βοΈπ A BIG THEORY β Sunday, December 31, 2023 β C&C NEWS ππ¦
What could mass hallucination, rogue waves, extreme weather, war, and billionaires in bunkers have in common? Today's subscriber bonus post offers a simple, scientific explanation for every bit of it.
Good morning, loyal C&C subscribers, itβs Sunday, December 31st β New Yearβs Eve! Not only that, itβs a rare date combination: 12/31/23. When you remove the slashes it becomes β123123.β Numerologists are having a VERY big day; make of it what you will. Todayβs C&C stretches toward some big topics, like what is really going on with the world? Iβll offer you a great big theory, a theory big enough to cover covid mass hallucinations, weather events and natural disasters, and even billionaires building bunkers.
Given the holiday, Iβm opening up the first part of todayβs post for our regular readers. The second part will be reserved for the weekly supporter bonus edition.
ππ¬ WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY π¬π
π₯ Australia β 17 hours ahead of Florida β has already celebrated New Yearβs Eve, and by all accounts the Sydney harbor fireworks show was spectacular:
New Zealand is in the same time zone, and it also had a successful New Yearβs show. It wasnβt quite as dramatic as Australiaβs, but then it lacks the iconic Sydney Opera House and Sydney harbor bridge. Still impressive though:
I mentioned both countries because significantly β for worriers β there were no reports of attacks or social problems from either countryβs New Yearβs celebrations. May the rest of the world similarly celebrate the holiday tonight in peace and joy.
π₯ The Fort Worth Star Telegram ran an encouraging story yesterday with this headline:
The restaurant has planned a gala, premium-priced New Yearβs Eve party including a fire thrower, a magician, a palm reader, dinner, music, a DJ, and several drag performers offering βcomedy and cabaret.β But, according to the story, after an βonslaught of complaints,β the restaurant changed up its New Yearβs Eve programming, deleting the drag performers:
To be clear: neither I nor most people who complained about the show hate transsexual people. Iβm not advocating to make drag illegal or banning it. But if most customers feel adding drag to the pricey New Yearβs experience is offensive, either because it is immoral, disrespectful to women, or for whatever reason, then restaurants are right to adjust to customer preferences.
This demonstrates a hidden benefit to the shrinking economy. Without all the free government covid money, businesses are being forced to pay more attention to their customers which means less wokeness.
π₯ Time Magazine reported on a hot story yesterday in an article headlined, βMark Zuckerberg Is Reportedly Building an Underground Bunker in Hawaii. Hereβs What to Know.
Honestly, I found it much more interesting that the Facebook billionaire is building a vast 1,400 acre Kauai estate including fantastic features like 11 tree houses. But social media was ablaze this week over reports that one of the estateβs fabulous features is a 5,000-square-foot underground bomb shelter.
More than one C&C commenter begged me to write about it and explain whether this news, especially combined with reports of other billionaires building bunkers, means that the World is Ending soon, and if so, what should we do about it?
Hereβs my take. First of all, the one feature you donβt want in your underground survival bunker is other people knowing about it. I lost count of how many recent headlines described Zuckβs bunker, never mind all the social media chatter. Everybody knows.
Itβs possible all these billionaires know some secret that we donβt know. They arenβt saying. But they are planning to survive some kind of top-secret apocalyptic event and the rest of us are going to die horribly, like a pack of rats who panicked and ran right into Bill Gatesβs cricket-crunching machine.
Thatβs one option.
Another possibility is that Zuck and the others read the same fear porn on social media that everybody else does, and they watch prepping videos on YouTube just like everyone else, and fulsome, well-equipped, underground survival bunkers are just the latest billionaire lifestyle accessory to measure against the size of other billionairesβ β¦ well-endowed bunkers.
The government says everything is fine. Amusingly, billionaire bunkers also means the billionaires donβt believe anything the government says, just like the rest of us. Nobody is buying what the government is selling these days. Itβs become a very interesting common feature of post-pandemic life. Distrust of the government could have been caused by the governmentβs universally-awful pandemic response.
Or maybe widespread distrust, fear of apocalypses, and the governmentβs universally-awful pandemic response could all have been caused by some other unknown third factor. Isnβt that an interesting idea? Letβs shamelessly speculate about what that unknown common cause could be.