A Glibertarians Exclusive – The River IV
Wednesday: Impact Day, 2:00PM
“Sure is a good old hot day,” Ty said. “Ain’t it?”
“’Bout the sixth time you’ve pointed that out,” James said testily. “Gonna get a lot hotter in ‘bout twenty minutes.”
“Sure is,” Ty agreed. Both men were good and drunk. The bottle of Rebel Yell James had opened when Ty had showed up post-church was empty, and now they were about half-way down the fifth of Jack Daniels Ty had brought along. James was wearing the same clothes he had worn the day before; Ty suspected (correctly) that James had spent the night right here, on the riverbank, in his lawn chair.
“Did y’all see that big flash of light jus’ at sunrise?”
“Nah,” James replied. “May have dozed off for a bit. Somethin’ to do with the meteor?”
“Dunno. Sure has been quiet. Everywhere, been quiet, from what I seen. Guess folks got tired of fighting.” In the last few hours of mankind’s existence, a hush had fallen over the world. The Internet and cellular phone networks were still up, and there was still news from the big cities, where rioting and looting had finally stopped.
Pollard, Alabama lay under the hot summer sun, silent as an open grave. Ty and James had the riverbank to themselves; nobody else from the town seemed inclined to walk down.
“Church was sure full this morning,” Ty said. “Prob’ly still is.”
“Makes sense,” James agreed. “People crammin’ for finals.”
They sat in silence for a while, passing the Jack Daniels bottle back and forth. There just didn’t seem to be anything more to say. After a while, James looked at his watch.
“2:20,” he said. “Wonder if we’ll see it coming?”
“Looked up some stuff in Ma’s old encyclopedias last night,” Ty said. “This ‘un comin’ in, looks to be bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs. Thing I read said that it hit so fast, that by the time you see it, you’re already pretty much fucked.”
“Figures.” James looked suspiciously at the sky.
“Seen old man Baker again this mornin’. Still sittin’ on his front step. Not crying or nothin’. Just sittin’ there, looked like he been hit in the head with a hammer.”
“Can’t blame him.”
A few minutes later, James looked at his watch again. “Huh. 2:25. Didn’t that news guy say 2:24?”
“He sure did. Maybe your watch is off.” Ty pulled out his phone to check the time. “Or maybe not. Phone say 2:26.”
They sat for a few minutes, watching the sky. There was nothing overhead but the slight breeze in the tree branches and the unbroken, tranquil expanse of Alabama sky.
Ty looked at his phone again. “2:31.”
“Listen,” James said. He cocked his head back towards the town. “Hear that?”
Distantly, but clear, came the sound of people cheering – laughing – snatches of shouted prayers.
“Check the news,” he told Ty.
Ty looked at his phone, opened a new app. “Oh, boy,” he said. “Listen to this.” He put the phone on Speaker.
The new object has been named 2088-Eos, after the goddess of new life and rebirth, a disembodied voice reported. For reasons that are not yet known, the new asteroid went undetected until its impact on 4292-Arawn, approximately nine hours ago. Calculations on the altered trajectory of the World-Killer were just completed and reported to his news service. We can now report that the World-Killer will miss our home, passing within the orbit of the Moon but then proceeding without harm to our planet. There will be some notable meteor showers over the next 24 hours, but no objects of any consequential size have been observed. The Earth has been saved!
“Well,” Ty grinned. He leaned back in his chair. “Ain’t that a hell of a thing.”
“Sure is.”
Ty looked slyly at James. “Gazillion-to-one rock in space, hit and deflected by ‘nother gazillion-to-one rock in space, saves the world. How many gazillions-to-one that make?”
“Well,” James said, “Reckon it’s pret’ near one-to-one odds now, since she already happened.”
“Yup. Makes you think, don’ it?”
James leaned over and opened his tackle box. He extracted a jar of foul-smelling catfish bait. Picking up his rod and reel, he let out some slack in the line, baited his hook with the catfish bait, and cast it into the river. Then he stuck the handle of the rod in his chair’s rod holder, picked up the Jack Daniels bottle and took a drink before handing it over to his old friend.
Ty reached out, still grinning, and took the bottle. He took a long pull. “Reckon I’ll got get my own fishing stuff,” he said.
“Good day for it,” James agreed. “An’ a good river for it.”
“Yep.” Ty stood up, looked at the sky, then at the river. In the near distance, the shrieks of joy and shouted prayers of thanks could still be heard. “It sure is. Sure is a good old hot day.”
He looked at James and smiled wider than ever. “Ain’t it?”
***
People disagreeing everywhere you look
Makes you want to stop and read a book
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
That was really shook
But this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow
Watch the river flow
Watchin’ the river flow
Watchin’ the river flow
But I’ll sit down on this bank of sand
And watch the river flow
“People crammin’ for finals.”
Gave me a chuckle.
Yup. I let out a chortle.
With this crowd, this is not a happy ending.
I blame the kansas city chiefs
It’s more the officiating, so I heard.
You know who else liked happy ending?
Pie?
Robert Kraft?
Deshaun Watson?
Dammit!
Deshaun Watson?
Is it Deshaun Watson?
Ava Braun ?
I would be pissed that i consumed my entire scotch amd wine collection for nothing.
Was it aliens or Bruce Willis/Robert Duvall? I feel it was aliens
For nothing? But you got to drink all that excellent scotch and wine, *and* you get to start a new collection from the ground up?
Yeah, that seems to be a big win. Take a few days off to hydrate and give the liver a break, then get back at it.
Does make me think I may have to get a hat “Too Drunk to Fish”.
Love it.
Great ending, Animal!
I liked it and also decided i do not want to go to alabama there seems and excess of good old hot days. I like cool days myself.
deus ex machina for the win!
That was actually the point – to raise that question, literally.
I see two dudes in togas playing bocce ball in a gravity well. The first is gloating over the imminent impact while the other guy smirks as his ball find just the right path to catch up to the first ball and . . . . . . . .
I thought about it. I figure those who tend to believe in God acting, see it as God acting. For those who don’t, it was just a lucky space rock.
If something like that happened, it would be interesting to see the impact on different religions. Would it lead to a “revival” or would it be a passing thing?
That could be an entire book right there.
Yes please.
Based on my reading of the Old Testament, brief revival followed by regression to our sinful ways.
Anyone looking for an alternative ending, I recommend The Forge of God.
#disappointed
I blame big meteor.
The perfect Glibs ending would be the rock breaking up as it entered the atmosphere, and the only surviving chunk hitting DC.
Cops are assholes. Likewise for the the judge in the cases.
cats are assholes
Eh, two people trespass, refuse to leave, get arrested.
Question: in this case would insurance companies pay for the rioting damage or would it be a force majeure kind of thing
Act of God.
Also apparently most don’t cover riots anyway.
This was fun to read. Somehow you made two guys sitting in lawn chairs compelling. Can’t wait so see what you have up next.
Seconded. Thanks Animal!
Thirded. Thanks Animal!
Iowahawk connects the dots:
https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/1620109532205813765
Our alien overlords love a good probing too much for us to be taken out by some space junk.
Romanian Orita Model 1941/48
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0uM0UNBA18
hey a romanian gun. And Ian butchered the name a lot less this time
Orita is a french fry
I thought she opened for Duo Lipa at the festival last summer.
All your monies belong to us.
https://twitter.com/jeffjohnroberts/status/1619028259622260736
Great job Animal.
I’ve never wrote any fiction or any other genre other than in HS and the little I’ve done here, so I understand that the following is probably basic story telling.
I assume that characters are often used as filters or peep holes into what the author is writing about. We get to experience the events and world the author is describing through these characters in an attempt to both relate with as well as inform the reader. The character’s motivations, desires, and behaviors are tools used to tell a story. characters can also be used in the opposite way, they experience the events and world the author is describing, to say something about the them in particular. What other styles of written story telling are there?
I apologize if it comes off as ignorant, but I am in this area.
This may be drugs/ass, but Bobby Hull has just passed away: https://www.nhl.com/news/bobby-hull-dead-at-age-84/c-340587082
Saw that. RIP.
By many accounts, not the greatest husband/father, but he was a hellaciously good hockey player.
There are a lot of people out there who really didn’t like him.
One of my wife’s roller derby teammates knew him. He met her family at some fantasy baseball camp, and they got to be friends. When did events in Chicago he’d stay at their house on Lake Michigan. The mom had some interesting stories about waking up and finding him doing a crossword puzzle at her kitchen table.
My dad liked him enough to get his rod hockey set. My brother and I grew up playing it non-stop.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/130534089173871235/
Rest in peace.
We had one of those. I can’t recall the teams, though, probably some fucking Canadians.
Fun game.
Did you try to hit your brother in the face with the puck? If you bent those players just right you could launch off the board.
Absolutely! That was even better than scoring the goals!
Did you have the Rich Kid version with the electronics?
It had no electronics. Just a slot to drop the puck. My brother and I sang the music ourselves.
My buddy recently bought blank players for his old set and has painted them to be the Quebec Nordiques (vs. the Bruins, of course)
ISTR he had one each of the Original Six players mounted and framed as a gift for his father.
Hmmm. I may have to go looking.
Our set had a little Stanley Cup. Every game was always the most important game.
LOL!
When we played street hockey against another neighborhood, the Stanley Cup was a beer mug one of the guys lifted from his dad’s bar!
I’m starting to think we grew up in a pretty goddamn good time.
I’m going to be in the market for one of these.
Those are nice! My boss has one.
https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1619877634367950849
I can relate to this.
Troll alert!
I was at a BBQ and one of the guests arrived with some fan fare after finding lawn darts in his dad’s basement. We all laughed and set up the rings and shot a few. Not more than ten minutes later one of the guest’s kids grabbed one and threw it directly at his brothers face. He managed to miss his eye by an inch or so.
Maybe making little colorful spears to be used at fun outdoor events with a lot of people are not such a good idea?
Yeah. That one was definitely not the best idea.
Drunken jarts is a great game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXXOoMpUhUg
I thought you were going to link to this.
The best part about beer bottle skeet shooting is creating the empty beer bottles.
Yeah, but lets be honest; if two brothers find a pile of 2×4’s, they will invent a game of “stand still while I see how close I can get to your face.”
Dow in that thread
Elon being Elon
Live by the algorithm, die by the algorithm
Hinnant said he knew plenty of people who lost their jobs across Microsoft — everyone does. “You can be the most important engineer at your job, you can be an awesome programmer, at the end of the day if the algorithm wants you gone you’re gone.”
“I think it’s waking people up to some realities of what the industry is really like,” Alejandra Beatty said. “We are workers. Even though we have benefits and we are highly trained — we’re still workers. We can still arbitrarily lose our jobs like anyone else.”
No shit, Shirley?
This is the attitude credentialism gets you. Fuck these people and fuck the people who told them they were more important that “normal” workers.
This is the attitude credentialism gets you.
The new aristocracy. My misanthropy rejoices in your suffering.
I’m important!
Nah.
WHO has decided that the COVID pandemic is not over.
WHO’s Tedros: COVID “remains a global health emergency.”
At least here no one pays it any mind it is as if covid does not exist in my day to day experience.
Elsewhere, there are signs that tech workers’ hard-won progress is being rolled back. Bloomberg reported that at companies such as Twitter, Meta, Amazon and Redfin that had promised to improve staff diversity, the layoffs decimated departments responsible for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, inititatives.
Oh, HORROR.
And there was much rejoicing!
Who would have guessed that dead weight would be the first over the side?
There is an old Charles Addams cartoon that shows staff lined up in front of a house, and the owner is mentioning that he has to lay off staff.
At the end of the line of competent staff stands a clown and a jester. DEI staff are the clown and the jester.
Certainly not people that were dead weight to begin with.
I remember 9/11 resulting in a 25% RIF in less than 3 or 4 months. Those were just the engineers. I have no idea what happened in the factory.
Fuck these children.
Muh-racisms.
.@NYCMayor Adams on black officers beating Tyre Nichols to death: “We have to be honest” racism involved
Even if everyone involved is black it is still whitey’s fault.
Especially then.
Tell me you are a cheap grifter without saying you are a cheap grifter.
I thought that black people can’t be racist, according to our DEI masters. This is a clear logic contradiction.
The white demons have infested their souls.
Do you even tricknology bro?
Well, we need to cast their souls in to the bodies of swine!
Snow falleth in the desert. Pretty good dusting going on. Great story Animal. I wanted and didn’t want them to survive.
Nice! Get any good pics?
Yeah wife snapped some cause its not here at the airport. Ill have to post Vegas snowpocolypes 2023 photos where golfers had stop for an hour before playing through
Had a dusting in 95 when I lived in Vegas. It was gone in an hour.
NGL, I’m kinda praying for that meteor. Or a cleansing fire.
Hell, even a flood at this point.
https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1619825828443074561
It’s gotta be performance art, right?
Squeaky wheel gets the grease Tundra and society is slathering it heavy upon them.
We’re on track for nuclear armageddon. So there’s that.
Ray of Sunshine?
Oh wait, that’s not the sun!
who the fuck knows at this point. performance psy op or the signs of a decaying species
I don’t know what that is but I am not inviting any of those fuckers over for dinner.
I find this somehow implausible
Coal in the US is now being economically outmatched by renewables to such an extent that it’s more expensive for 99% of the country’s coal-fired power plants to keep running than it is to build an entirely new solar or wind energy operation nearby, a new analysis has found.
The plummeting cost of renewable energy, which has been supercharged by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, means that it is cheaper to build an array of solar panels or a cluster of new wind turbines and connect them to the grid than it is to keep operating all of the 210 coal plants in the contiguous US, bar one, according to the study.
“Coal is unequivocally more expensive than wind and solar resources, it’s just no longer cost competitive with renewables,” said Michelle Solomon, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation, which undertook the analysis. “This report certainly challenges the narrative that coal is here to stay.”
The new analysis, conducted in the wake of the $370bn in tax credits and other support for clean energy passed by Democrats in last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act, compared the fuel, running and maintenance cost of America’s coal fleet with the building of new solar or wind from scratch in the same utility region.
On average, the marginal cost for the coal plants is $36 each megawatt hour, while new solar is about $24 each megawatt hour, or about a third cheaper. Only one coal plant – Dry Fork in Wyoming – is cost competitive with the new renewables. “It was a bit surprising to find this,” said Solomon. “It shows that not only have renewables dropped in cost, the Inflation Reduction Act is accelerating this trend.”
Now analyze consistency and reliability 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in any weather.
which has been supercharged by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act,
The magic words. It costs more, but FedGov will dump buckets of money on the project so that it looks like it costs less.
It’s cheaper because the government subsidizes the living shit out of solar and wind and penalizes coal. Remove that market distortion and no one but a total clown can say coal is more expensive. Solar and wind only make sense in small-scale settings.
It’s not actually cheaper. It still costs more. But the cost is being shifted from consumers to taxpayers (who are also the consumers).
Smoke
And
Mirrors
Took me a minute, but I got it. Very clever. I will be stealing that whenever anyone brings up coal v solar.
By all means, repeat it to anyone that will listen. And then tell it to other people too.
And yet I have a clean energy surcharge on the electric bill. If it’s so cheap, why does it cost more?
You expect virtue to come cheap?
Coal in the US is now being economically outmatched by renewables to such an extent that it’s more expensive for 99% of the country’s coal-fired power plants to keep running than it is to build an entirely new solar or wind energy operation nearby, a new analysis has found.
Lmao. Good one. Oh, you were serious. Well, fuck you for lying.
Huh. OpEx for one type of power generation is more expensive than the CapEX for another, particularly when there are government subsidies for one of those. That proves it!!!
How dishonest do you have to be to include government subsidies when calculating the costs?
Scruffy’s sister is running those books? No wait, she didn’t embezzle.
Pretty damn dishonest.
They always compare cost based on nameplate capacity, and overlook that replacing that 1GW coal plant requires 3 – 4GW of solar or wind plus the cost of storage (which nobody, but nobody, is building on grid scale because its stupendously expensive). Coal is being crushed by regulation and ESG, which is constraining or denying investment capital.
” a policy analyst at Energy Innovation”
Hahahaha
Level playing field it’s not even close.
I was watching a SHOT show video, and there was a small-time gun company called NoDak Spud. Which one of you runs that?
Clearly it’s a joint venture between NoDak Matt and Spudalicious.
Owned now by the PSA parent company.
Sad!
Nothing terribly sad about it, I don’t think. To quote an industry buddy of mine:
“…PSA bought Nodak and is running them under the H&R brand specifically to make retro ARs now,…”
“They’ve got forging dies to make 601 (slick-side), A1/E1, C7 (A1 carry handle + shell deflector) and A2 uppers.”
“PSA bought the brand when they bought Remington’s firesale assets, and basically slapped the name and logo onto Nodak Spud (which they also bought, and brought over the former owner to run for them).”
James Stock, an economist at Harvard University who was not involved in the Energy Innovation report, said the analysis “rings true” and that coal is no longer economically competitive.
“We can’t shutter all these plants tomorrow, we need to do it in an orderly fashion to support grid reliability but we should be able to do it in fairly fast order,” he said. “Coal has been on a natural decline due to economics and those economics are going to continue, this is a transition that’s just going to happen.
“We built a lot of coal plants in the US around 50 years ago because we were worried about energy security in the world. That made sense at the time and they made an important contribution. But we know a lot more now about climate change, so now we need to make different decisions.”
i doubt your seriousness.
But we know a lot more now about climate change
We know that CO2 is the foundation of life and we may be in danger of having to little as opposed to too much in the atmosphere?
Well, I know a lot more than I used to about “climate change”. Somehow, I doubt he does.
Yes, plants are more starved for CO2 than at any other point in history. We need more plant food!
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nuclear-power-plant
We have no worries about energy security now, clearly.
The Bee gives zero fucks:
New Netflix Series On Tyre Nichols Beating To Feature White Officers
Ford Releases New Safety Feature Where Car Shuts Off If A Woman Gets In Driver’s Seat
I was reading an article not long ago that included a black actor saying that wokism was actually hurting the careers of some blacks, because nobody, but nobody, will cast a black guy as the villain.
I thought it was a Pakistani actor who finally got to play a villain because it was about a real person.
Or have there been a couple of parallel articles with the same message?
No clue. Vague recollection type of deal, but it rang truthy.
Oh my.
HATE! HATE! RHHEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
ALOL
The magic words. It costs more, but FedGov will dump buckets of money on the project so that it looks like it costs less.
If somebody else pays for it, it’s free.
You can never run out of other peoples’ money!
It’s cheaper because the government subsidizes the living shit out of solar and wind and penalizes coal. Remove that market distortion and no one but a total clown can say coal is more expensive. Solar and wind only make sense in small-scale settings.
I assume they have also included some bogus imputed “cost per ton” of carbon emissions.
Maybe they don’t feel the need to endorse any particular sexuality.
The fact the New York Rangers completely abandoned their plans to wear pre-game Pride jerseys shows how entrenched homophobia and transphobia is in hockey, and the NHL’s complicity to exclusion
Wear the ribbon.
“What’s next? Will we have to die our hair purple and wear bras?”
Ian Kennedy
@IanKennedyCK
Writer for
@TheHockeyNews
| Analysis for
@yahoocasports
/
@YahooSportsNHL
| Author of “On Account of Darkness” | Sports disrupter | He/Him
Sports disrupter? Is that like an even shittier sportswriter?
Streakers are sports disrupters, but they’re a lot more fun.
“complicity to exclusion”
So there’s a straight sex celebration that wasn’t completely abandoned?
The last time Shane Gillis was on Rogan he said he was working on a bit: imagine your parents at a sex pride event, making out on a float…
I don’t care how sex positive you are, that’s gonna kill your buzz.
The fact the New York Rangers completely abandoned their plans to wear pre-game Pride jerseys shows how entrenched homophobia and transphobia is in hockey, and the NHL’s complicity to exclusion
Or maybe, you know, they decided to focus on what they do, which is play hockey.
They left out racism. Ask a black hockey player how friendly those Canadians are in Alberta or Manitoba when he wants to be on their team.
Suicide bomber detonates inside mosque in Pakistan, killing and wounding dozens
At least 59 people were killed and 157 others were wounded.
What would the motivation be for this?
The Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, have claimed responsibility for the attack.
Muslims bombing Muslims right?
No, driven by the lasting effects of British colonialism and then American imperialism, i.e., the underlying current of white supremacy.
No avoiding the white elephant in the room.
Nah, it’s those wicked Ukrainians.
🙄
At a guess, the age-old Sunni/Shiite schism.
Can’t rule out Sunni/Sunni split entirely.
Ultra-MAGA terrorists strike again?
Sundays..
More like Mondays.
Definitely Mondays
So true. I love that.
Puppy Update: 8-week GSD is causing nothing but tension in the typically calm interior of the TresCool 2X-Wide™. She’s taken to Liesl, but The Dozer remains segregated from GenPop simply due to the amount of damage he could do with 1 bite. Luckily I’m off tonight, so I can play referee between Jugsy and the three.
Citation.
I’ve known a couple of Boxers who were pretty dog aggressive. I recall one who thought he could take on our fully equipped Am Staff. Fortunately, they never made contact.
I think caution is wise approach.
Something cheerful
WInner.
Hahaha…though the fact that the guys brain turned off and couldn’t recognize the obvious gait difference between canine and feline is a marvel to behold.
Oh, bother.
I remember a story where someone had a golden-doodle or similar dog groomed to look like an African lion. It got loose one day and caused quite a commotion (even though it was less than half size of an adult lion).
More cheerfulness
Stealing and tweaking a reply: “That dog now identifies as a tiger. You will respect it and run.”
Already in the replies
Oops. Got it now.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/01/30/whoopi-goldberg-do-we-need-to-see-white-people-also-get-beat-before-anybody-will-do-anything/
She must have really missed when the cops beat the shit out of Kelly Thomas..or executed Daniel Shaver crawling on the floor. She at least said on thing correct though:
I ain’t gonna invite you in Whoopi, but there are a group of people out there that uh…have been saying this for decades.
Don’t prove me wrong!
You can watch that all day long. Endless videos of police abuse of white people. She’s racist for not watching them!!
There, I said it.
Racist? Maybe, but ain’t no doubt she’s as smart as she is attractive.
Late, as usual.
Me likee. As for the ending, I may or may not believe in God but I do NOT believe in coincidence. Someone/something rearranged those rocks. Most likely SPACE SMITH, to maintain a supply of… partners.