I don’t have to outrun the Bear, I only have to outrun YOU!

Two Hunters in the woods.
One Hunter turns to the other and asks if they encounter a bear, could they outrun it.
The second and older hunter replies;
I don’t have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you.

That old joke passed through my mind during some news coverage about Daniel Penny.

I’m not sure exactly why.

Perhaps it’s because if both hunters worked together they would be able to defeat the bear. But if they break and run then the bear is likely to get at least one of them.

Daniel Penny and two other men stood up to one bear in the subway car. I don’t believe for an instant Mr. Penny thought to kill anyone.

I’ve heard of, and actually seen on one occasion Marines goofing around choking each other out. They seem to consider it kind of harmless play. Indeed, most of the time, in most situations it seems to be harmless. Among Marines.

They’re fit, strong, and in the prime of their lives. (At least they’re supposed to be.) So they’ll lose consciousness, their buddies will draw a dick on their forehead and when they wake up everyone laughs and the recently unconscious guy is handed a beer. It’s a weird bonding, an expression of comradeship and nothing is thought of it.

Or wasn’t back when all my best friends were Marines. Granted, that was a decade or two (or three) ago. Things may have changed and the Marines might have gotten a little more pussified than they used to be.

Everything is going “Woke”. There may have been some recruits that couldn’t cut it, who sued because BOOT was too hard, and their feelings got hurt.

I wasn’t in the military. I broke bones as a teenager and the surgery to fix it disqualified me. I should have gone military. Looking back, I wish I had been able to, I’d like to have been pushed up against my limits. I’d have either gotten a lot out of the experience or I’d have spent my time in the brig or stockade. Whichever, I’d have learned a lot.

I suppose my experience with Marines colors my opinion. Every Marine I knew was goofy, funny, dirty minded, rough & tumble, honorable, kind, and when the shit hit the fan, deadly serious. In an instant, they focused on everyone getting out of the situation in one piece. None of them put up with threats, intimidation, or the strong picking on the weak. In my experience two Marines could hate each other’s guts, but they’d join forces instantly to protect someone who couldn’t protect themselves. It’s like somehow all of this is hardwired into Marine DNA.

I was honored to be counted among them, and honored again when they said I was scrappy in a fight but needed some training, then showed me how to fight better. I appreciated knowing they had my back as I had theirs. There was a rule that a lot of folks didn’t get…  if you ran your mouth in a bar or wherever and deserved an ass whipping you’d get one.

They’d stand by and let you and whoever you offended duke it out, but you weren’t gonna die. They’d make sure your well deserved ass whipping didn’t go too far in either direction. Win or lose, they’d take ya home clean ya up and critique your style while doing it.

It’s a weird mix. I guess it would confuse the hell out of people who’d never hung with any group of military folks. The group dynamic is different from any other group I’ve ever seen. Maybe a large family would come close. You and your brothers might fight like you’re going to kill each other but God help anyone who sucker punched a brother.

I miss those guys a lot.

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I guess all of this went through my mind as I was processing the news outlet reporting.

One conservative commentator got away with pointing out that the general media wouldn’t have made a big deal about it, if both participants were black, or if the person who died was white and the Marine in question was black. Or if both participants were white.

But because the Marine was white and the person who died was black, the media is in the promised land. Likewise we wouldn’t have all the protests and discussion about homelessness or all the rest. It would be just another white guy dead on the subway… Big Deal!

The problem is The Bear we all have to worry about now is the Bear of the mob, of the preconceived notions, the Bear of our spineless pandering leaders.

We’ve spent the last few years ignoring the mob, and all the stupid reasons for protests or razing of city blocks. We’ve watched politician after politician cave in to bad behavior and tacitly approve of escalating violence. At the same time police forces around the country are bleeding officers from their ranks.

This inevitably will lead to people standing up to defend those who cannot defend themselves, today we call it vigilantism, in centuries past we called it guardians of the community or village. The warriors who stood between the village and marauding hoards.

Woe be unto those who cause a warrior to put down his plow and pick up his sword. They will not survive the encounter. Real warriors value peace, home and hearth above all, but they understand war and the necessity to sometimes fight. When they go to war, they go to win.

New York and other large cities better brace for what’s coming next. If the people don’t feel safe going about their daily lives, Vigilantes will fill the vacuum left by the dismantling of police forces. When prosecution isn’t an option for career criminals in these cities, summary street execution will be. Vendetta will be the norm and innocent people will be caught in the crossfire.

Interesting I just applied for a job in Rupees

So weird!

I converted my required American salary to INR so that I could apply for the job. What the hell is that about? I wouldn’t have bothered except that the company appears to be legitimate and it was on LinkedIn.

The job is in America so hmmm. I wondered if it was one of those silly HR tests to determine if you pay attention. Of course it’s entirely possible that the person putting the ad up on LinkedIn carelessly specified INR instead of American Dollars.

Who knows these days?

Every company plays games, and HR people seem to have orgasms tormenting folks just trying to find work.

It’s possible it’s just an artifact of an HR person that’s poorly educated.

This is what it’s come to. I’m mostly applying to jobs now, just to rub salt in my wounds. Call it an exotic form of self harm. LOL! I’m still applying only for positions that I’m entirely qualified for. I know that I’m never going to be actually interviewed by a human for any of those positions. So this is nothing more than beating my head against a wall.

It’s a total crack up in a very sick way, that now I’m applying just to attempt to annoy an automated system.

I suppose this is better than me creating a viral bit of code that utterly destroys automated hiring systems.

And yes, the thought has crossed my mind!

Just how much of Canada is burning?

The smoke is covering the East Coast as far south as Myrtle Beach. My goodness! Have Canadian Patriots lit the place on fire to cover a Coup? Under cover of smoke are patriots dragging Trudeau out of parliament?

One can only hope!

Will Canada pay reparations to the United States and / or carbon credits to the EU to offset this?

I know I shouldn’t be making fun of the situation but when you take the whole green thing to its insane conclusion then we have to ask these kinds of questions.

The smoke cover is also going to be reducing the efficiency of solar panels and causing more carbon to be produced because of unusual demands on the electrical grid.

OMG! Canada’s ESG Score is going to take a hit!

It is not my intention to be mean to Canada. The Canadian people suffer under Trudeau. They have my sympathy.

I use this event to highlight the absurdity of carbon taxation and ESG scoring. Because neither system can be enforced and neither system appears to account for those events we used to call “Act Of God”. Since God is dead in the minds of the WEF attendees there can be no “Acts Of God” and therefore someone is responsible.

It’s well known, it can’t possibly be the government, or the super wealthy, or the movers and shakers in the entertainment industry.

The only people left who can be punished, are the taxpayers.

I’ll bet 6 months from now there’s going to be some tax hike in Canada that will be called wildfire mitigation and the funds will go anywhere but into proper stewardship of the land.

I can make that bet because California has tried to implement exactly those kinds of taxes. They’ve failed but for a time it looked like California was going to tax people living in “higher risk” zones for additional fire fighting resources.

They almost got away with it, until someone pointed out studies that proved the worst wildfires originated in California State Controlled & “maintained” forests.

Yep, the wildfires were originating in areas owned by the State of California and in many cases the California Department of Forestry hadn’t been allowed to do the proper maintenance to remove dead trees or undergrowth because they didn’t have their full appropriation.

Logging and other forestry management, in some cases, was blocked by environmentalist groups doing impact studies, often for years. Until a fire swept through the area being studied and well, I guess there wasn’t a need to do an impact study anymore.

Uh like yeah Professor Moonshaft-Sunbeam-Jones, the forest burned really hot. Like all our equipment is toast. The entire colony of inverted 9 toe hermaphroditic spotted periwinkles flew off when the fire came toward them. Too bad about Alboneus & Groompa being burned up, I liked Zem both… They kept saying the fire wasn’t real while the rest of us like, uhh ran.

Perhaps I’m too mean toward the academics but over the years I’ve heard some truly astoundingly stupid things being said by supposedly educated people.

We know that dead trees in a forest are a fire hazard, we know that lots of brush is a fire hazard, we know that people wandering through the forests can become a fire hazard if they’re careless with camping or smoking or just suddenly fascinated that hitting two rocks together can cause a spark. (That last one I’ve actually seen an adult male doing.)

On the plus side, on that occasion I got a glimpse into what early hominids looked like discovering fire… That I was seeing this in 2022 was terrifying.

My point is that most countries and states within those countries have fire mitigation procedures. The question we should be asking is; why aren’t those procedures being followed?

In California it appears it’s about money not getting to the agencies who are tasked with the job. I’d suggest our Canadian brothers and sisters, ask their respective government agencies what’s going on.

Equally, I’d say for them not to take the government statements that the fires are being caused by climate change as gospel. Yes, climate change may be partially responsible. But if we’ve known climate change is happening, why haven’t more resources been allocated to forestry services to proactively mitigate the problem?

Could it be that government wants to use wildfires for their political and financial benefit?

Just a few questions that run through my mind.