” has been so few and far between, it sticks in my mind.

My barber only takes cash, no cards. I didn’t know that when I sat down. It got done, found out that I didn’t have enough cash, left my lady as collateral, went and got more cash. I got my lady out of hock and called it a day.

Most healthcare is billed out after service, but is still considered payment at the point of service.

Pre-payment for medical services is when you pay something now for services you might need later.

In America, that is done with insurance. You purchase insurance to cover your healthcare costs.

Originally, health insurance was designed to cover unusual health events. You broke your leg, insurance covered it. You required your appendix removed, insurance covered it. You require a hip replacement, insurance covered it.

If you require an annual physical, insurance doesn’t cover it. Most of the maintenance costs of healthcare were paid out of pocket, not with insurance.

The government broke this model.

The benefits your employer gives you are part of your total compensation package. Only some of those benefits are taxable. One of the things that is not taxed, is your healthcare costs. Nor the amount your employer pays towards your healthcare insurance.

Consider the following, you are offered $50,000/year. You pay $13,000 in health insurance per year. That leaves $37,000. The government takes 30% of that, leaving you $25,900.

A different firm offers you $45,000 per year with matching insurance payments. This means that you will be paying $6,500 in insurance and the company will pay $6,500 for a total of $13,000. Your taxable income is $38,500. The government still takes 30%, leaving you with $26,950.

By taking a lower salary $5000 less, you get to take home just over a $1000 more. Not bad.

These tax games actually changed the face of medical insurance. For healthy, young people, this equation wasn’t as persuasive. So “insurance” started to cover healthcare maintenance. This drastically increased the cost of insurance.

Whereas, before, the insurance company could play the odds, taking money from everybody, knowing they would only have to pay a few, the new model required them to collect money and pay money for everybody.

A healthy 25-year-old didn’t cost the insurance company anything, on average. But now that maintenance is included, even the 25-year-old costs money. All of that had to be paid for.

The other place where the government interferes with insurance pricing, is in boundary limits.

There are places in this country where the side of the street you live on changes the cost of your medical insurance.

While you might think you have “Blue Cross/Blue Shield” insurance, I can promise you that you do not.

If you look at your insurance card, you will find that you have “Blue Cross/Blue Shield of STATE”. This is because medical insurance companies can only offer medical insurance in their state.

This means that there are 50 different Blue Cross/Blue shield insurance companies. Are they inter related? Yes. It is a legal fiction that keeps them separate.

In addition to the visible insurance costs, there are other hidden insurance costs. The federal government of the US takes a part of your income and uses it to fund Medicare and Medicaid.

When people talk about “free healthcare” in the UK or Canada, they are lying. There is no free healthcare in any country.

It is free at the point of service. The citizens of those countries pay for their healthcare via taxes.

The NHS of the UK spent $231.6 Billion on health services in the 2022/2023 budget year. This is out of a budget of $1,551 Billion. The NHS budget was 15% of the total budget.

This puts the price, per person, at about $3,400, or $13,600 per family of 4. Just about the same as the pre-Obamacare cost for family insurance in the United States.

The point is that healthcare in the UK is NOT free.

What they mean by “healthcare”

The left conflates healthcare with paying for healthcare. In the process, we have created a situation where healthcare costs more for most people. Access to healthcare has gone down. And the quality of healthcare seems to be slipping.

But, the left yells that more people have access to healthcare than ever before.

They didn’t really get more access, they just changed how much they pay for healthcare and who pays for healthcare.

I’m reminded of a show I watched a few years ago.

In the show, the couple set out to find out if they could live as a couple at menial labor.

He got a job, but I do not believe she did. His job did not have healthcare benefits. He was working at nearly minimum wage.

She was prone to getting UTIs. About 6 months into this experiment, she came down with what she knew was a UTI.

So they went to the ER to get treated. They ended up with a bill in the thousands.

They held this up as a reason people can’t live on such low wages.

They cheated for their story. First, she could have gotten a job. If they were as good as he said they were, they should have been able to work their way out of that starting wage/position. They didn’t.

Second, the cost of an ER visit is pretty high. The cost of an urgent care visit is much lower. My last urgent care visit included minor surgery. My total cost, before insurance, was less than $200.

The cost of diagnosing a UTI and prescribing an antibiotic is around $100. There are telehealth options available today that are even cheaper.

By making a shitty decision, they cost themselves over $1500 in medical bills, which could have been less than $125.

Conclusion

Make sure you hold them to using the right terms. Don’t let them redefine words to confuse and conflate the different issues at play.

In the shadowed depths of night, where silence reigns,
A network, once vibrant, now fades in gloom,
Its circuits, dead, like spectral, ghostly chains,
No longer does it herald or consume.

Oh, how the whispers of the web did cease,
The humming ceased, the lights went dark, then cold,
In digital demise, there found no peace,
But tales of loss and legends yet untold.

The servers, once alive with fervent quest,
Now rest in mute, an eerie, silent crypt,
Where bytes and bits, in deathly dirge, do rest,
And all connection to the world is stripped.

Thus, in this void, where once the data flowed,
The network fails, and in its death, is silent.

— Grok 2

There are skills that our grandparents and great-grandparents had, that we (as a society, at least) are sadly lacking in today. The art of “making do” is one of those skills. It’s something we MUST learn to do, and quickly. Whether we have some type of country-wide emergency, an apocalyptic event, or a recession, the ability to “make do” is crucial.

So what is “making do,” you ask? It is actually an amalgamation of important skills. First and foremost, it is living within your means, no matter how uncomfortable. That means putting away the credit card and paying cash for things. If you can’t afford something, you don’t purchase it. Don’t live a filet mignon life when you have a hamburger budget.

It’s so much more than that, though. How many of you have mended a pair of socks or your jeans because they got a hole in them but still had a lot of life to them? Likely very few of you. Until the last ten years or so, I hadn’t done much of that myself. Even as someone who had a very low income, I could afford our frankly very cheap clothing. Today, even though I have access to considerably more money, I tend to spend less.

I do know how to darn a sock, mend a hole in a knitted sweater, and hem or patch clothing. I practice these skills on a regular basis. A good example of this is that I discovered my favorite holiday dress was eaten into (likely by a bunny, but we don’t know for sure). There are several jagged holes, and they’re near the hemline. I could patch the holes, but they would be very noticeable, and I don’t want that. I could darn them or put a decorative patch on them (which I’ve done with some of my jean skirts), but again, it wouldn’t look nice. It’s a nicer dress. Instead, I’ve decided to shorten the entire dress. I tend to wear it with tights or leggings anyhow, because it’s quite short and revealing, so taking off the 1.5 inches to remove the holes will not really be seen. As a bonus, it will give me a strip of the dress’s fabric that I can use for future patching, should it ever be necessary. My lovely holiday dress will live on, and I will enjoy wearing it despite a few mishaps.

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