It’s really weird.
We’ve had a high-traffic month, including a record-high day (in terms of visitors) but – so far – this has been the worst month, pie chart-wise, we’ve had in at least six months.
It’s why I’m posting a second appeal for support.
We’ve only got about a week left in this month and – as of today – we’re not quite halfway to Green. Which is not good news.
I want to order another batch of magnets – and pens! – but I can’t do that until things improve a little. It’s that tight.
As always, the rock and a hard spot thing. I wish ads brought in enough to cover costs such that I never had to shake the cup – but very few web sites (including this one) can survive without the support of readers like you.
If you dig EPautos, please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
PS: EPautos magnets are free to those who send in $20 or more to support the site.
Our problem is we’re trapped in this imaginary totem. This America. A wholly waterheaded Pioneer Testament conjured into being in 1507.
Petulant children murdering each other over childish make-believe gotten way too real and destructive.
This soil was here long before this idiot civic religion was born. It remains long after its tales and protagonists become obscure ancient folklore.
America
1507, “the western hemisphere, North and South America,” in Cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s treatise “Cosmographiae Introductio,” from Modern Latin Americanus, after Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who made two trips to the New World as a navigator and claimed to have discovered it.
His published works put forward the idea that it was a new continent, and he was first to call it Novus Mundus “New World.” Amerigo is more easily Latinized than Vespucci (Latin Vesputius, which might have yielded place-name Vesputia). The sense in English naturally was restricted toward the British colonies, then the United States.
The man’s name Amerigo is Germanic, said to derive from Gothic Amalrich, literally “work-ruler.” The Old English form of the name has come down as surnames Emmerich, Emery, etc. The Italian fem. form merged into Amelia.
Colloquial pronunciation “Ameri-kay,” not uncommon 19c., goes back to at least 1643 and a poem that rhymed the word with away. Amerika “U.S. society viewed as racist, fascist, oppressive, etc.” is attested from 1969; the spelling is German but may also suggest the KKK.
It is a thousand pities that the puny witticisms of a few professional objectors should have the power to prevent, even for a year, the adoption of a name for our country. At present we have, clearly, none. There should be no hesitation about “Appalachia.” In the first place, it is distinctive. “America” is not, and can never be made so. We may legislate as much as we please, and assume for our country whatever name we think right — but to use it will be no name, to any purpose for which a name is needed, unless we can take it away from the regions which employ it at present. South America is “America,” and will insist upon remaining so. [Edgar Allan Poe, 1846]
FREDONIA, FREDONIAN, FREDE, FREDISH,
These extraordinary words, which have been deservedly ridiculed here as well as in England, were proposed sometime ago, and countenanced by two or three individuals, as names for the territory and people of the United States. The general term American is now commonly understood (at least in all places where the English language is spoken,) to mean an inhabitant of the United States; and is so employed, except where unusual precision of language is required. [Pickering, 1816]
An America First Energy Plan
https://www.whitehouse.gov/america-first-energy
Bringing Back Jobs And Growth
https://www.whitehouse.gov/bringing-back-jobs-and-growth
“We’ve had a high-traffic month, including a record-high day (in terms of visitors) ”
That’s because I’ve been posting your sh!t like mad on Gab, Twatter and Farcebook. Which you should be doing, too.
How much are you paying for bandwidth?! Your overhead seems stupidly expensive!
Thanks, Dave!
We have a high-capacity server because this isn’t a chickenshit “blog.” We have traffic – and without a heavy duty server/plus back-up, it would (and used to) crash all the time. Also, I have a computer guy – and he’s not free.
And I have to earn a living, too.
The problem is, online ads pay next to nothing (thanks, Google) and even a site that has six figure traffic (we do) has a tough time making ends meet, let alone making enough for even a single person to live on. I’ll give you some cross-reference:
I used to work (back in the ’90s) for a big city paper that had low six figure circulation. It had a staff of full-time/salaried writers, editors, copy desk people and graphic designers. I can barely keep my head afloat – one person, doing almost everything (writing, editing, formatting; responding to people’s comments and questions) on a literally 24/7 basis (I never take a day off).
Most writers have had to sell their asses – or least, their keyboards. Getting paid under the table to shill for Team Red or Team Blue. Those guys make a living. But they are media whores.
I don’t do that, but – god! – I get the temptation….
eric, I feel your pain. Life’s getting better for a few…..but a very few. Or maybe it just seems that way. But people I know from 20 to 80 it’s mainly like Ross once described that “big sucking sound”.
I suppose my mind is trying to get more work in less time by not letting me sleep so last night, like every other night in the past few months, I was wide awake when my phone whistled and I found out my unemployment pay had been halved. I didn’t see that coming.
I’m too old and ugly to take up the world’s oldest profession…..next to trucking. At least it would be honest work if not legal and I can’t worry too much about legal.
I noticed a while back one of those Nordic countries had legalized human recycling, or at least the first part of it. I haven’t heard if they’re building soylent green facilities…..yet.
Hi Eight,
It is rough out there – for everyone, just about.
In my world – publishing – it’s become almost impossible to survive without becoming a shill. Take your pick – Red or Blue. But pick one. And then shill for it reflexively, never allowing nuance or question let alone your own honest opinion to ever affect the Unwavering Partei Line.
One can become quite rich this way. Hannity, Beck for Team Red; Maddow and so on for the Blue.
It’s awful.
I like to think I would not sell out. But sometimes I wonder what I would do if, tomorrow, some Koch Brother combine approached me and offered me enough money to never have to worry about money again.
If I had a family, the temptation would be great. It is still strong.
So far, I haven’t given in.
But sometimes, I wonder about it. I truly do.
eric, perhaps you are a student of stoicism, an Epictetus prodigy who believes the 3 steps of reason. Do not lie, why you should not lie and the reasons of logic that define it.
We all walk that line of logic leading to reason. We willingly suffer or even die to continue that moral reason. It’s almost one in the same with the NAP. Only you can determine when the reasons are presented to you if you should “sell out”. I think you established those lines or line of reasoning long ago, the very reason you refuse to sell out. In all reality and in your mind it was a choice made long ago and one you aren’t willing to re-examine for the love of security. Maybe that’s simply what the real libertarians here live by, logic and morals, inured to stay the path of freedom regardless of our pain.
Perhaps you…..or none or any of us won’t stay the course but I sincerely doubt it….in all cases lest we wouldn’t find ourselves here. I feel the kinship of reason and morals here I’ve found nowhere else in numbers……even though we all get a bit jiggy at times ha ha. It’s the sense of irony, sarcasm and downright humor that make it all bearable for most of us.
Google does it to everyone these days. Fark.com is a huge site traffic wise and recently they had an article of how google nailed them over some non-offensive photo that was in a comment thread many years old that tangentially related to false accusations.
Hi Brent,
Yup. Which is why the only viable means of support for most online media is direct reader support. Hence my occasional pitches. I don’t enjoy making these, but it’s necessary. And there is an upside. By directly supporting a site – such as EPautos – readers free the writers/publishers from having to worry about Google or being forced by economic necessity to shill scheisse “content.”
I’m not sure why things dropped off so steeply (so far) this month… but am hoping that (as has been true so far) the readers will step up.