DARK DAYS

 It was right about 1500 when the lights went out here. I was relaxed enough that it didn't disturb me at all since it used to happen much more frequently years ago and we are now prepared for the fall of darkness. It was a cold, rainy, blustery day and darkness was had by all on this block and maybe the school across the street. I didn't bother to look. It was like a prelude for what I see Europe going through this winter and no, I don't think it will be a good winter in Europe this year. They elected leaders who pretty much ganged up to slit the throats of all Europeans and they will all get to suffer in the cold and dark and wonder why they no longer have jobs since much of their production was energy intensive. There won't be much glass blowing in Europe this year or the next.

Here at home the heat comes from gas. I could and did go on downstairs and put on a pot of coffee. Several years ago I found some single AA battery flashlights that are perfect for sudden darkness. They're in every room. As I recall, I bought 4 of them at a time for $5.00 at amazon. I bought a bunch. All of them still work just fine and we have lanterns and candles if we really want to keep on reading real books as opposed to a dozen mostly fully charged kindles. My kindles are not "connected". I buy the books, download them and then disconnect. It saves the batteries and it keeps amazon et al from goobering the software to keep me from enjoying my books. The goobering has affected the ipads and iphones though since they are connected.

I had a look just now at one of the last generation of kindles I bought. Unlike the earlier versions, the new ones no longer have the microSD slot. It doesn't matter. The old kindles all work just fine. I only bought so many because I literally could not resist buying a mini-ipad for $25.00 apiece. Srsly, they do everything an ipad that I use does and it cost me $25.00.  I bought another new one this week and it cost $44.00 and yet I heard the person I bought it from complaining that it cost too much. Srsly?!

I'm watching the latest hi-tech war and sometimes even listening to the morons on tv news talk about the things that Russia is doing in its defense and I contrast it with the same noises made when America was blowing the hell out of, well, you name it: Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Beirut, Iran and other places all over the world hit by drones courtesy of Obama, Bush and the dummy. I am kind of curious about what would happen if a nuke exploded over the Black Sea at a height above ground that did no direct damage but did employ the EMP we have been hearing about forever. I wonder if Starlink is EMP hardened? They're not long term satellites and in LEO they may even be orbiting below the Van Allen belt and deliberately have been left unshielded since the solar wind was not going to eat them alive. Perhaps we'll see.

It may well be time to enjoy once again, "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" We will look for the bright side of life!