I'm back

My vacation was really three trips in one: first, a trip to the farthest west point that I went to visit my son and his family for my grand-daughter's first birthday. Secondly, my wife and I took our daughter in law and our grandkids to a family reunion at Bear Lake, a famous vacation spot that neither of us had ever been to before. We did a lot of things in and around Bear Lake, like a visit to Bloomington Lake, for example. Then, my wife took the kids back and flew home for work, while I stayed out west for a backpacking trip in the Bighorn Mountains. Everyone seems to have gotten sick at Bear Lake, and I didn't realize it because I was out of touch, but I've been feeling kind of beat-up myself. I attributed it to the hiking and being out of shape, which are both things that are real, but I had strange tiredness, stiffness, soreness and achiness that didn't seem to be related to that, and which lingered several days after I stopped hiking. I suspect that I got just a touch of whatever everyone else was getting too, but the only symptoms I really had were the random achiness and tiredness. Don't know what people had. Flu, I guess. Some people tested positive for COVID, but some negative. Whatever. Covid is a coronavirus, and coronaviruses have been a leading cause of the flu for decades. There's really no difference between Covid and the flu. It's just a strain of the flu.

Had an interesting discussion during the second part of that trip. I made a kind of off-the-cuff comment that I doubt I'll ever vote again, since my vote was countermanded specifically in my county, although this happened in many counties in the 2020 Presidential election, by hoards of fraudulent votes. I thought this was pretty self-evident, given that the evidence for electoral fraud is overwhelming, and loads of people have actually been arrested for involvement in several counties, in Georgia, Texas, Nevada and elsewhere. Turns out it is not so self-evident if, of course, you refuse to be aware of the evidence. My sister-in-law, in fact, said that there was no proof. When I asked her if she wanted me to send her the proof for her to look at (I'd start with 2000 Mules and then you could spend hundreds of man-hours reviewing the stuff at this bibliography) she said no, she didn't want to see it. At that point, I realized that there wasn't much point in talking to her. She is uninformed of the evidence, and actively refused to even look at it when offered. If you're that obtuse, then frankly, you shouldn't be having opinions about political/social/cultural issues. They think that I'm extreme. Which isn't an argument about my position at all, its an attempt to shame me into having a more "socially acceptable" opinion by giving my opinion and out-grouped label. But they're actually also wrong; it's the mainstream opinion. And even that's likely understated. Rasmussen is better at most at eliminating sampling bias, so they don't oversample Democrats and then make conclusions based on that, but that's only one of three sampling bias problems that tend to understate conservative opinions. One other is something similar to the Bradley Effect, while another is the fact that conservatives are more likely to distrust that the data that they give to the survey will be treated with integrity, so they either refuse to answer surveys or don't answer them honestly. 52% is a very conservative (no pun intended) lower limit, and the real number is certainly higher, but how much higher is impossible to ascertain. My own handwavy attempt to guesstimate it, which would be closer to 60%. And if the media weren't non-stop lying about it, it would be at least 70%.

But I shouldn't be surprised. While they're not exactly SJWs, there are, as Aristotle said over 2,300 years ago, some people who are only convinced of anything by emotional manipulation and are unable to receive instruction from facts and logic. I also made an off-hand reference in another conversation about the problems with the education industry in America, and this same sister-in-law attempted to shut me down by pointing out that she works at a school. And that her oldest son and probable future daughter-in-law will do so as well. So? What does that have to do with anything? My wife used to too, until she quit because the environment was so toxic, and she found a better way to spend her time. Her husband, who thinks I'm an extremist because I like to make decisions based on confirmable data, said at one point that he doesn't know if anything at all in the Old Testament actually happened. That's an extreme interpretation of the "as far as it is translated correctly" clause. Projection, through and through.

But I don't intend to let this blog turn into a socio-political blog. I'm looking for more topics to explore. I've actually gotten interested again in D&D and FRPGs, especially after reading the last 65% or so of The Night of Long Shadows, which is probably the best Eberron novel I've read so far, and really good relative to any game fiction I've read for any game or setting. But much of that may be either on my Youtube channel or my Dark Fantasy X blog, where I've (in theory) migrated my RPG discussions.

I'm actually thinking of going through some of those "thirty day" exercises for worldbuilding that I've seen. Yeah, yeah... most people who did them did them when they were current a year and a half ago. But I do stuff that seems interesting to me when I encounter it, even if it's old news. But I'll probably do that as a YouTube series.