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@shagbark_hick "@willroman you inching up this way Will Welcome here if so"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:12:21 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"Hot tip: If you're taking care of someone who is dying you need to know about "UTI psychosis" if they have a catheter. The UTI can cause kidney failure + sepsis. Both can induce psychosis. And I mean real psychosis. Like attacking people frothing at the mouth going nuts"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 22:43:28 UTC 43.4K followers, 171.7K engagements

"Whoring welfare petty theft with resale at pawn shops organized theft with resale at bodegas and scrap metal seem to be the major sources outside money into drug-heavy communities. For example a homeless single man can get EBT in CA to the tune of $292/mo. The return scam can help him turn it into cash: because the benefits are only for food he can abuse the "soft cash" return policies of places like Wal-Mart by buying an item under $XX (Bertolli olive oil in the big jug at $XXXXX is common) with EBT and then return it for cash. Rinse and repeat for $292/mo in drug money. Similarly"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 15:34:50 UTC 43.2K followers, 32.4K engagements

"Imagine: no delirious 24-hour news cycle about idiot politicians all lying through their teeth. No awkward Thanksgiving family drama over fake politics that don't matter. Just chilling praying cleaning your AK-47 drinking tea with your brethren in the mountains"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 15:29:34 UTC 43.3K followers, 10.4K engagements

"The best "middle of nowhere" places are the ones where you can't figure out what the hell anyone does for work. That's where the really nutty wild-ass types of people are living. Largely broke mostly lawless and eccentric to a fault -- these are my people. Of course such places are few and far between. Many former havens for this kind of thing are either succumbing to abandonment yuppie colonization or some kind of development that brings the squares in by the dozen. And the real loony old codgers are dying out in many of these places. The young generation of fellas who might've picked up"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 19:19:28 UTC 43.4K followers, 15.6K engagements

"There are times in Upstate NY when the omens aren't whispered -- they're screamed"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 00:57:56 UTC 43.4K followers, 6803 engagements

"@Inglenniously They definitely exist in certain places in New England and the Mid-Atlantic as well as New Mexico"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 15:11:31 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"@GreyWreath @yoltartar have fun paying the mortgage lmao"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:12:51 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"Incredible insight. Yes -- I very very often feel like I "don't get it." I'll cause trouble in social circles or lose friends having zero idea what I have done wrong. I've often asked: "do people take a class on this stuff How do they know The Rules" So I can really only hang with dropouts and misfits and in lieu of those I can really only be a hermit. The window during which I might've "learned The Rules" has passed; it's just an insane and ridiculous effort to constantly walk on eggshells not knowing whether what I am doing is "correct." That's the "outlaw" mentality in a nutshell"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 14:33:20 UTC 43.3K followers, 2014 engagements

"@mrrobertwp Again "land takeover" is a misnomer because the present-day system of land ownership is fairly new. Previously "land takeover" meant something very very different"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 17:39:37 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"@PhineusPhineus Haldol is exactly where we're at. Involuntarily tranquilized with the cops there after coming at grandma with a fork and breaking her arm"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 00:34:50 UTC 43.2K followers, 5793 engagements

"Years ago I went out with a very-wealthy Jewish girl from Boston who was big in the art scene in NYC. Met her at some bar in Brooklyn where bike couriers hang out; proceeded to spend a month straight with her. She did coke 24/7 took me to VIP rooms at tons of clubs and seemed to have both infinite money and a near-zero grasp on time or reality. She swore she'd marry me and she literally prayed we'd get pregnant. We went to "Members Only" in Brooklyn constantly where I was exposed to some of the weirdest gayest richest most drug-addled people I'd ever seen. I was a filthy hobo at the time"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 15:34:07 UTC 43.4K followers, 3.1M engagements

"It has always seemed a bit odd to me that none of the "tinker" nomad groups of Ireland & Scotland made their way to America to continue the traveller way of life. By what I know descendants of those groups (such as myself) that wound up in the New World retained an irrepressible nomadic urge but expressed it in novel ways -- like cowboying hoboing railroad work and the military. The few descendants who retained a way of life at all similar to that of the old country were the showmen and 'carnies' like my own father. Those who came to America to leave the Traveller ways behind largely went"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-18 15:44:51 UTC 43.4K followers, 3938 engagements

"@JulianeWriter If we ever leave the United States this will be why. Dead serious"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 18:03:08 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"So in looking at this gif it's obvious to see that the vast majority of the USA's land area was settled after 1850 roughly X generations ago. Because of this with the exception of the Mid-Atlantic Northeast and certain parts of the South FL CA and NM very few American families could've continuously occupied the same county for more than X or X generations. Furthermore because the USA lacked a more "seigneurial" or feudal-type system of distributing land between the offspring of a landowner numerous siblings in every old landed family had incredible incentive to leave their home county. This"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 16:06:55 UTC 43.4K followers, 14.3K engagements

"America needs a Kowloon Walled City. Totally unregulated hyper-dense zero oversight. Cheap dirty packed glowing with neon all night long. There's a desperate market demand for something like this"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-15 00:39:07 UTC 43.4K followers, 107.4K engagements

"Two ideas that I was introduced to at a young age made any kind of integration into "professional" "polite" "respectable" culture very difficult: The First Amendment and the Argument Pyramid. As a kid I thought: OK the First Amendment means I can say what I want and if others don't like it the Argument Pyramid means that they can attempt to refute the central point of my argument if they wish. It was a purely idealistic conception of communication that I never really shook. Always assumed if I said something others didn't like they'd respect my right to say it for one and for two they'd show"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 16:26:14 UTC 43.2K followers, 9015 engagements

"Lifestyle inflation happened that's it. If you wanted to live the 1950 version of this that our grandfathers actually lived you still could very easily. You'd just be in Iowa or Ohio or whatever. No $1k smartphones or central A/C; no trips to Prague no top-20 cities. Eating at restaurants maybe just a few times a year. Only one car instead of two and at that the cheapest car you can buy (Mitsubishi Mirage). The house you buy could be $50k but it will be XXX square feet "outdated" and you'll need to put some elbow grease into it like grandad did. You might live somewhere really flat and boring"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-03 13:55:25 UTC 43.3K followers, 715.5K engagements

"@Ris1844860 wow inflation's nuts lmao. I probably wouldn't pay that"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:35:49 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"Spot-on quote. This is VERY apparent to the resident of rural Upstate New York where the air coming from NYC and Albany is always one of condescension and sneering mockery. How they govern the heartland of NY is how they appear to want to govern the heartland of the USA"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 14:59:31 UTC 43.4K followers, 5411 engagements

"Large-scale demoralization is not a problem that you can "fix." When a native-born population has lost the will to live or to maintain and expand a coherent society that society is already dead. No amount of money policy investment can fix it. A lot of people seem to think that the solution to the problems caused by offshoring in the Rust Belt / distressed rural areas can just be "fixed" by "bringing the jobs back." This is false. The loss of the prosperity of the manufacturing era introduced a STRUCTURAL change in the cultures where that era took place; it caused a type of demoralization"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 18:58:38 UTC 43.4K followers, 20.8K engagements

"Anyone who's ever tempted to think that it is "over" for any European-descended ethnic group should read Lost White Tribes by Richard Orizio. It's a fantastic book detailing all sorts of Euro-descendant groups who've clung on in obscure regions of the world from Sri Lanka to Jamaica to Brazil to Namibia. The simple fact is that it's never over. Total eradication of the race is profoundly unlikely. Even at the current abysmally-low global white birthrates true extinction of our race is numerically unlikely until well after the year 3000 AD. And every "lost tribe" is a seed that can in the"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 22:50:12 UTC 43.4K followers, 22.1K engagements

"@wonderlandmom makes her story seem very fake"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 17:07:22 UTC 43.4K followers, 124.6K engagements

"I always get people telling me "oh well when you have kids you're not gonna be doing / thinking / living like that." Truthfully I doubt it. All my life I heard these kinds of prophesies warnings predictions and proclamations. I ignored them all and thrived. E.g. when I hitchhiked people said "you're gonna get kidnapped" (I wasn't) or when I dumpster dove they said "you're gonna get E. Coli" (I didn't) or when I dropped out of society with no job and no money they said "you'll regret this" (I didn't). The list goes on and on. Whatever comeuppance for my eccentric ways people have been hoping"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 23:06:28 UTC 43.4K followers, 9253 engagements

"@suburbanhornero You know of any places online that sell them I'd love a pair"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 18:15:10 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"Correct: I simply don't think about talk about or visit the American South because it was never my thing. Humid heat is like hell to me mostly. I always thought it was a shame they were prevented from seceding. No idea why 750000 Americans had to die to keep them in. The South really is something different from the rest of America -- feels foreign to me in a way the West the Midwest the Plains and New England just doesn't and never did. And there's basically no way for a non-Southerner to talk about visit or think about the South without making Southerners mad. If I move there I'm a filthy"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-21 14:21:28 UTC 43.2K followers, 79.5K engagements

"For some bloodlines in the New World the "freedom of the open country" drove their descendants nuts. Sent them sputtering into paranoia conformity fear as a response to the uneven and often harrowing terrain of early America. It's a hysterical security-oriented mentality; people like these hearken from the "fortress-builder" archetypes of early America not the "horse-mounted soldier-of-fortune" types. Just as their ancestors built forts and fences modern-day descendants have constructed a an almost entirely psychological arena to be policed. Those who deviate even slightly from an extremely"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 15:41:35 UTC 43.4K followers, 3891 engagements

"America needs a nomadic Catholic desert caliphate. End times Fatima prophecies in the Mojave herds of goats Mass in tents AK-47's firing at the moon kettles of hot tea in the desert sunrise little kids on dirtbikes. The Eucharist in a sandstorm. The time has come"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 15:41:26 UTC 43.4K followers, 127.6K engagements

"In a sense Fentanyl and Meth murdered an entire generation of American "characters" and eccentrics. In the old days weird misfit guys would just drink a little liquor build castles out of junk scrap metal in the desert or whatever. Now they're dying from hard drugs instead. This has been a kind of purging of America's real raw "weird" personality as a country. The long-range results of this will only aid the cultural homogenization that is already taking root. I mean you can't let 700000+ of a country's most poorly-adjusted citizens die young without losing a large number of that generation's"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 15:08:43 UTC 43.4K followers, 36.1K engagements

"The death of the old-school "hippie co-op" has been a disaster for America. Not that long ago co-ops sold at cost or a few cents above at most. Was the place to get CHEAP bulk foods. Then they went corporate started with the luxury yuppie schtick and prices skyrocketed"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 16:05:15 UTC 43.4K followers, 7961 engagements

"I'll never get it either. OK you disagree with some doctrines you're not Catholic whatever that's your choice. But to be feverishly adversarial toward the Church that has brought the Gospel to more human beings than any other group seems absurd and even juvenile"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 16:12:32 UTC 43.2K followers, 10.4K engagements

"@Glyph_of_Doom Yes to almost no avail. I know of maybe one guy who has moved here because of my efforts. Most traditional Catholics want a low-tax pro-gun low-reg state for very understandable reasons. So in spite of the obscenely low cost of real estate they're not interested"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 22:21:58 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"Upward social mobility might be a little like pissing in the pool. If one or two people do it OK no one notices. But if everyone does it it's absolutely disgusting for everyone and the pool is no longer usable. The dismal state of our elites may've produced in large part by the endless striving and elbowing upward that many lower-class American families did and continue to do. In a society where people "know their station" and remain in it stability is the default and there are real barriers against engaging in pitiful levels of effrontery for the sake of power or financial gain -- most"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 14:47:29 UTC 43.4K followers, 9589 engagements

"What's actually incredible about food commodities markets today is -- even at RETAIL prices in grocery stores and restaurants we still spend the lowest level of our income on food in human history: 11.3%. But if you got into buying raw commodities yourself processing them into edible food this figure could be lowered to astonishing levels. Literally could make a year's worth of masa (for tortillas and tamales) for a family of X for $XX. Rice for $0.26/lb Pintos for $0.40/lb wheat for less than $0.10/lb. You'd have to figure out how to buy in bulk purchase some processing equipment and take a"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 15:22:01 UTC 43.2K followers, 12.8K engagements

"Another instance of "branding" in states is Vermont. I mean we know advertising works right Vermont has won the advertising game against Upstate NY by a landslide. If you tell mom "mom I moved to Vermont" it hits a lot different than "mom I moved to Plattsburgh NY which is in New York but no it's not a part of NYC it's actually a day's drive North kinda near Canada across from Burlington VT. no I didn't move to Times Square mom this is different." Honestly I think this is half of why Vermont is so vibrant and Upstate NY is so decrepit in spite of having a very similar climate and frankly a"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 02:49:38 UTC 43.4K followers, 32.1K engagements

""Class" isn't about money. It's about "unwritten rules" that simply cannot be learned except by growing up in a family that wordlessly imparts them or by sycophantic levels of effrontery. If you don't know the unwritten rules just own it. Accept your station with dignity"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 02:30:05 UTC 43.4K followers, 37.9K engagements

"Folks who've never lived outdoors for very-extended periods of time tend to imagine that it'd be a terrible way to live. They're right it is -- if you're not very good at it. It's like anything. Basically anyone I know who "got good" at tent dwelling and did it for a long time seems to agree with me here and many such people actually come to prefer it over time. I certainly do; sometimes I feel like I only bought a house just to say I did. Once you know how to stake a tent fly down for the wind conditions in your area know about condensation management for the fabric your tent's made from"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:08:58 UTC 43.4K followers, 39.9K engagements

"@drivelinelive Oh yeah El Paso Texas -- a classic Southern city. not"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 01:10:46 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"I'd rather endure poverty filth and isolation than walk on eggshells appease petty bureaucrats chase clout or suffer any indignity at the hands of the little shits in the government or the professional managerial class. That makes me an American that's all. A lot of people just don't get it. They accept a half-assed compromised version of what being American means and jeer at you when you don't accept monkeying around for a bunch of clipboard-wielding dipshits. I toe no lines; I don't "play the game." I'll pay dearly for that if I must. If this is "third-worldism" so be it. Way back when"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 02:11:15 UTC 43.4K followers, 12.4K engagements

"@jcm10x1 I believe it is most common in the dying and elderly for some reason but I may be wrong there"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 23:01:05 UTC 43.3K followers, 8283 engagements

"I can find no real data on this. But I suspect the proportion of Americans living in the same county as their parents grandparents and great grandparents in an unbroken chain is VERY low. And continuous familial presence in a county for 4+ generations infinitesimally rare"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 15:04:08 UTC 43.4K followers, 15.3K engagements

"False. Because we're also getting the most out of life all winter too. We just get more out of life all the way around. It's hardcore beach swimming and cookouts all summer snowmobiling and skiing all winter. We don't have a "sit inside all day because it's too hot" season"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-16 16:32:36 UTC 43.3K followers, 4406 engagements

"I always laugh when people say that Nebraska sucks. They drive through on I-80 zip past everything and say "wow it's so boring." Like most places it's only "boring" if you stay on the Interstate"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 00:13:58 UTC 43.4K followers, 54.2K engagements

"The neighbor's welder runs in the abandoned highschool on a foggy night. What's he building in there"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 02:46:00 UTC 43.3K followers, 9794 engagements

"I receive a lot of comments like this and they're funny because I was the anarchist par excellence for many years. Read thousands of books within that canon from Marx to Fanon to Stirner to Bookchin to primitivists like Derrick Jensen John Zerzan. And I lived the ethos maximally; traveled to dozens of anarchist communes and farms lived with hippies in the desert hitchhiked 100k+ miles was homeless traveling for 5ish years and homeless not-traveling for a couple years more. Shoplifted spiked trees dumpster-dove etc etc. That's exactly why I'm "conservative" now -- because I traveled all the"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 13:07:33 UTC 43.4K followers, 36.2K engagements

"There's a very thin overlap between the native range of the Joshua Tree and high elevation areas that get 10" or more in annual snowfall. The 'zone' is mostly right around Tonopah NV. I saw it once. Will never forget it. Mind-bendingly magical sight to see"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-17 16:01:49 UTC 43.4K followers, 4836 engagements

"@Las______ I did not. It was way way way too weird. Felt almost demonic"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 16:06:31 UTC 43.4K followers, 117.7K engagements

"The American way of life is really just nomadism with more steps. X. Settle in a place build homes with intent to stay forever X. Economic conditions change move away X. Old houses and towns fall to ruin X. Place with more jobs is crowded; beg for more housing to be built there (while paying exorbitant rents) X. Economic conditions change again (they will) move again X. Another set of houses and towns fall to ruin X. Repeat the process forever Makes a yurt a horse and a herd of goats on the steppe seem a whole lot simpler"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 14:25:06 UTC 43.4K followers, 10.5K engagements

"Well they do call NM "the land of entrapment" for a reason. Very strong eddy there. Much of the South is the same. But even in these cases it's usually not more than X generations continuously occupying a single county maybe X. And 4+ really only exists in New England Mid Atlantic NM Hispanics etc"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 15:24:01 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"The irony about the GI bill is by the time you've got free college the idea of going to college sounds awful. I'm XX I cannot imagine going to English XXX at the local SUNY with all the 18-year-olds. Sounds abysmal. At this point it's a foreign student visa excuse if I need one as a path to permanent residency or an extended stay in another country. That's it"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 16:03:55 UTC 43.3K followers, 14.2K engagements

"Whittier Alaska is basically this. Almost everyone lives in a single building where there are stores bars and so on. Seems like an excellent concept. I'm not really against this model at all. I'd gladly live like this if the vibe was right. Micro-urbanism in the wilderness"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 16:11:23 UTC 43.4K followers, 143.4K engagements

"That's why I mow my lawn with one of these things. Quiet free to use low maintenance artful. You can't beat the classic reel mower and frankly if your yard is too big to mow with one -- you should probably let it go to woods"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-05-16 20:56:39 UTC 43.4K followers, 19.2K engagements

"@FrDamienKarras Relevant Radio is also awesome when you're in the car. I prayed the Rosary from Ohio to North Dakota on my way to meet my wife using the radio. It was awesome. And I got a nod of approval from an old guy sitting in traffic outside Chicago too. God bless him"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 00:49:10 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"The absolute best parts of the United States are the places that are so harrowingly desolate abandoned and isolated that no one cares what you do. Want to camp under the water tower in the middle of town Go ahead no one minds. Building a cabin "If you're crazy enough to stay here" they might tell you "then we figure you know what you're doing." Places where you can pass months without hardly seeing anyone unless you want to. Where everyone's a "character." No jobs no visitors no traffic no crime mostly just wind and silence and rusty trailers and weeds -- a blank open canvas for a few weird"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 15:37:21 UTC 43.3K followers, 9239 engagements

"@yoltartar Well and the very best is sleeping with no tent or tarp at all. When I'm out West I very often sleep out in the open. If I'm worried about snakes I put a tarp under me and raise the edges up with a little staking. Absolute best nights of my life hundreds like that"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:37:00 UTC 43.4K followers, 1626 engagements

"If you wind up being an "interesting" person you get an weird vista on human psychology. The wilder your stories the larger the peanut gallery will be. They'll say: "it can't be true" You know it is; they won't believe it. So in essence your life history is "Schrodinger's crazy story." No one can prove it; cheap shots against their validity are easy to make. Some people really seem to have a psychological need to believe that "crazy life stories" are never real. I don't know why but if you wind up being "interesting" you'll see this firsthand"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 16:14:26 UTC 43.4K followers, 25.5K engagements

"@HxBased I mean serious question not a troll -- what's up with the nomadic populations that have existed since the dawn of time Are they genetically different Perhaps they are"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 18:09:32 UTC 43.2K followers, 2295 engagements

"There seems to be a mismatch between mens' perception of womens' desire for comfort and womens' actual comfort requirements. Whenever I post about nomadic living and such it's always women who seem fascinated and enthralled by it. But the men say: "no woman would do this." If you point out to these men that the women DO want to do this stuff -- even for extended or indefinite periods of time -- they'll say: "those women are lying." And that could be true until you realize that women are camping hiking doing the AT and PCT WWOOFing off-grid living and third world traveling in larger numbers"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 16:37:48 UTC 43.4K followers, 281.7K engagements

"I notice a strong difference when crossing from ND to MT. Even just from Glendive to Medora something shifts. On one side the people's energy is paranoid standoffish even vaguely apocalyptic. On the other there's a kind of warm wholesomeness. Can you guess which is which"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 23:21:58 UTC 43.4K followers, 50K engagements

"Huh it's almost as if sedentarism is not a great way to obtain power. By staking yourself to a single piece of ground your fixed position is your greatest liability. The Khan was right. The ultra-rich are right. The seafaring merchants were right. Real power is nomadic"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 15:49:12 UTC 43.4K followers, 10.1K engagements

"I remember rolling up to Newton Iowa years ago ate the the Denny's there (or maybe it was a local diner I forget). Had X hours of incredible laughs and conversation with the old people there. When I left they all said "you should just stay in Newton" I always wonder what would've happened if I had stayed in Newton IA"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 23:24:54 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"There's a lot of truth in this. Catholicism's ecclesial hierarchy is quasi-Monarchical; laity are peasant-esque. Most Catholic culture is a world of spirit grime wine; it largely defies the neat-and-tidy manner of the well-to-do. When high-brow Americans go Catholic there's a weird mismatch; a 'secret third thing' that isn't regular Catholicism but isn't quite Protestantism either. The attempt to shoehorn intense uprightness and petit-bourgeois sensibility into the Faith often results in a stuffy awkward affair. No offense to the SSPX but the Society's Parishes here are often an extreme"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 20:50:53 UTC 43.2K followers, 12K engagements

"Respectfully I find it hard to understand why anyone takes Anglicanism seriously. Like an insane King goes nuts defies Rome murders Saint Thomas More rainbow flags on half the Churches now and you're convinced this is better than being Catholic I don't get it"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 01:31:51 UTC 43.4K followers, 26.3K engagements

"I'll admit criminally insane as Charles Manson was he captured something defining and real about the American spirit when he said: "I got a motorcycle and a sleeping bag. What the hell I wanna go off and go to work for Work for what Money" That's America right there"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 01:34:13 UTC 43.3K followers, 14.7K engagements

"One of the toughest things going forward is going to be raising boys into real men. Everything's illegal everyone's watching every activity is structured regulated -- the default for boys and young men today is to be a pussy because anything else is now against the rules"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-12 15:41:13 UTC 43.3K followers, 28.7K engagements

"Except priests / monks this demographic often consists of the saddest most tortured of them all. The unmarried 40+ man lives in a kind of anguish unknowable to the rest of us. They either convert that anguish into beauty & genius or become dangerous dark-sided depressives. It is one or the other; there is no middle ground for them. The stakes are high"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 23:40:57 UTC 43.4K followers, 10.6K engagements

"@harold_bracy spreadsheet brain though culture matters and the culture in NH is tattle-tale. Lots of permits building codes garbage. I mean Pittsburg is different and a handful of other areas but mostly the state is on bureaucrat lockdown in practice"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 02:56:58 UTC 43.4K followers, XXX engagements

"I do find it strange that Americans for all their anti-communist / anti-collectivist sensibilities took to the "job" thing so quickly and so naturally. Every company that employs W2 workers is a kind of microcosmic Soviet state. They tell you what to do set quotas monitor your activity (sometimes even outside work) evaluate you and then for it you get your "meal stamps" AKA money and you (might) get healthcare and a retirement. The only distinctly individualist thing about it is the fact that you can quit. But once you quit inasmuch as you became accustomed to being attached to a firm as its"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 22:20:00 UTC 43.4K followers, 22.8K engagements

"@YIMBYLAND Saint Louis for the Catholic culture. Fargo for the nicest people in the world. El Paso for the happiest people in the USA"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 12:29:51 UTC 43.2K followers, 2829 engagements

"It's kind of incredible what "branding" can do for a state. MT is absolutely not "the most libertarian state" but the reputation persists because that was how it was in the 90's. My wife's family has lived there for many years. Property taxes doubled in a single year county passed ordinances against backyard chickens (even in rural areas) etc. It's a "purple" state now. Legalized abortion to XX weeks "trans" representative in the state house crazy ordinances getting passed in tons of towns etc. If I had to guess the actual in-practice "most libertarian states" are probably AK NV SD AZ"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 01:44:16 UTC 43.4K followers, 64.9K engagements

"@KingSpiezio Realistically that may be true at times -- but many "geniuses" are. not geniuses and don't get one tenth of the "pass" they think they might deserve. To be honest I feel a little "edgy" for occasionally having a 2pm pint on a workday. like "can I get away with this""
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 23:33:31 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"The "working-a-job-to-pay-the-bills" setup causes the VAST majority of mental health problems. The best thing you can do for your mental health is to find a non-job way to generate income (no alarm clock required) and to keep your bills as low as humanly possible"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 16:25:20 UTC 43.4K followers, 28K engagements

"Nomadism never died even in the European genome. It just became "alcoholism" instead when nomadic peoples were forcibly settled (or intensely pressured to remain settled). (and the opioid epidemic is a genocide of peoples with autochthonous genes)"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 23:04:45 UTC 43.2K followers, 8043 engagements

"People who aren't from sick dark-sided broken families cannot conceive of what it's like to be from such a family. It's beyond their comprehension. The entire psychological architecture is different. The guy from a decent upstanding functional family thinks: "It's important to have fun work hard and just generally enjoy life; there are problems in the world but nothing really apocalyptic." Subjects they consider to be "heavy" are generally. not very heavy. These people are not urgently anguished or yearnful for "something better" and are mostly very well-adjusted and optimistic (even if they"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 13:43:02 UTC 43.4K followers, 138.7K engagements

"High summer in the Adirondacks; my wife is X months pregnant. We lay on the rocks like lizards; we dive into the river rapids at the day's peak heat. Each morning we walk to Mass come home read books -- she naps I write. That baby can't come soon enough. He or she has no idea what they're missing. They're chilling in a dark little water sack sleeping kicking fidgeting. That baby has no idea if it's gonna be born in Kazakhstan or in Tunis or in Hainan. nope my little friend you're going to be born in the Adirondacks in a high summer haze by the river under the Stars and Stripes. buckle up baby"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 22:43:35 UTC 43.4K followers, 37.1K engagements

"Sent the fella off earlier today on his big adventure. He's well on his way. What a great kid"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 22:51:44 UTC 43.2K followers, 7066 engagements

"An American living in Central Asia notes here that nomadic populations were killed by the Soviets; they didn't choose to settle because it was such a better way of life -- they were forced to do so. Once you see historical patterns surrounding nomadism it's hard to defend the idea that all nomads for all of history were living a grim Hobbesian life that they were desperately trying to escape. The reality is basically always the complete opposite. Nomads would quite often rather fight and die than settle and in their oral histories they often make expressions of pity or disgust at the"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-24 14:23:29 UTC 43.3K followers, 9269 engagements

"Imagine if we did this today. There are 21000000 boys between XX and XX in the USA today. En masse emancipation would inject tremendous life into our society. and would be good for those boys too. The suffocating "endless childhood" thing was a bad idea that should end"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-22 01:01:33 UTC 43.2K followers, 7442 engagements

"I've slept outdoors for 2000+ nights often for months and months at a time. It was the best sleep of my life. I rose with the sun at dawn and crawled into my bedroll just past dark every day. Once you've done this for any length of time you can't go back. The whole "keep the lights on after dark stay up late sleep in a drywall box with fabric hung over the windows to keep the light out" thing really starts to feel as insane as it actually is. And alarm clocks are completely anathema; they almost seem cruel. Ever since going back to sleeping in electrified buildings again I've had nothing but"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 14:06:17 UTC 43.4K followers, 41.5K engagements

"There's a part of the Great Plains where "Midwest nice" and "the cowboy mentality" seem to overlap and it's a heavenly kind of heartland place. They're not really the ranchers who are itching to shoot you are clannish isolated warlike. They always struck me as a more optimistic open-hearted bunch than some of the ranching folks further west. Nordic facial features Western 'cowboy-type' dress. Minimal "Gadsden Flag survivalist energy" until further west. Many times hitchhiking in Western NE / SD / ND I found this and it always felt like a literal heaven on earth. Guys would pick me up with no"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-27 20:43:42 UTC 43.4K followers, 139.1K engagements

"@MarcuSteropes the guy was gay very high on drugs and I wasn't about to walk around pants less in that place. Not even for $1k"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 17:54:22 UTC 43.4K followers, 28.7K engagements

"@Eggelstein This I can intuit. and it is my purpose to throw the wise truisms of the old into question with a kind of artistic flourish if I can"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 01:52:35 UTC 43.4K followers, XX engagements

"Sometimes I have a few beers and think on Edward Abbey a man I consider to be a true hero. He died in '89 a fact which if he could see what's going on today he'd be glad for. I imagine his disgust at the turns this country's taken. I feel just as disgusted. RIP to a legend"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-25 02:37:10 UTC 43.3K followers, 8356 engagements

"You'd think all northern-European-descendant people would agree with this but they by and large don't. No idea why people who are literally white and pale-eyed because of winter have come to prefer devilishly hot swamp-ass weather out of nowhere"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-28 16:36:11 UTC 43.4K followers, 96.4K engagements

"I've always hated dogs and among those I grew up around this was an absolutely normal mentality. So the sudden shift in the collective conscious about these animals is totally baffling to me. Those who walk on rural roads know it well: loose dogs are a blight. Chained-up barking behemoths snarling at you from yards are an antisocial disgrace. I've been chased bit barked at and when I've responded with any degree of anger or discomfort at the behavior of peoples' dogs their owners were often indignant with me. Even after the first time I got bit the lady who owned the dog kept repeating that"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-19 15:06:02 UTC 43.4K followers, 1.7M engagements

"I think it's hilarious that people from other states occasionally see the dirt-cheap prices of real estate in Upstate NY and assume it's a scam or criminal or whatever. Nope it's real and legal. Our State is so poorly run that in essence you get PAID to buy property here. I say this because there's no way I could've built my house for what I paid for it ($33k for 3bd 1100 sq ft move-in ready with a two-story barn). And there's NO way you could've built that Cathedral today for $250k. It is a crisis of governance so extreme and so deeply entrenched it's almost impossible for people from other"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 14:14:56 UTC 43.4K followers, 9636 engagements

"I don't talk about it for obvious reasons but. yeah. Absolutely true. If you want to "pull chicks" or whatever being a filthy hobo is a fantastic way to do it. It's a bizarre window into female psychology. Skews liberal old money. No idea why. Hobos are like toys to them"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-23 18:23:07 UTC 43.3K followers, 9171 engagements

"If we ever leave the US it will be because of the contingent of citizens law enforcement and government agencies who seem to view children as "public property" and parents as "parenting agents with the revocable privilege of caretaking de facto wards of the state.""
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 19:49:00 UTC 43.4K followers, 3588 engagements

"A shocking amount of the USA looks something like this. When I think of "America" I picture a scene like this"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-21 01:55:59 UTC 43.4K followers, 54.5K engagements

"@hununu @NatureSchoolSU Uber came to NYC way before 2016"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 23:53:56 UTC 43.3K followers, 5021 engagements

"G.K. Chesterton said: Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her. Notice that he says "men" and "they" -- in the plural. One man cannot do it; the kind of greatness he describes cannot be willed into existence by one man. If you find you are the only one who loves a dying place or one of the very very few that place will continue to decline in spite of your affinity for it. There is a "fulcrum point" in sheer numbers that must be achieved for the "Rome Effect" to be actuated and sustained. The solitary lover of a dying place is only a witness or at"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-21 16:35:13 UTC 43.3K followers, 3070 engagements

"The structure of this idea is present in all domains of American life. If you deviate from "The Way Things Are" for suburban-Americans people from that demographic will curse you prophecy your failure etc. "You'll eventually learn why that's a bad idea" is the response to any "weird" idea. Homeschooling home birthing various forms of devout religious practice choosing not to go to college deviating from the 'good job with benefits' thing alternative types of housing etc etc. Those who've bought in to a certain 'suburban' type of conformity seem to be openly praying for the comeuppance of"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 14:20:52 UTC 43.4K followers, 33.9K engagements

"Addendum: This phenomenon has very likely intensified as "the death of mythos" has swept through Western Civilization. Language and storytelling was formerly a mythic domain; words had a spirited invocational quality. Now we use words like Lego blocks and any phenomena outside the august limits of "normalcy" must be dismissed as hokum by practitioners of the new hyper-rationality lest we find ourselves unleashing scary mythopoeic forces that cannot be measured or controlled. Just as the rationalist-atheist combs through sacred Scripture to "debunk" it in the most self-satisfied sort of way he"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 17:05:02 UTC 43.3K followers, 7477 engagements

"My mother is now nonverbal in in-patient Hospice. Her and I are likely never to speak together again in this life. Please fervently pray to God that in His infinite mercy she shall be spared the pains of hell and that we'll speak again when it is my time to leave this world"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-29 23:57:44 UTC 43.4K followers, 47.8K engagements

"@Johnson73039590 You are definitely right I really have a very weak grasp of the world of the "normie." Pretty much a foreign world to me"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 17:32:40 UTC 43.3K followers, XXX engagements

"Daily Mass is one of the absolute best things about being Catholic. Even at tiny rural Parishes weekday Mass is normal. For the vast majority of Protestants and Orthodox this isn't a thing. It's almost unbelievable -- who wouldn't want to worship God EVERY DAY"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-17 13:17:52 UTC 43.2K followers, 5987 engagements

"@RoguesPhilo that's insane what'd they make of you"
@shagbark_hick on X 2025-07-26 16:21:22 UTC 43.2K followers, 1139 engagements