Wake-up call

Missile-carrying trucks.
The most significant recent wake-up call has been the Russo-Ukraine war.

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WotD: Wake-up call

Remember the old days when you could request room service or a wake-up call in a hotel?

It wasn’t that long ago.

Although room service may be gone for good, you can still request a wake-up call at the front desk, but often the call itself is an automated call made by an AI assistant. 

That’s not the only type of wake-up call we can receive, though.

Oh no, they can be more severe than an early morning phone call.


A wake-up call can be something that causes you to notice something and start to take action.


Scientists had warned us that the SARS and MERS epidemics were wake-up calls for society to prepare for a pandemic.

We failed to heed their wisdom and were caught with our pants down when COVID-19 hit us like a freight train.

The pandemic itself provided us with more wake-up calls.

We suddenly realized that most of our medical equipment is manufactured in China or India, which puts us at their mercy in a crisis.

That’s not all, though.

The subsequent supply chain problems and ongoing microchip shortages were further wake-up calls to get our act together and move even more manufacturing home.

However, the most significant wake-up call has been the Russo-Ukraine war.

I had said the West has grown fat and lazy for quite a while.

As long as we had relatively cheap energy and one-day delivery from Amazon, we didn’t care from where our stuff came.

We have pumped trillions and trillions of dollars into Russia and China to satisfy our ‘needs.’

They then took that money and expanded their respective military.

Yes, after so many wake-up calls, one after the other, I hope we are finally bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.  


Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test

This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).   

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.   

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.