Yes, it is normal. For 10 months out of the year, anyway. No, we are not okay. Send help.

I think I'll wait until late 2030 or so to post about Venezuela. You'll know what I mean when it happens.

Brits are now giving AI commentary on the UP. Weird time to be alive.

You don't know the Historical Significance of Events until significantly later; Alas! The Eye of Man is blind to the Verdict of History whilst the storm yet rages; the Significance of the Now is written only in the Retrospect. Consequently, you ought to keep thy Soul sober amidst the Roar of the Present. Don't get too excited or depressed about Anything ongoing. For what art thou, O Earth-born Peasant, to command the Tides of Fate? These things are not within thy sphere, for that sphere is as narrow and humble as thy birth. Work in Silence! Let the World-Machine grind as it will; thou canst not distinguish the Eternal from the Sham, nor the Good from the Bad, the Beautiful from the Ugly, amongst these Earthly events until the dust has settled and you look down from the Side of thine Origin.

Let thy Leftovers sit out on thy table overnight for extra Flavor.

Do not say, “Why were the former days better than these?” For you do not inquire wisely concerning this. -Ecclesiastes 7:10

Do not lament that society is not what it once was, but rather, look upwards to God for your mission and build your life and contribute to His kingdom according to His will. How exciting is it to be counted among those who stood unwavering when the world opposed righteousness on all fronts.

Be the man that your congregation relies on in all aspects. Be the leader your employees and coworkers count on for strength and encouragement. Be the father that your sons are ecstatic to emulate. You can only accomplish this by surrender to the Almighty! Amen.

I should commit to attempting to steal the style of Thomas Carlyle in all my posts this year.

Mea Culpa! Let the patient Reader grant a moment’s grace to this poor, stumbling Soul!

But it is fixed, then! A solemn Covenant with the Upper Powers of thine Upper Peninsula! Henceforth, until this present circling Year grinds to its frosted, wintry, snow-laden halt, I shall bind myself to a singular and titanic Labor.

I must—nay, I shall—clothe my poor, naked thought of a mere fool in the heavy, woolen vestments of the Sage of Chelsea. Every digital scribbling, every ephemeral utterance cast into the electronic Void, shall strive to thieve the Thunder; to mimic, however clumsily, the growl and the fire of the Prophet. Work! Duty! Order! My Pledge is written with the Gall and Wormwood of a holy Scorn for all the empty finery of Beelzebub; a fiery noscript that spits in the face of the Mud-gods and the Gospel of Mammonism, rejecting the Devil’s glittering bribes of Ease and Popularity, and choosing instead the rugged, thorny path of Magniloquence.

I've been informed that modern right ideology is deeply rooted in video game activism, that so many right wingers today "just wanted to play games." Herein is a Secret of the right's Abject Failure unlocked, availed for All to behold, for the fate of any party who has stroke its Roots not into History or Religion or Philosophy, but into the trivial Soil of screen pixels is ultimate quietude.

Those electric Shadow-Plays serve no purpose but to drag the Divine Spark of Man down into a Mud-bath of spiritual Stupefaction. For behold, they have harvested no Grain, built no Temple, and forged no Truth; they are a Gospel of Idleness that serves only to thicken the Skull of the Spectator, and as such, that they ought to be swept into the Eternal Cesspool and forgotten is recognized by any man of even modest faculty.

The American doth ever abet Treachery, though with a discriminating gaze. There is wanting in him that primal Loathing for the Judas which is wont to dwell in the breast of general Mankind. He beholdeth a man forswearing his Sovereigns, his Magistrates, his Ordinances, and yet stays his Doom. Wrought the Ruler aught that I deem Tyrannous? Was his Sway base? Were his Decrees unreasoned? If so, peradventure the Rebel stood in the Right!

​For should the American foster a true, uncorrupted Sense of the Blackness of Treason, such must needs condemn him to view the Genesis of his own Story with a baffled eye. America is a Commonwealth begotten of Perfidy; wherefore her Citizens can in no wise brand the Traitor, categorically, as Evil, nor find Abhorrence in that very Difference which sunders them from their Genus.

The cry "Liberty, equality, fraternity or death!" was much in vogue during the Revolution. Liberty ended by covering France with prisons, equality by multiplying noscripts and decorations, and fraternity by dividing us. Death alone prevailed.

― Louis de Bonald

Divorce was in harmony with democracy, which reigned too long in France under various names and forms. Domestic power on the one hand, and public power on the other, were delivered up to the passions of the subjects; there was disorder in the family and disorder in the State: between the two, there was a parity and an analogy of disorder... But divorce is directly contradictory to the spirit and principles of hereditary or indissoluble monarchy. There is then order in the State and disorder in the family; indissolubility in the one, dissolubility in the other, a lack of harmony in consequence; and in this situation, either the family must end by disordering the State, or the State by ordering the family.

—Louis de Bonald, On Divorce

Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, Democracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible! So much, with certainty of loud astonished contradiction from all manner of men at present, but with sure appeal to the Law of Nature and the ever-abiding Fact, may be suggested and asserted once more. The Universe itself is a Monarchy and Hierarchy; large liberty of "voting" there, all manner of choice, utmost free-will, but with conditions inexorable and immeasurable annexed to every exercise of the same. A most free commonwealth of "voters;" but with Eternal Justice to preside over it, Eternal Justice enforced by Almighty Power! This is the model of "constitutions;" this: nor in any Nation where there has not yet (in some supportable and withal some constantly increasing degree) been confided to the Noblest, with his select series of Nobler, the divine everlasting duty of directing and controlling the Ignoble, has the "Kingdom of God," which we all pray for, "come," nor can "His will" even tend to be "done on Earth as it is in Heaven" till then. My Christian friends, and indeed my Sham-Christian and Anti-Christian, and all manner of men, are invited to reflect on this. They will find it to be the truth of the case. The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.

—Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets

Thou, poor bewildered biped, wandering within this Bedlam-world! The salvation of thy mind lies not in Idleness but in the earnest study of the Sage of Chelsea! Think not of Refusal, thou shackled Scoundrel! Here, within these iron-girded walls, the Flail of Authority descends inexorably. As surely as the Turnkey turns the lock, so surely shalt thou be yoked to the Text! Each sun that rises upon thy wretchedness shall witness thee chained to the Page—forced to swallow the bitter, curative Words of Carlyle until the Chaos within thee is beaten into Order!

TL;DR: you will henceforth be forced to read Carlyle daily.

I wonder if these cases are connected.