Taken as a whole, the following perspectives were conspiring toward a future of muddle-through, or collapse. Not the lerast of which? US and Iran end ceasefire talks without an agreement | AP News
And the hell of it? The luck of birthright will play as big a role in your future as all the hustle, crypto, and financial planning in life.
As we go through these, you might want to pause and take a note or two on how to level-up your “play of life.” It’s a fine game, but it always ends. So, you push on the “end” part and work on mastery of the middle-game.
Disturbance #1: Battle of Telecom Tyranny
Our “live fire drill” for the past two weeks has been dealing with sketchy in-ground phone service.
The Universe has seemed intent on having us focus on redundant systems. We used to think that in-ground copper would save us all – at 9600 baud – in the end. Two weeks ago, the old HDSL modem failed. A new one arrived. It delivers 500 kB speeds, mostly and sometimes.
I had explained to Brightspeed customer service it was likely an equipment problem at the C.O. (central office) but my dealing with old Lenkurt Model 45 mux gear (and the local phones in a nuclear warhead storage area in my youth) didn’t impress them in the least.
Within a week, the C.O. problem had blown up, however. We were able to call our neighbors (Deacon Dan has a new gas-powered saw mill with extended track, by the way). But, we couldn’t call the doctor, the pharmacy in town, the County Judge’s office, or even 9-1-1. Oddly, I could get through to the new fount of new 2 by 4s.
We have always known that going into the Second Depression (as the year wears on, it will become obvious) that comms would matter a lot.
And – thanks to prodding by our (tax attorney, consigliere) we were only “without 9-1-1” for about 15-minutes. See, we have prepaid MagicJack well past 2030 now. The “big sneak” is that with a “fat pipe” to the sky, MagicJack runs fine.
What the Universe seems to have been hinting at? OK, so we now have a second (3 unit) cordless phone that goes over satellites. The “normal” land line phones are the silver Panasonics. The red, blue, and gray route to sky.
The copper came back to life on Friday morning – after a full week out of service – inconveniencing more than 4,000 local homes according to a tech who filled me in without going through the PR filters.
Telecom Beefs Up
The two other moves (beyond new cordless units) were two-fold.
First was the new Starlink “mini” went up on the old ViaSat mounting. (I was on the ladder when G2 was in meetings so he couldn’t yell at the old man (77) for being up on a ladder running wire.
Later on, coffee break first, this was augmented by actually getting serious about the t-com here. So now there is an actual “equipment home” inside the shop on the north wall.
If it looks like “just a Starlink unit” look again.
The unit on the left is a UPS which will keep the sky coverage up for both phone systems for 2-hours, or more.
Plus, it’s only a few feet from the power center – where dozens of solar panels land by way of three large charge-controllers and 800 amp-hours at 24 volts of storage. That will deliver 3,000 watts peak (at 240 volts) so, um., shocking design, huh?
Planning takeaway: Do you have at least three ways onto the web or local/regional comms when shit hits the fan in coming months?
Disturbance #2: A Mindfulness Lesson
In the midst of the t-com shelf set-up, I needed to drill a hole through the shop wall. Which, as long-term readers know, is reasonable Lexan. It lets in light, keeps “bad stuff out” (cross the whole range from slithering to two-legs, to four, and small fliers). It’s also not something you tackle with a spade point drill bit.
You also don’t bring out the old man’s good Forstner bits.
Educational Note: A Forstner bit is a specialized woodworking drill bit used to bore clean, precise, flat-bottomed holes, commonly used for installing cabinet hinges and making shallow holes. Unlike twist drills or spade bits, they are guided by their outer rim rather than a center point, allowing them to drill overlapping or angled holes without drifting.
This is one of those rare times when only the “right” tools work. Having every tool God has seen fit to share, I wandered over to the drill press station and reached for this:
Yeah – fooled me, too: I thought I was grabbing the Step Drill.
Instead, what I grabbed was a “log-splitting” bit.
The difference? The log-splitting bit has a fine-pitch threading on it. Once it was into the Lexan there was no pulling it back out when I figured the hole was big enough. Sucker just keep going – making the hole bigger, and bigger, and….
Oh, sure, I tried to back it out, but the shaft on these things is designed to unscrew. Which it did. The only way through was to just keep going until well-past the threading!
Planning Takeaways:
- Be more mindful in tool selection. Don’t run on autopilot thinking about things like the damn phone company or wondering if Andy made it to the airport to hop over to Fiji to play Noah while the northern hemisphere lights up in coming weeks.
- Now that I have a slightly over-sized hole to fill to keep the crawlies out, mention to the assembled multitude that hydroponic plant collars (see here) squish down nicely to fill the hole…
We really live in an amazing country, when a lapse of mindfulness can be resolved for $35 solving the next 200 lapses of attention and eyesight.
Disturbance #3: Old Hands Getting Worried
A newbie note: Our Comments section here deserves careful daily review. Toss out the Len and Bitcoin Nazi skirmishes over personal bullshit and read it all. Because as my consigliere advises, it’s often as good as Godlike Productions when comes to how Reality will arrive.
The “old men” (we use the term fondly, being one) – are nervous as hell.
Here are a few snips and links to the posted Comments they came from:
- “I went through Ure chart pack. I’m not really seeing a lot of disagreement between Ureself and TEF’s projections. There are a lot of things going on under the economic hood that haven’t quite bubbled up to the top, but I’m personally starting to see signs of belt tightening, and people running scared.” Advice to Widows and Orphans in the ChartPack
- ““.., and we have likely completed the Wave 2 up.
Next week (to be blunt about it) should see markets crater into at least mid-May and possibly even June. That’s where the wave 3 down may end. A small summer rally to Labor Day, or first week of August, which will be our Elliott Wave 4 rally. And then Super Collapse this fall.”
.
My dates are ‘slightly’ different – but, yeah, that’s how I see it lining-up also [ if that means anything.] I am not holding any trades at the moment – but am seriously looking at a progression of long expiration options/puts – probably on Monday.” More here Advice to Widows and Orphans in the ChartPack. - But hope springs Eternal as in “Those who resist out of abhorrence to notions of 1929 repeat, or even a lesser Wave ending *crash* due to Nuclear Armageddon, count me in. Both result in end of the world scenarios and … them’s lousy odds kid. That’s Art’s story and I’m sticking with it.” That comment is here.
Still, it only takes once.
Takeaway: Our most sensible read of players and motivations is the “peace talks” track will be blown up before coffee-hour next Sunday.
Disturbance #4: “Old Men Will Dream Dreams”
Not to end on a negative note. Since I am an accomplished Oneironaut, I understand that someone in the multitude may also be working on the “Milk of Magnesia” problem.
Not keeping up? Humans are test-fitting apes. We take knowledge we have and try to “fit it” with everything else in order to build a more complete view of Reality.
About here, we need to ask “What is a magnesia” and how do you milk it?
Is it some kind of metallic cow grazing on alkaline prairies, or did chemists just wake up one morning with a poetic streak and decide to squeeze a white, chalky suspension out of thin air?
Turns out, magnesia is just magnesium oxide or its hydrate, a powdery mineral that the old alchemists named after a district in ancient Greece where they dug up the stuff.
But milking it? That took a Yankee pharmacist with more imagination than a riverboat gambler. And it was done before Big Pharma started patenting everything in sight. Before captive regulators and all the rest of what masquerades as “modern.”
Back in 1873, up in Stamford, Connecticut, an English-born pill-roller named Charles Henry Phillips got tired of his customers griping about bitter stomach remedies and the runny consequences of old Irish doctor Sir James Murray’s earlier “fluid magnesia.”
Phillips took magnesium sulfate, cooked up a batch of magnesium hydroxide, drowned it in water till it turned as white and creamy as fresh Jersey milk and slapped on the name Milk of Magnesia like a patent-medicine showman. It worked like a charm for heartburn and, shall we say, “sluggish constitutions”—gentle enough for delicate folks, powerful enough to clear the tracks when the train was stalled.
The blue glass bottles? They belonged in a lady’s boudoir, and for a hundred years it flowed out of the Glenbrook works like the elixir of regularity itself.
Takeaway: So, oh Grand Vizier* of Prepping: What is in your medical kit for the nuclear here-after?
Keep the flash goggles handy and write when you get rich, SPF-100 in the shade.
*A grand vizier was the highest-ranking minister of state in the Ottoman Empire and other historical Muslim states, acting as the sultan’s absolute representative, chief advisor, and prime minister. They held immense power over the bureaucracy, military, and legal systems, often managing the government while the sultan remained isolated.
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