“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”
― Thomas Paine
July 23, 2015 - Still not lovin’ it: McDonald’s sales in US drop for seventh straight quarter
February 10, 2020 - McDonald’s Declining Customer Traffic Is A Death March To The Future
March 7, 2020 - McDonald’s: Can’t estimate coronavirus impact to its business
February 11, 2019 - PC Shipments Fall for the 7th Straight Year
March 5, 2020 - PC sales in 2020 will suffer due to coronavirus , says IDC
May 1, 2019 - Global smartphone shipments decline for sixth straight quarter
March 20, 2020 - Coronavirus : Smartphone sales collapse amid pandemic
September 20, 2019 - In August, America’s home sales slid 1.6%, marking the sixth month of 2019 that produced fewer sales than the previous year , according to the RE/MAX National Housing Report.
March 19, 2020 - Home sales could fall 35%, as coronavirus stalls spring housing market, new analysis says.
March 9, 2020 - Americans bought just over 17 million vehicles in 2019, the lowest since 2014.
March 20, 2020 - J.D. Power: Coronavirus could drop projected vehicle sales by 3 million
Stationkeeping: There’s never a problem without a gift for you in my hands. Isn’t that how the old saying goes? New York is basically shut down, so there’s a tenth, a twentieth of the people and vehicles on the street as usual. So on my bike ride yesterday I was able to get 10 simple, inexpensive Orgonite Towerbusters into positions along the spine of Manhattan, several of them down in the very heart of Broadway.
You could simply not do such a thing unremarked under normal circumstances. Here, I was able to pull into position over a storm drain, take a drink from my bottle, acting like I was resting. Then I’d pull a TB out of my butt pack as if it were an energy bar, palm it, take another swig of water, gazing all around to see and feel if anyone was looking at me, our could be. Then I’d reach down and adjust my shoe…then drop the TB into the storm drain. Then not rush off. Another swig of water, then on to the next storm drain. Gare’s TB’s are of a thickness that just fits through the slots in the drains.
Central Park was full of happy, relaxed people. There were so many people around the lake in the Park I didn’t even consider trying to gift it. People every three feet, no “appropriate social distance” being observed, few masks in sight.
As you can see from the sets of headlines up above, the mean-spirited Western materialistic way of life is disappearing like frost on a spring morning. So the folks in charge engineered a virus and released it upon the populace to distract everyone from what’s actually going on. It’s called " social engineering ".
Now, make no mistake, depopulation is another plank in the platform. But, where I live in New York, the “epicenter” of the virus outbreak, we’re at 48 deaths as of this morning. Yesterday I reminded a close friend that 2,100 people died of influenza in New York in 2019, and that we all needed to keep what was going on in perspective. They immediately got angry with me and concluded the conversation. Questioning people’s religious or political beliefs is always risky at best.
Remember, people get the flu, and die of it, and have, forever. And still to this moment the state has not said “flu vaccinations are mandatory.”
48 deaths in New York, thus far, and they’ve effectively shut down the 8.2 million person city.
Feb 21, 2018 - Nationally, about 69 people die due to lawnmower incidents based on data from a 10-year period. The deaths were up to 100 in 2014.
I was allowed to start and use the lawnmower when I was nine years old. I was warned to, obviously, not stick my hand underneath it when it was running.
But those were different times.
Today, far more people die falling down flights of stairs here in the U.S. than have died from this engineered but not-terribly-deadly virus. This virus which the populace has collectively allowed to cripple the country.
What was that ancient Chinese curse? " May you live in interesting times ."
However, most everyone in my neighborhood is being positive, and generous. It feels like accounts I’ve read of London during the blitz in World War II. Except that, here, the doom and damage is almost completely illusory.
And I guess that’s the best news of all.
At the Park Slope Food Co-Op, here in my neighborhood, a line of mask-wearing hysterics (each separated by what they refer to as the “socially appropriate distance” of six to ten feet) stretches three and four city blocks, ALL DAY LONG.
(The line to get in the Park Slope Food Co-Op. No such line exists elsewhere at any other food store in the five boroughs.)
While at Key Foods, the chain grocery story two blocks away, everyone is calmly shopping. No masks, no lines. Same deal at Wegman’s, another big grocery story a mile or two away.
Yet, here, one small, minority, one deviant clique or cult is so programmed as to collectively act in a way that’s actually harming the Co-Op , and every one of its members. And it won’t be until the Co-Op’s members collectively step up and act in a way that is actually “cooperative” that the situation will return to the positive.
That’s our national and international political situation in a nutshell, by the way.
But the key to understanding the situation is knowing that the subset of the populace we’re discussing doesn’t want life to be positive. As they are currently demonstrating.
They pretend and front that they are “the good people”, when in fact they are the opposite. Mainlining NPR or some zombie TV series on their smart phones in the two-hour Co-Op line, then, when it’s their turn to shop, buying and hoarding all the toilet paper, so that you and me can’t have any.
Most fortunately for us all, there’s plenty of toilet paper , and also no line down at Key Foods, just two blocks away.
Years ago, a boss of mine and I were discussing a horrible coworker, who, counterintuitively, had an excellent radio show on a local independent station. One show better than the next, one song better than the next. She was otherwise a duplicitous, back-stabbing, pathologically-lying sociopath. He said “Jeff, she’s the worst sort of person. She knows what cool is, but she’s not cool .”
Last night the owner of the yoga studio I go to (it’s across the street from the Co-Op), said she was trying to keep business going. In no way joking, I said “the weather’s nice, you should do classes on the sidewalk in front of the building.” She grinned and replied “yeah, in front of that damn Co-Op line!”
Take another look at the picture of the line up above. Can you see how they are all phone addicts?
Two blocks down, at the liquor store, a happy crowd of people are out on the sidewalk, nicely dressed, laughing, chatting, as they patiently waited their turn to buy liquor. No “appropriate social distance” between them. No masks.
The positive changes aren’t stopping. They are, rather, increasing in speed and magnitude.
The world that we’re all steamrolling toward is positive.
This engineered hysteria over a virus that kills about the same number of people as lawnmowers is going to pass, and pretty quickly, I believe.
I’m off work today. I’m going to go for another bike ride.
I’m going to carry my bike down the stairs here in my building, taking care not to fall as I do so.
Jeff Miller, Brooklyn, New York, March 22, 2020
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