BTW, the letter was shared to reddit 7 years ago and a redditor replied that it was his uncle Andy:
https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5a95b8/til_i...
A photo of Andy:
https://imgur.com/gallery/tsWkg
The story has been circulating the Internet at least since 2004:
https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2004/spring/c...
What kind of amazing self-parody is 'Irmo man wrote letter'! That's brilliant
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tornado_events_by_year
The Texas drought reference does appear to be accurate. https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/16/us/crushing-drought-in-te...
If my comment is sarcasm, does my comment affect your calculations?
Artists tell the truth using a lie. I dislike lying and yet love art.
"A lie spoken is easy to see. Repeating a lie colors it candidly. " -- Granny
So, I try to keep things in perspective, especially in comments on this website, so I don't get misunderstood.
I appreciate your perspective and share and interest in clarity of thought and expression. I originally thought you must be being sarcastic due to the implausibility of calculating a discrete number of potentially possible misunderstandings of comments when whether something is misunderstood or not is largely subjective and may simultaneously be both understood and misunderstood depending on the reading of a comment as serious or unserious, or both.
I thought for moment of asking you to show your work to derive your answer, but opted for a more lighthearted literary device.
Concepts like death of the author complicate matters. You may feel that a comment misunderstands your point, but your position as such should not be too privileged as a reader, and it’s possible to both say more and less than intended.
We also shouldn’t take for granted that we are understood, and being sensitive to potential misreadings are sometimes a useful device for playing with the actual ambiguity of reality itself.
It implausibly overestimates the scope of problems, then claims that the private sector / volunteer organizations have more capabilities / funding than the federal government.
I’m hoping it was self-parody and not just a canned form letter response.