Episode Summary

This time on This Month in the Apocalypse, Brooke, Inmn, and Margaret talk about food insecurity, genocide in Armenia, a storm in Libya, battles for abortion care access, the government shut down, the state of water, and how everything can tie back to Lord of the Rings.

Host Info

Brooke can be found on Twitter or Mastodon @ogemakweBrooke. Inmn can be found on Instagram @shadowtail.artificery. Margaret can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

Publisher Info

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness.

Transcript

This Month in the Apocalypse: September, 2023

**Inmn ** 00:15 Hello and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying [Brooke cheers] and this is our extra fun This Month in the Apocalypse section in which we talk about, unfortunately, most of the horrible things that happened in the last month. I'm one of your hosts today, Inmn, and I have with me some other folks.

**Margaret ** 00:36 Hi.

**Brooke ** 00:36 The indomitable you.

**Margaret ** 00:40 Brooke is Brooke. I'm...I'm Out-mn [like Inmn, but out] Margaret,

**Brooke ** 00:45 I'll be Margaret, you be Out-mn.

**Margaret ** 00:49 The inverse of Inmn. [Brooke laughing] Or, I'll be Margaret. And then Inmn can be Brooke.

**Inmn ** 01:02 I don't know nearly enough about math to be Brooke, but I will try.

**Margaret ** 01:07 Okay, we'll just switch each other's scripts and so that we each read what the other has researched. And y'all can go  with my shitty notes.

**Inmn ** 01:17 Yeah, right. You know, that sounds great. But before we get to all of that, we are a proud member of the Channel Zero Network of anarchists podcasts and here is a jingle from another show on that network. Bah doo boop doo [Singing the words like a simple melody]

**Inmn ** 02:21 And we're back. And, to start off the show, we have harped a lot on how horrible of a place Phoenix, Arizona is a lot this year.

**Brooke ** 02:38 Oh, I've definitely talked shit too, so...it's at least an "us" and not necessarily a "we."

**Margaret ** 02:42 I really appreciate you making this a "we" instead of me just talking shit on it.

**Inmn ** 02:48 Yeah, no, I mean, it's the place, famously, where propane tanks explode because it's too hot and people fall on the ground and get burned. And, where they're trying to build some giant super future city that Bill Gates wants to trap us all in...or something. But a listener got a hold of me and told me about the history of the name, Phoenix, because it got brought up on the show. And, what he had to tell me about it was that Phoenix is named so because it was built from the ashes of a Hohokam civilization that was literally burned to the ground by white settlers. [Brooke boos] And they wanted to inspiringly build a city in its ashes. [laughing in a horrified way] So yeah, the surprising but not too surprising history of Phoenix.

**Margaret ** 03:58 It's more like the spell Animate Dead where you bring someone back to life but as a mindless zombie who serves you instead of their original purpose.

**Inmn ** 04:04 Yeah, totally. Yeah.

**Margaret ** 04:08 Brooke, what were you gonna say? Sorry.

**Brooke ** 04:09 Oh, just that I think that, as an indigenous person, we should go ahead and re-Phoenix, Phoenix. [Everyone laughs] It's time.

**Margaret ** 04:18 This is just a terrible transitional state that I was in before...

**Brooke ** 04:21 I mean if it rises from the ashes, let's burn that motherfucker down and give it back to its proper people.

**Inmn ** 04:29 It might do that on its own. The way the city is running it, it might...that might happen regardless of intention.

**Brooke ** 04:38 Excellent. I'm glad to help, though. I will help the city towards that goal.

**Inmn ** 04:44 Yeah. But, in a hopeful note for Arizona, I did find out that other cities in Arizona, not Phoenix, do weirdly have a pretty robust aquifer system. Like the city of Tucson, for example, only relies on the Colorado River for like 5% of its water, and otherwise, it's all aquifer driven and there's a lot of cool programs in place for--this is me defending that Arizona is a fine place to live.

**Margaret ** 05:18 I know. And I'm going to talk about groundwater later [Laughing] and how aquifers are all drying up all over the country.

**Brooke ** 05:24 Thank God, because I was going to insert some shit about there right now. So, I'll leave that for you, Margaret.

**Inmn ** 05:28 Great. Well, to start us off today aside from Arizona...

**Brooke ** 05:36 Phoenix getting burned down.

**Inmn ** 05:36 ...Aside from Phoenix getting burned down. There are some bad things happening in the world. I know this is a shock to all of our listeners who came here for a list of joyful things about the apocalypse, right? But, so there's a new wave of activity in the Armenian Genocide from Azerbaijan. And, what's been happening is that on September 19th, Azerbaijan   launched a full assault on Nagorno-Karabakh targeting mostly civilian infrastructure. There have been--you know, this was as of September 19th--200 casualties so far. But, there are 120,000 people who are completely cut off from any kind of external supplies or aid. Nagorno-Karabakh, it's been contested for a really long time. It's been the subject of a lot of past conflicts. And, both sides have--there's been a, you know, an unsteady..."peace" isn't the right word, but, you know, non-attacking-each-other time. And both sides are kind of accusing each other of a military buildup. And while there's a lot of physical evidence that shows Azerbaijan amassing troops and building military infrastructure, the same cannot be said of Armenia, who has--there's a local defense army in that area. Because, the area is sort of technically part of Azerbaijan, but is controlled by an ethnically Armenian population. And, so, part of this big military buildup is that there was this blockade put on, essentially, the only route in and out of this area, was just put on full military blockade. And there was a big humanitarian response to it because they're like, "You're cutting off 120,000 people from all external like food, and medical, and, you know, any kind of supplies, and, in some instances, water. And, there was this big mass starvation happening in this area. And, humanitarian aid convoys that were trying to go into the area were literally being shelled by Azerbaijan. Which eventually culminated in this full assault on September 19th. And, as it stands right now, there's...literally 120,000 people have gotten into their cars and are attempting to leave the area since the...

**Brooke ** 05:37 That's a lot of people

**Inmn ** 05:38 Yeah, yeah.

**Margaret ** 05:41 There was a ceasefire or something, right?

**Inmn ** 05:44 There was a ceasefire, which called for the unconditional surrender of the defense army. So, it's now a completely civilian population. And, there has been a call for the reintegration of the Armenian population, which locally is being viewed as a death sentence to pretty much everyone. Because, in the past, reintegration attempts by Azerbaijan have resulted in things like mass torture and rape of civilians and POWs.

**Brooke ** 09:22 Wow.

**Inmn ** 09:23 Yeah. And, to complicate things even more, there's like a...You know, it's in the world view right now. And people are like...Like, other countries are like, "Oh, should we do something?" And weirdly, Russia has been the peacekeeping mediator between the two.

**Brooke ** 09:43 What?

**Margaret ** 09:44 So, it's not good. They're not doing good things.

**Inmn ** 09:47 No, they're not doing good things. And, a lot of people suspect them of playing this double game because Russia has publicly supported Armenia in a lot of the disputes, but they are the main arms supplier to Azerbaijan. So, there's obviously a lot of strange conflict. They're essentially...the world at large is viewing them as playing one side against the other. So...

**Margaret ** 10:19 So, I don't know as much about this part. I've only been learning about some of this stuff recently. But, Russia, in general, has its own kind of equivalent of NATO, like its power-block type thing. But, Armenia is basically being slowly, kind of, shunted out of it or given less and less say in it, is the impression that I'm under. And, so there's a lot of tension of how Armenia is a little bit more looking to the west or whatever in a way that Russia isn't stoked about. That's the--I'm not 100% certain about this--that's the understanding I've been kind of learning.

**Inmn ** 10:58 Yeah, yeah. And so, kind of, one of the big pressing issues right now is what is going to happen to this mostly ethnically Armenian population that is...Like there's a 70 mile line of cars trying to flee the area. And like, yeah, yeah, obviously...

**Brooke ** 11:22 Where are they headed towards?

**Margaret ** 11:25 Armenia.

**Inmn ** 11:26 Yeah.

**Margaret ** 11:27 They're in the border region.

**Brooke ** 11:29 Going into Armenia? Not going out of Armenia?

**Margaret ** 11:31 Yeah. No, into. Because, what it is, is there is a border area and that border area, most of it is now controlled by Azerbaijan and was taken, I believe, during the conflict a couple of years ago. However, several of the cities, or several of the population centers, are primarily Armenian even though they're now technically part of Azerbaijan because of this conflict, right? And so they need to get the fuck out because they're going to be genocided. And, they're very aware of the fact that they are going to be genocided. And a lot of the rhetoric that is coming up is genocidal. And, Armenians are being like fairly blunt that, like, "If the world doesn't do something right now, we're going to die." Like, hundreds of thousands of people are going to fucking die.

**Inmn ** 12:22 Yeah.

**Brooke ** 12:23 Wow.

**Inmn ** 12:24 Yeah, it's...it's really bad. Yeah, but yeah, that's all I have on that. Brooke, I have heard that there's also some pretty bad things happening in India and Libya?

**Brooke ** 12:41 Yeah, well, I can tell you about India, anyway. Well, we talk a lot about, of course, climate events going on. And there's been a lot of stuff that we've talked about this summer with various climate catastrophes, wildness, unusual behavior. And I think it's pretty well known that we're in an El Nino situation right now. One of the countries that has been affected by climate catastrophe this year is India, especially in the northern regions where they do a lot of growing of food. And they have had really unpredictable rainfalls. In some places there's been severe flooding, and other places, there's been less rain than usual, which overall is leading to a lot of problems with a lot of crops. So, some of the food staples in India have seen significant increases in prices. Tomatoes and onions are things popularly used in Indian cooking, and they've seen a five to six times increase in the price for them. [Margaret goes "phew!"] Yeah, yeah, massive increases. And then, and this is then also related to war in Ukraine and wheat and grain prices. The chicken feed has gone up significantly, and chicken is a pretty common meat in a lot of dishes. But, then the chicken has become too expensive--to buy chicken. And to have chickens and feed them and butcher your own chickens has also become too expensive. So, that big source of protein is kind of off the menu in a lot of places too. So, some families are eating, you know, just mashed up vegetables is their whole meal for the day. Other places, they're making just--it's not naan but it's breads that are...roti. Roti breads. They just make some roti bread in the morning and that's all the family has to eat for the day is just bread. A lot of lower income families get a wheat subsidy from the government. They get so many pounds of wheat every month. But, it's not enough to last through the whole month. And of course they're not able to get enough wheat from other sources to even keep up with the levels of demand that people have in the country. So, inflation is making it much harder to buy goods. And, it's due to the climate catastrophe. And in fact, India has gone so far as to ban some exports like rice and sugar. Yeah, they've banned exports on those, which, of course, all of the places that might turn to rice as a grain source when wheat runs out then can't get the rice that they would usually get. Not that they're interchangeable, but, you know? And, in fact, India is looking at importing some things that it historically never has to import, like tomatoes from Nepal. They're looking at having to import those. So, yeah, you know, it's already a very impoverished country. So, India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, having some trouble with the food staples there. And, not gonna get, you know, better anytime soon because, of course, they're crops that you harvest and that you store. So, rice, you know, being a big one, they're pulling in a smaller rice harvest. There's not enough to go around right now. And then everything that they would usually put in a long term storage, they don't have enough for that. So, there's going to be even more food insecurity down the road, unless they're able to find ways to import some of that and do it in a way that they can afford to do.

**Brooke ** 16:58 One more component of that whole foods situation--it's not like the food supply-but speaking of Ukraine, is that India imports fuel from Ukraine. And I can't remember the kind. But, they haven't been able to get as much fuel as they usually would, and so people that use that for cooking, don't have don't have the ability to do as much cooking because they can't afford it or they can't get the fuel that they need in order to cook.

**Margaret ** 17:37 It's funny because one of the things I'm sort of hoping we can start doing with a lot of things--obviously, we can do it with all things--is to sort of talk about how to mitigate these problems or how to help with these problems, you know? And there's like two different parts of it. And one is like, you know--and I don't have the research and I'm just like thinking about a way to try and do this--but it's, you know, we don't have a way to necessarily impact food prices in India and so then it's like, "Oh, well, there's the things that we can do here." And then it's like, well, overall, not entirely, but, overall, the average person in America is a lot more privileged. But then it's like...just things like how tomatoes and other crops are also being threatened a lot in the United States right now, and we're probably going to see food prices on a lot of these staple crops, like vegetables and things, go up--not to the same degree, not five or 6...you know, 500%, or whatever, in one year. And it's interesting because there's some of these things that are easier to grow at home, as compared to staple crops. Like, large copper hydrates, corn, wheat, rice, can be grown at home, but very...it's way more complicated. And, you're also very unlikely to have a climate where you can grow all three of those things instead of just one of those things.

**Brooke ** 18:54 Yeah, in my heart, I'm like, "Oh, yeah, the solution to this is, you know, everybody should plant a garden." But, that's such a privileged thing to say, to assume that they have space, resources, good soil, you know, with a thousand things that actually tries to do that.

**Margaret ** 19:12 Yeah. Yeah. Well...

**Brooke ** 19:15 But, if you can garden, you should learn how to do something, plant something.

**Margaret ** 19:22 No, I mean, even as a as a prepper, sometimes when something goes wrong for one of my friends, I'm like, "Oh, I'm gonna get the thing that helps me if that goes wrong for me." I mean, I try and help them out first, right? But, you know, driving with someone and the muffler or the whole tailpipe detaches from their car, and they're like, "Oh, I need this metal strapping instead of, you know, I had like P-cord or something, right?" And now I have metal strapping in my car because why not? It's tiny and cheap and light, right? And that's not...this doesn't apply on a global level. I'm sorry everyone who's listening who's like, "Shut the fuck up." You're right. Okay, so we decided what we're gonna do is we're gonna do like foreign--foreign... [questions the phrasing] Whatever, international shit before we do shit that's like a little bit more...the shit that we already...the shit that's closer to home. So, the other big thing that I have from this year...from this month--Jesus Christ, it's been...this year...it's just not even.... [Pauses to rest] In Libya, the...Okay, there was a storm called Storm Daniel. And, it was the deadliest storm in the Mediterranean in recorded history. And, it happened on September 11th. Way higher count of dead people than anything--well, then the famous thing that happened on September 11th in United States. I don't know as much about the coup that happened on September 11th years ago. But, Storm Daniel, it's like...it's not a tropical storm because of like, it's not from the sparkling Champagne region of France or whatever...[Brooke laughs, getting the joke] Like...You know what I'm saying? [Affirmative noises] Like, in order for it to be a tropical storm it has to exist in this very specific way. But, it's like...it's a tropical storm, like in terms of its impact. Like, it's a sparkling nightmare. And, you know, so it's legally distinct. But, it hit a ton of Mediterranean countries, and it fucked a lot of things up. And, it most notoriously killed a fuck ton of people in Libya because there were these two aging dams outside of the city of Derna that broke on September 11th. The death toll is anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000 people with 9,000 people that are still missing, even though it's been several weeks. I believe that that 11,000 number includes those missing people. That's the best guess I can get. And, just basically a third of the city fucking washed out to sea. I'm being slightly hyperbolic. A third of the city was damaged and a fuck ton of it washed out into the sea. And...Yeah, the morgues were overfilled. Bodies were laid out in the main square on sidewalks. Eight people, eight officials have been arrested already over this, which is funny because it's better than what the United States would do, you know? And, we're all like, "Oh, look at these terrible, idiotic countries," or whatever. Like, no, they...So far, as of yesterday, as of recording, they've arrested eight people.

**Inmn ** 22:32 Like on...because of...because of like what? Like preparation?

**Margaret ** 22:36 Because they didn't fix the damn thing. Yeah, sorry. There are these two dams that for decades scientists...The dams were built in the 70's by, I want to say, a Turkish contractor. No, I'm not sure. A contractor from a different country. And, they've been showing signs of aging and they've just been unmaintained for like 50 years. And, in 2012-2013 $2 million was appropriated, like sent to fix them, but Libya has not been an incredibly stable place, and that money did not fix them. And so, yeah. Everyone was like...Scientists were sitting there being like, "There's a crack in this dam that's over the town. We should do something," and everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, totally." [In a tone suggesting they won't fix it] And, you know, I mean, that's, government for you? Like, like, you know? But, on the other hand...Whatever. Glad that people are at least trying to take it seriously.

**Inmn ** 23:45 Sorry. Do you have more on that?

**Margaret ** 23:47 No, no, let's talk about things in the Western world.

**Inmn ** 23:50 Oh, yeah, I'm first. We'll start with the bad, unfortunately. So, the newest battleground for abortion access in Texas is that Texas is...There's this group of lawmakers who, you know, it's the same people who authored the Heartbeat Bill, who are trying to...Instead of making large state or national laws to target abortion, they're trying to target abortion on a very small level--which will have a huge and devastating impact--by building this network of what they call like "Sanctuary for the Unborn" cities. [Margaret scoffs] Yeah, no, it sounds pretty bad. And, so what they're doing is they're going to small towns, especially in West Texas, to try to get those towns to pass local ordinances that would create criminal penalties for traveling through those cities to access abortion care in states where abortion is still legal, like New Mexico. And, this is particularly impactful in West Texas because a lot of--there's a handful of new abortion clinics that have sprung up on the border of New Mexico and Texas specifically to serve people going from West Texas to New Mexico to access abortion care. And, two cities have passed the ordinances so far with as many as 51 cities who are thinking about it. And, the one currently in the news right now is Llano, Texas, which sits at an intersection of six different highways, including a pretty major highway, highway 87, which is a road that a lot of people who are going from Austin to New Mexico might use. And then there's a bunch of cities along I27 that have ordinances brewing for...similar ordinances. And, largely, though, what's interesting about this is that although two cities have passed this so far, there's a lot of conservative apprehension about passing these laws.

**Brooke ** 23:53 Really?

**Inmn ** 24:23 And, this comes from...I think this comes from the intersection of like...these are probably more libertarian-minded people who think that it is an overreach for the government to create penalties based on travel, because they're worried about other ways that travel could be limited and for other reasons that travel could be limited. So, it's libertarians and conservatives who are not like...who are probably antiabortion, who probably support abortion bans, but they think that this kind of larger infrastructural travel thing goes way too far. So, there is a lot of conservative pushback from it, which is interesting.

**Margaret ** 28:53 Okay, about abortion. Obviously, the State should not use--well, the State shouldn't exist--but, the State shouldn't use the Church or religious teachings in order to determine health care. I think that's a fairly understandable thing. However, if you, the listener, are religious in a Christian variety or if you want to argue with these people, this whole concept of being against abortion as a Christian is pretty fucking newfangled, is one of the things. The Church, the Catholic Church--which is a minority religion in the United States and is not a like primarily powerful force in the United States political sphere--the Catholic Church has only been against abortion since 1869. For almost all of the church's existence, abortion was only a problem during the third trimester after the Quickening, the Ensoulment, right, is what people want to argue about is like when a human gets a soul or whatever. And, until the late 19th century, the Ensoulment happened...people would argue either like...Most Jewish religious teaching, I believe, is that the Ensoulment--that's...I don't know if they use the word "Ensoulment''--but, the first breath of life, right? "You get your soul when your fucking born," is a very common traditional teaching. Also...Or, you get it at the Quickening, which is the fucking...like 24 weeks into pregnancy. And so, this whole idea of life beginning at conception is god damn new. All the people that the Catholics venerate didn't fucking believe that shit. And then, more than that, evangelicals, who are the main people pushing antiabortion shit, they didn't get into the shit until the 1970s. And they were like...basically were like, "Oh, how else can we be shitty?" And they were like, "Oh, we can be shitty by hating women. And so we're gonna fucking all of a sudden decide that we're against the following type of health care." I don't have as much of the facts about that in front of me, about exactly how that went, but basically, they joined...It used to be only the Catholics who were the people running around being shitty about abortion. And, I don't know. I, for some reason, I think that this matters...Like, just even in terms of like when you're talking about...Because people act like it's this like, "Well, I'm a Christian and therefore 2000 years of hating abortion," like that's just not the fucking case.

**Inmn ** 31:17 Yeah, and even there was this one person in Llano, who was quoted as saying like--it was like a council person--who was like...she was like, "Yeah, I'm personally not in favor of abortion. But, I remember giving a friend, like picking up a friend from an abortion clinic in high school and like I didn't support it, but I picked them up. And, under this new law, I would be a criminal." So, what is interesting about this overstep to me is that it offers some ground for people to talk about things in a way that might not have been in the forefront before where like...Which is interesting. It's like the more that the government, or, you know, crazy far-right conservatives, overreach, it does have the potential to create these funny little fissures with, you know, just normal everyday people who are like, "Well, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Wait a second. I was against abortion, but this is looking more like Fascism." And, I think that is creating fissures, which is interesting. But...

**Margaret ** 32:37 No, and it's good. That side should have fissures and we should make them...we should embiggen those fissures. There's a different word here.

**Brooke ** 32:46 I love it.

**Inmn ** 32:51 But, yeah, that's mostly it for Texas. In a related note, Idaho recently became the first state to impose criminal penalties on people who help a minor leave the state for an abortion without parental consent, just as another wave of the war against abortion access.

**Brooke ** 33:14 You know, this wasn't on my talking list, but, if I may, speaking of Idaho and abortion, I was reading about a lot of OB-GYN providers who are leaving Idaho in noticeable numbers, especially people who are specialists in like NICU care [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] or early birth tiny baby death problem kind of things, those sort of high-level baby specialists, because they feel so at risk in Idaho that if something happens to a baby in their care, that they could be criminalized for it. I mean, they're taking jobs in other states and fleeing in such numbers that it's recognizable. And, there's some places that have--hospitals--in rural areas that have shut down their maternity wards.

**Margaret ** 34:06 It's just so awful.

**Inmn ** 34:09 Well, if state-by-state Christian nationalism bothered you, do I have some bad news, because recently it was unveiled that this horrifying thing called Project 2025, and it is a thousand page, essentially, playbook for conservative lawmakers to dismantle the federal government as it stands. And...

**Margaret ** 34:40 Why do they always try to do the cool stuff? [Laughs at the dry joke]

**Inmn ** 34:42 I know. I know. And, most of what they're looking at doing is completely dismantling the EPA and a lot of similar jobs that pertain to environmental regulation. But...

**Margaret ** 34:54 Yeah, the stuff that we want to have keep happening once we have an organizational system instead of a government Yeah, I'm sure they're gonna keep the fucking cops and Border Patrol. Fuckers. Yeah.

**Inmn ** 35:06 Yeah, it's pretty disconcerting. It's like trying...People view it as trying to pave the way for whatever the...whoever the next Republican president is to essentially become, you know a dictator in a more literal sense.

**Brooke ** 35:27 Well, the federal government is trying to fuck itself currently.

**Inmn ** 35:30 Oh, yeah?

**Brooke ** 35:31 If I can transition into that. Because, we are facing another federal government shutdown risk. [Makes an enthusiastic noise]

**Margaret ** 35:42 Once again, they're gonna shut down the wrong parts of it, aren't they?

**Brooke ** 35:44 Oh, yeah. Uh huh. They're gonna keep essential services, which is apparently not shit like OSHA, and Food and Drug inspections, and air traffic control. Those are not essential services. [Margaret laughing]

**Margaret ** 35:58 I'm sure it's the goddamn Border Patrol and making sure poor people pay taxes and rich people don't.

**Brooke ** 36:05 Yeah, shit like that. We talked about it one other time, government shutdowns on the show together, and in that context, it was talking about the debt ceiling, the government's self imposed limit on how much money they can borrow. And so, they were at risk of having to shut down because they weren't in agreement about being able to borrow more money. Well, this is the...now, we're facing the most beloved refuse-to-agree-on-a-budget federal government shutdown and fucking every time they have to redo the budget, it's always in the news, "Oh, it's gonna be a federal government shutdown!" And, sometimes it's more serious than others. So it's super hard to take it seriously. It hasn't really happened very many times that there's been a government shutdown. There was one that was back in like 2018-2019 that was 35 days or there abouts. And that one....

**Margaret ** 37:00 Which is the longest one in history?

**Brooke ** 37:02 Exactly. And that one was actually long enough to have an impact that mattered. If they have one right now, it's, you know, they probably won't have one there. And, if they do, it's going to be one of these stupid two or three day kind of things. It's really, really unlikely, because they just don't have the circumstances to have that long one happen again. If it did happen, and it goes on for a long time, then you get a lot of backups in the federal government. You have subsidy programs that won't send out payments, like SNAP benefits and Social Security benefits and housing assistance and financial aid for students. But again, it has to be a shutdown that's closer to a month long, because they're set up to do all of those payments, you know, for the next month. So, if they shut shut down today, October is all set to go and would automatically do its thing, and then November would be fucked if they stayed shut down. So, most likely not going to happen. If it does happen, probably a minimal one and longer interruptions. I guess if it happens and we're looking at a long one, we can talk about it some more and I can tell you all about what's actually going to go on and all the fucked-up-ed-ness. But, if you're seeing it in the news, it's just because this is the thing that the news likes to pick up right now and talk about this time of year. Yeah, don't stress out about it. Like, they fucking take the exact same article from the previous year and and, you know, move the paragraphs around.

**Margaret ** 38:27 Well, it's like...it's like...Okay, it's like Covid. It's like...When Covid was first coming up, it was gonna be like another bird flu where we were like, "Oh, no, this thing that won't actually materially affect us that's just a news cycle panic thing." And then it's like every now and then it's a Covid, you know? And, eventually, it might be a Black Death and we're fucked, right? But, most of the time, when there's like...Like I still...Like, even as I was skimming there was some like, "new superbug" in such-and-such place and I'm like, "I'm not worried," right? Like, it's either...It's either gonna be real bad or it's not. But, there's a new one of those to worry about every fucking month. And, so, that makes sense about government shutdown being that it could be real fucking bad, but it usually isn't. Yeah.

**Brooke ** 39:19 The worst that it's ever been still wasn't really that bad. I think things got really fucked up for, you know, about a month after they got back online. And then there were some other things that had delays, you know, applications and shit that they didn't process and then had like a backlog of and whatever. But, the biggest thing that could be an impact, that could, even if it's a short one, could be air travel, because the TSA doesn't get paid. And the last time they had a long one, the TSA agents were like, "No, we're not gonna stay here and work for free." And, they fucked off and went and drove Uber. And whatever.

**Margaret ** 39:53 Yeah, I mean, there was a whole constitutional amendment about how you can't make people work without giving them money unless they're in prison.

**Brooke ** 39:53 The government begged them and they're like, "Please, please. We know you'll...We'll figure it out. Please do it for free? You'll get back pay!"

**Margaret ** 40:08 And they're like "Nah, we fought a war over this."

**Brooke ** 40:09 People are like, "I don't need back pay. I need money now."

**Margaret ** 40:11 Yeah, if the economy wasn't trashed it wouldn't be a big deal. Everyone's paycheck-to-paycheck, even the fucking middle class, so what the fuck are you gonna do?

**Inmn ** 40:22 Yeah. Which is...This is a whole thing. But, um, did you know that billionaires are putting a huge amount of energy and time into trying to figure out how to keep security forces loyal to them when money doesn't exist anymore?

**Margaret ** 40:38 I think we've talked about this, haven't we?

**Inmn ** 40:39 I think a little bit. We've touched on it.

**Margaret ** 40:41 Maybe I just talk about it all the time. It just comes up at every dinner.

**Inmn ** 40:47 Yeah, yeah. It's wild. It is a huge thing on billionaires minds right now is not getting killed by everyone when the...when civilization collapses.

**Margaret ** 40:59 Yeah, specifically, how to get to their security...Yeah, how to get their security guards to like...In their doomsday shelter where they're like, "How will I still be in charge of my doomsday shelter when there's no outside world?" Like, well, you won't. You'll be dead and everyone will be glad.

**Brooke ** 41:14 This is why I say "Start early and eat the rich." I've got a solution for India.

**Margaret ** 41:21 Also, it's vegan to eat the rich because...Because veganism is a relationship to power, right? And so it's not actually...It's like you can't be speciesist against humans, right? So, you are not oppressing oppressed animals if you eat billionaires.

**Brooke ** 41:41 Thank you. I feel even better about that.

**Margaret ** 41:45 It might not be vegetarian, but it is vegan. [everyone laughing]

**Inmn ** 41:50 Brooke, do you have any other things to tell us? [Nervously laughing]

**Margaret ** 41:56 Before it goes over to me? [Laughing]

**Brooke ** 41:58 My one other thing to say to you is "Don't talk to cops." Okay, go on.

**Margaret ** 42:02 Okay, let's see. I got some bad stuff, some good stuff. Well, in good news, it was the hottest August on record all across the world.  So, get your bathing suits ready, including in the other hemisphere where it was supposed to have been Winter, but it wasn't. Everyone's like, "Oh, yeah, hottest August. I mean, it's fucking August." Like, no, you motherfucker, it's Winter somewhere when it's August.

**Brooke ** 42:28 Margaret, do you know it's September though? Like just checking.

**Margaret ** 42:34 I'll take your word for it. The leaves are turning where I live. Okay, so there's like, we had the hottest August, we had the hottest July, and we had the hottest June. We also had five months in a row of the hottest global surface sea temperatures, like each month it hits a new record that is hotter than the one previously. Overall, our August was 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit, like 1.25 Celsius, I think, over the 20th century average.

**Brooke ** 43:03 We did it!

**Margaret ** 43:04 Yeah, exactly. But, don't worry, all of this rising sea temperature actually will make tropical storms, and sparkling storms, rarer. This surprised me. It'll make them rarer. But, it'll make them more powerful. So hurricanes, more common. But, tropical storms and sparkling storms, less common because a higher percentage of them will destroy things in their wake.

**Brooke ** 43:33 Okay, but on net because there's less of the other kind, we should just average out to be fine, right? That's what I hear you saying, one's worse, ones...not.

**Margaret ** 43:37 Yes, absolutely. It's a good time to get a yacht. And I know who has yachts. They are people who you can eat, ethically. And, if you want to get to the ocean to get some yachts, you can go down the Mississippi River. Except, did y'all hear that? It's not in the fucking national news at all. Did you hear that New Orleans is having a water crisis?

**Brooke ** 43:40 No, I didn't hear about that.

**Margaret ** 43:44 They're gonna have to be shipping in millions of gallons of water to New Orleans for people to drink. Because--and this is not certain. This is looming. This is today's news, like past couple days news. All of the drought that has been happening this year has the Mississippi so fucking low that there's basically backwash from the sea coming up into it. And, so all of the saltwater is going to fuck up southern Louisiana's plumbing, right? And, also fuck up--and you can't, you can't boil advisory saltwater. Off the top of my head, if you are stuck with saltwater, your best bet for desalination is building a solar still or some other kinds of still. Be very careful. If you purchase a still. You can buy them on Amazon. Most of the things you can do with stills are incredibly illegal and will get the ATF paying attention to you. However, I don't know, if I was in New Orleans right now, I'd probably buy a fucking still. Just in case. Because, you can distill water and then the brackish water stays in the bottle. Whatever. Anyway,