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Monday Links
First, from US News & World Reports an article on how detrimental the school closures were for the kids. New federal data – the first comparing academic achievement from before the coronavirus pandemic to now – shows unprecedented drops in math and reading scores and the largest setbacks for students in more than half a century. Way back in March/April of 2020, there might have been a case for closing the schools. We didn’t know enough about how COVID was spread, how dangerous it was, and who it impacted the most. However, as we learned more, it was clear that the biggest obstacle to opening the schools were the unions who wanted their members paid for not having to go into the schools. I think we will be feeling the ramifications of this for a very long time.
It’s not Derek’s links without Reason articles. So here’s one on what happened when Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertilizers. The short version? Famine, inflation, government destabilization. Everything a country needs. <Sarcasm>
And here’s another on embracing the prepper mindset. Seriously, hasn’t the last two years kind of proven it’s probably a good idea to have some extra supplies on hand? As reader David says in his articles at Blue Collar Prepping, “Some is better than none.”
From The Reload, comes an article on a recent survey of gun owners. According to the article, this was the largest survey done with more in-depth questions. So, what did it find? Gun owners are more diverse, they are carrying more, and they often own the same weapons and magazines that many want banned. Oh, and they are possibly more than 1.5 million defensive gun uses annually.
Friday Quote – David Levithan
What separates us from the animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.
What We Pay
I was listening to The Michael Shermer Show where he was interviewing Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley on their new book Superabundance.
A statement made by one of the authors hit me. We buy things with money, but we pay for them with time. They went on to discuss how economics made a mistake by measuring prices in terms of monetary cost instead of measuring the cost of goods/services in work-hours.
One of the dramatic examples is how much in terms of time we have to pay for an hour of light.
Weekend Oops
This weekend we had plans. Great plans. You know what they say about plans…
Saturday should have been relatively simple. We had to take the Ward Wagon back to the dealership to get a coating put on. It was something we purchased when we bought the Ward Wagon. The trick was that the dealership is an hour and a half north of us. The plan was to get there when they opened, which meant we were going to need to leave at oh-dark-early. At least for The Wife. She likes to sleep in on the weekends. Everything went fine. A little bit longer than we anticipated, but no major issues. I even got some writing done on the third Irregulars story (I’ll finish that. I promise.). Then we went to The Brother’s since we were not too far from him – not close, but not far compared to Ward Manor. He’s getting some roommates due to a rent increase and is in purge mode. We were getting some of his castoffs. As we were taking items back out, we realized that the service folks had taken out our trunk organizer – and failed to put it back in. Grumble, grumble, grumble. It was another half-hour back to the dealership. Then another 100 minutes to get home. Well, we did make one stop to a store we both hadn’t visited.
The Sunday before Labor Day is usually the day The Wife and I celebrate our first date by going back to the restaurant. From the annoyances on Saturday, and some other items, we decided we would just go to the restaurant on Monday. This is what we call in the writing world as foreshadowing. Most of Sunday was taken up with The Wife and MIL putting up decorations around the house.
Monday we decided would be a mostly TV day. Just as an aside, I decided to check the restaurant hours in case they were changed for Labor Day. Well, they hadn’t. Unfortunately, that was because the restaurant is closed on Mondays.
I guess we’ll try next weekend.
Monday Links
First, a couple of links regarding the housing issue.
From CBS comes an article that a school district near San Francisco is trying to keep teachers by offering low-cost housing on school district property. This has been an issue facing the area I live in. The editor of one of the local papers calls it a shortage of "workforce housing." How do you house all the people between the lower class and the upper middle class who do all of the work needed to run our cities and our businesses? Some good solutions (like what this school district is trying) are needed before the failing ones (like rent control) are brought back out.
One of the downstream impacts of the housing market has been an increased demand in storage units. A recent report from Yardimatrix expects demand to continue to be high and sustained Considering how many self-storage places are going up near us, this doesn’t surprise me.
A couple of new gun offerings that interest me.
First, TFB has an article on B&T’s folding sub machine gun. I have been fascinated by folding subguns since Robocop 2 and B&T has just been putting out neat stuff. I’m really looking at their APC308 for my heavy AR slot.
From GH Hill, comes Big Horn’s new 500 S&W tactical lever action. One of my Zombie Strike characters carried one of their levers, and there was some temptation to give Nick one in Badmoon.
Finally, an article from Nature on why we get tired when we think really hard. From the article: "The study, published on 11 August in Current Biology1, found that participants who spent more than six hours working on a tedious and mentally taxing assignment had higher levels of glutamate — an important signalling molecule in the brain. Too much glutamate can disrupt brain function, and a rest period could allow the brain to restore proper regulation of the molecule, the authors note. At the end of their work day, these study participants were also more likely than those who had performed easier tasks to opt for short-term, easily won financial rewards of lesser value than larger rewards that come after a longer wait or involve more effort.”
Friday Quote – Dorothy Grant
There’s no such thing as quality time that makes up for quantity time.
Vocabulary Word
Quockerwodger – A type of wooden puppet. Colloquially used in the late 19th century to denote a politician acting on the instructions of an influential third party rather than the best interests of his constituents.
Lessons From A Birthday Party
The past weekend, we celebrated the great niece’s second birthday. In her usual fashion, The Wife went into full crafting mode to decorate the house in the party’s theme of Minnie and Mickey Mouse. Cricut go brrr. I think they went a little overboard. However, based on the guests’ comments, I was in the minority opinion.
So, what lessons did we learn?
First, if you are going to have large inflatable pools, have an air compressor that will actually handle inflating said large inflatable pool. Do not use the one you got off of an Amazon sale that is more designed for inflating small sports equipment and the tires to your hand cart.
Second, be more careful into which party supplies you buy from the warehouse. Particularly perishable items. My drink fridge has lots of drink boxes. We were expecting more toddlers that didn’t materialize. Fortunately, we are very good in using up spare hamburger buns, and hot dogs are a staple of our weekly menus.
Third, even if all you are doing is grilling, it’s probably a good idea to put on sunblock. I now have the red neck to go with my Southern accent. Fortunately, it’s less painful and more annoying.
Overall, it was a successful day. The guests were happy. The niece was happy. No family drama.