We have had two serious hurricanes in the last couple of weeks. It's exhausting and scary. People have died. Small towns have disappeared. Places have been cut off when the roads washed out and the bridges got carried away. There's lots that needs to be done, and lots that is being done. If you want to help, I recommend donating to local charities in your area of choice. I do not recommend flying to Florida or the Southern Appalachians in your own personal helicopter. You're liable to get in the way, say the rescuers.

What has struck me about this year's hurricane season is not the severity of the storms. Yes, Helene heading up to the Smoky Mountains and devastating people at 2000 feet above sea level is a once-in-a-century event; at least, it usually is, and we hope it stays that way. But we do get bad storms. And I'm not weirded out by the crazy talk that surrounds such an event. In 1811-1812, a series of earthquakes emanated from the New Madrid Fault in Missouri, which at that time was on the western frontier. European Americans thought it was the end of the world, while many Native Americans took the earthquakes as a sign to join Tecumseh's alliance. It's fairly normal, even in a skeptical age, for people to look for signs. Not particularly helpful, mind you. But it makes some people feel better while they're waiting for the power to come back on.

No, what's worrying me is that in a short period of time I've seen so many varied and unconfirmed assertions that it's giving me vertigo. All of these things have been claimed, in public:

• The Democratic Party, through its connections to powerful others, has used Science to engineer a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, which then travelled in an unnatural direction (east) toward Florida, because they want to attack the home of the Republican presidential candidate. Why their previously engineered hurricane hit a resort city in the Appalachians which is known to be infested with Democrats is anybody's guess. I don't really expect these things to make sense anymore.

• It is possible to outwit a hurricane by strapping your entire house down and staking the straps in the ground. We have photos and video of the 'before' aspect of this experiment, but as of now I haven't seen any 'after' photos. In the meantime, someone else went off to ride out the hurricane in his sailboat. Another guy wrapped his brand-new Corvette in plastic. Nobody has the results of these forays into logic yet, and debates still rage as to what should/will have happened.

• 'They' are doing a lot here. 'They' are engineering all this in order to corner the lithium market. 'They' are targeting political opponents, or their voting machines. Worst of all, 'they' are working for some shadowy cabal of billionaires, foreigners, or some fellow named Soros. If you protest, even mildly, the people saying these things retort that they 'read a paper' about it (this means about what you think it means) and are better-informed than you.

I don't even engage with this stuff any more. I just remove myself mentally from the environment, going far, far away in my mind. I'm somewhere on the edge of the solar system at this point.

The question uppermost in the minds of everyone not afflicted with the desire to rewrite the laws of physics or substitute fiction for investigative reporting? Why? Why are they doing this? Not 'they'. The people who infest your tweets, your email, your tv, your neighbourhood. Why do they persist in making these things up? Why do they so easily believe exactly those rumours which are least likely to be true?

I have a theory. And I am not going to share it with you. I am almost 100% sure that if I did, y'all would accuse me of peddling a conspiracy theory. So I'm keeping it to myself.

I just hope we don't get any more hurricanes for the rest of this month. There's too much to clean up already. Also, I don't think our mental models of reality could stand the strain.

PS: The strapped-down house made it through the storm with only minor damage. It was in Orlando, not the worst part of the storm. Arguments continue.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

21.10.24 Front Page

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