The Proper Order Of Things Is Often A Mystery To ONT

Howdy Horde! I want you all to know that I've just received a study that we commissioned on AoS thread traffic. It's long and detailed, but let me see if I can summarize the results below:

It's Cold Out There

5 Polar Expeditions That Ended in Disaster

When you set out to explore territory that is extremely hostile to human life, sometimes the territory wins. And sometimes you find men who are incredibly courageous and tenacious.

On 10 November 1912, Mawson set off into Antarctica with 16 dogs and two companions, Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis. Some weeks into the trip, Ninnis fell into a crevasse and died. He took a sled and most of the group’s food supply with him, forcing Mawson and Mertz to eat their dogs to survive. Mertz eventually died, too.

Mawson walked alone for 32 days straight across the Antarctic wilderness. After travelling roughly 100 miles on foot, he arrived back at base camp, having torn the soles of his feet off and in a terrible state of health.

Stuff Too Weird For The ONT

If you click a link from me that is labeled “Stuff too weird for the ONT”, you have no basis to complain when you get back. Fair warning.

The Gods Of The Cigarette Packaging

Life Hacks From 100 Years Ago

Thomas Gallaher was a cigarette entrepreneur from Ireland who started manufacturing cigarettes in 1857. By the early part of the 20th century, Gallaher Cigarettes was the largest independent tobacco company in the world. Since then the company has been acquired, merged, sold etc., but its legacy lives on in brands such as Silk Cut and Benson and Hedges.

100 years ago the company was going strong, and they included little “how to” cards with their packs that featured what an internet age would probably call “life hacks”. The link features a collection of them, and they are kind of neat, not just for the wisdom they contain, but as a relic of the problems of a bygone era. Example:

Philosophy Corner

Covid was liberalism’s endgame

Discussion of the differences between Hobbesian and Lockean thought, and how the shift from the latter to to former has shaped politics in the west over the last 30 years.

Our regime is founded on two rival pictures of the human subject. The Lockean one regards us as rational, self-governing creatures. It locates reason in a common human endowment — common sense, more or less — and underwrites a basically democratic or majoritarian form of politics. There are no secrets to governing. The second, rival picture insists we are irrationally proud, and in need of being governed. This Hobbesian picture is more hortatory than the first; it needs us to think of ourselves as vulnerable, so the state can play the role of saving us. It underwrites a technocratic, progressive form of politics.

The Lockean assumption has been quietly put to bed over the last 30 years, and we have fully embraced the Hobbesian alternative.

Scary stuff.

It's About The Money, Stupid

Daniel Greenfield's stuff is always worth reading. Here he takes a look at what declining public school enrollment means to TPTB.

The total loss of over a million students leaves public school enrollment at a historic low.

Even while trapped in a failed system, those kids still meant money in the bank for teachers’ unions and the leftist politicians funded by dirty money looted from property taxes. Now that they’re gone, both Democrats and unions want to bring back their property to keep the cash.

Democrats could try to win back the million students and their parents who fled a failing system. They could try to retune schools to better compete with private schools, charters, homeschooling, and other alternative options to the failed public school system.

Otherwise how are you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm now that they’re seen what a functioning educational system that puts math and science ahead of wokeness looks like?

In the face of parental revolts over efforts to bring graphic sex, racism, and sexual identity grooming into classrooms, Dems could give parents greater control over school curriculums.

Instead they’re trying to destroy any alternative to the system whose teachers fund their party.

When we're discussing the problems this country faces, we talk a lot about idealism, and pseudo-religious movements (the cult of climate change), and socialism, and power and stuff like that, and these are all factors, but I've come lately to the belief that the biggest underlying driver of the leviathan state is money, and how to keep stealing it from the citizenry and direct it to the pockets of the “elite” and their pet politicians. All of the former reasons don't even matter, really. A corrupt “Christian” church using government power to sell indulgences for sin could easily replace green corporations and carbon credits. A global movement claiming to support “republican government” could slot in where the socialists are now, admittedly it would be contradictory in stated purpose vs its actions, but hardly anyone would notice, nobody notices the contradiction between the stated goals of socialists and their actions now. You can change the names and the stated desires and still have the exact same leviathan parasitically sucking the life out of the masses and nothing would change. In the end it all boils down to the same thing, and it's as old as mankind: They're all just thieves.

Musical Interlude

Starlink Question

Does anyone know anything about Starlink for RVs? I got on the waiting list for regular Starlink, and they sent me an offer to get Starlink for RVs immediately. The RV part is great, I have one of those, but I'm wondering about the feasibility of using it as my main internet connection. I saw a picture for Ukraine after they sent the Starlink stuff over there, fuckers were getting 4 times the speed I get from Suddenlink, in the middle of a war zone! Here's what it says:

"Users can expect high speed, low latency internet in areas marked "Available", and notably slower speeds during hours of peak usage in areas marked as "Waitlist" or during events with many collocated users."

My part of Texas (East of Dallas) is still marked "waitlist". Here's the map. Anyone know if this would work for me?

Thursday Night Quiz

Agree? Disagree? And if they got your state wrong, what is the correct answer?

Bad Teammate

Let's count the ways:

#1: He's wearing neon green...leg warmers? Something anyway, to make him stand out as an individual and not as a part of the team

#2: He's taunting the other team, which causes him to trip.

#3 He's not holding the ball securely, so it comes out when he trips.

#4 Instead of trying to recover his fumble, he waves to the ref to call it down, letting the opposing team recover.

#5 He falls on the ground bemoaning his mistake instead of tackling the other team's guy, that alone gives them 30 years or so.

All in all, not a teammate I'd want on my team.

Tonight's ONT has been brought to you by happiness:

posted by WeirdDave at 10:00 PM

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