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Jul 11Liked by James Bernard Shepard

Wow! Excellent rant! And people are so up in arms about the election... when there aren't enough people to keep shit working properly WGAF who's running this nightmare?

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Coincidentally, your comment dovetails with my post on Facebook today:

My friend DeNeice Kenehan shared story from a man who had been travelling through Houston and staying for a day at a hotel when suddenly 85% of the electric grid went down. The gentleman posted this account:

"On our way to Amarillo again… after three days in a hotel without electricity.

"I’ve got some... more insights into how fragile US infrastructure is …

"More than 85% of the power grid went down in Houston. Our hotel room is accessed by electronic keys—meaning we couldn’t leave our room and get back in so one of us always had to stay indoors.

"All restaurants and stores were closed. Local people were so domesticated by smart phones that they were in shock and clueless about local geography when the communication systems went down.

"The only way to extend our hotel stay was with online booking services because the hotel staff didn’t know how to use their own computer—and this was after they brought a gas generator to power their office on the second day… “

I foolishly forgot that Facebook automatically shifts the frame and “reboots” [if that’s what you call it] your “page” if you don’t secure a spot in “comments”. So I composed a reply on my email system but when I went back to Facebook “ZIP!” The page shifted frame.

So I’m posting it like this instead:

Thanks for this, DeNeice! It is a wake up call to teach us all if we will only heed it. If I can paraphrase the lesson:

Do not absolutely rely on externals if you can avoid doing so. Electronics is great but the electric grids are not as eternal and magic as we are conditioned to assume they are. Always remember and keep a mental and physical contact with the physical, the industrial, the real world.

The electronic externals will fail. Industry and the physical world has been neglected by those few of us who run the political superstructure. The physical world will have its revenge. Generators, wires, towers, lines, nuts and bolts – none of these things magically evaporate with the new “Paradigm”.

Avoid absolute dependency on things you cannot control with your physical body and your own independent mind. Have backup, physical, personal backup. Do not depend absolutely on the electric grid for vital necessities, like food, water, shelter, warmth. If you can, avoid shelter which provides only electronic access and egress. Do not rely on an automobile which has only electronic access. Use a key which you can keep on your person. Avoid dependence on digital devices for finding your way if you need to do so; have a hard copy map you can keep on your person. Use LOW technology for vital needs, at least as backup.

Does this caution not apply to electronic “wallets” as well? Yes, I use a “debit card”. But I’m going to put some more physical cash in my physical wallet right now. And I was forewarned by a long power outage a while ago so I do have batteries, a battery radio and lamps and some cash and I do have a backup key if our electronic security locks go dead again.

And I would not buy any electronic money even if I had the wealth to blow on it. A.I. data centres and electronic money servers are taking up huge and growing amounts of electric power world-wide. And the push is on for electric vehicles – which makes our new world even more absurd because the Western world’s electric grids are being neglected.

Fantasies of a new Virtual World have parasitized the brains of our politicians. We’ll not have any dirty old physical fuel now, just windmills – gargantuan steel towers using up scads of copper which also arrives magically – and solar panels by the thousands of acres under the greyed out sky sheltered from the sun by chemicals sprayed into the stratosphere lest the planet overheat. Food will also magically appear, not grown in soil but Magic Meat 3-D printed from sweet unicorn poop …

This New World will fail. Criminality begets incompetence. Insanity does not survive its encounter with reality. Learn skills. Keep knowledge in the most secure backup: your own mind.

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Jul 11·edited Jul 11Liked by James Bernard Shepard

Great story... excellent observations! While I think it's entertaining (mostly irritating) that a 21yr old can't count out change for me when I pay in cash, we are in a crazy scary situation based on what you wrote. I have already read it twice and will probably do so a few more times. Need batteries! And maps. A non smart vehicle. I miss the 90's 😩

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Me too. Give me back my old VW Beetle

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Hear, hear. And -- well, there's also this: Get ready, get snacks and drinks, it's two hours of information SURE to piss you off and light a fire under your backside!

https://stream.gigaohm.bio/w/cHUfaKFthRJWBmhHdf4rjD

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