Scan the news or don’t scan the news…

gloomdoom.jpgOver the past few days I’ve been wondering if I’d be better off just not looking at any news at all. 

I’d noted that I’m far more focused and happier on light news days. It’s like there’s not quite so much static in my head and it’s easier to harness the team of wild horses in my brain to a series of tasks.

News has become a distraction from what I should be doing. Reading anything on social media is a rabbit hole of conflict. People make all kinds of wild assertions and my only way out of that miasma is to run their source material to ground.

Doing this,  I’ll lose a day researching articles to verify or disprove  someone’s wild ass claims. I’m a little OCD that way. (Okay, you caught me, I’m a lot OCD that way. I’d probably give Dracula a run for his money in OCD behaviors.)

watching-news-brings-feelings-of-gloom-doom-and-chaos.jpgI’m trying something different. I’m not reading or watching the news, and I’m not opening social media. At least not until I’ve got the stuff done I need or want to get done during the day. There are all kinds of things that I can and should get done without being dragged off in a completely unproductive direction.

I miss the days of real journalism. Sure, even then there was bias but it was a lot more subtle and the meat of any story was at least consistent across liberally and conservatively slanted newspapers. 

The added advantage was that newspapers could be used to line your birdcage when you were done with them.

DNG Clouds.jpeg

Looking back on the past 6 months, there’s a lot more around here that I could have gotten done were it not for my easy distractibility.

I should have painted the trim of the house and done a myriad of other household tasks, I should have been studying language (an interest), writing (an interest),  music (another interest), and improving my web design skills (also an interest). 

After all, I had the time on my hands. But I’ve had the feeling, “What’s the point?

The problem is, I allowed the constant feed of COVID, Fear, President Bad, Rioting, Protesting, Political Aggrandizement, Meteors falling from the sky, and all the other chaos into my home and into my head.

This morning for example, I haven’t looked at news or social media. I’m in a much lighter mood. I’m not expecting Armageddon at any moment and without that background static I’m getting things done that I want to get done. I’m far less frustrated, far more productive, far less pissed off, and far more clear headed.

I know as soon as I’m confronted with driving and interacting with people, I’ll be irritated I always am diving these days. (I need to hit the hardware store and do a couple of quick errands.) The good news is there’s a much wider range between where I’m at right now and the rage monster inside me waking up. For the moment I’ll just let him sleep and not poke that particular bear.

Later this week, I’ll be installing the replacement hard drive in the other half’s computer. I know that will either go well or become a pain in the ass of epic proportions. Strangely, this morning I’m not looking at that task with dread. It will go as it goes, in the end I’ll succeed and that will be another task off my list.

This morning I need to make some phone calls, and get busy moving my life forward. After that I’m going to try to make some more little repairs around the house. Nature is letting me know Winter is coming, and I’ll use the moderate daytime temperatures to get set up for that.  There’s that old saying, “Make hay while the sun shines.” Doing those things will give me a sense of accomplishment as a reward.

Depending on how those chores go, I’m feeling like sitting down and working on one of the several stories I’ve been writing sporadically over the past year. It might be nice to finish one and submit it for publishing. I seem to be able to write only when I have enough clarity of thought and zero static in my head.

If you’ve been feeling anxious and uneasy or unproductive, try ignoring the news, and social media.

The “likes” will still be there when you get around to your social media account again. The news will still be what it is. Think of the news like the old daytime soap operas, you could miss a month of “Days of our Lives” and not miss anything at all.

I’m off to live my life today. Hope you’re doing the same.

Hate to Break it to the Ghouls out there…

TrumpBut President Trump has a 99.5% probability of survival.

Sorry to dash your hopes and orgasmic dreams.

Oh, and by the way, if President Trump drops dead you’ll still have Mike Pence as President for the remainder of the Presidential term. Sorry Nancy! Go have some ice cream.

The news feeds lit up about the President having Covid-19. Predictably, all kinds of people came out of the woodwork to express their joy that the President was sick. When it was announced that he was being taken to Walter Reed, I thought my computer was going to blow up.

The ecstasy expressed by celebrities, political opponents, and citizens was to me, absolutely disgusting.  The mask NAZIs were so busy saying, “I told you so,” I’m honestly surprised that there wasn’t a rush of sprained index fingers in the emergency rooms across the nation.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing and I’m ashamed for these people. I’m ashamed that they call themselves Americans. In truth I’ve personally realized a growing shame in Americans over the past 12 years, and the era of Covid has only deepened that shame.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ashamed of the police, or our military. I’m ashamed of a large percentage of the American people.

I’ve even begun to feel ashamed of myself for not speaking out against things that were obviously wrong, such as lies, misinformation, and divisiveness.

I didn’t speak out because like many Americans I’ve been afraid of Cancel Culture or losing my job, and plain fear of the mob. I’ve self censored and kept my thoughts to myself. I’ve stood silently by hoping against hope that our better angels would get our attention and we’d go back to being the best versions of ourselves. 

Guess what, it ain’t working. 

Instead of looking inward at ourselves we’ve looked outward for anything or anyone to blame for our failings. 

Last night after the tenth article expressing wholly incorrect information about being able to remove the President and the attendant Schadenfreude over his illness. I was annoyed and the continuous rain of glee from the left was damaging my calm.

Then the other half mentioned that they’d been looking at youtube watching old Laugh-in skits of Ernestine the telephone operator, and that several of the skits had been removed by youtube for apparently violating community guidelines.

I lost it.

I said, to no-one in particular, “This country no longer deserves freedom. At least half the people here deserve whatever hell socialism brings. At this point just launch every fucking nuke on the planet burn it to the ground. A million years from now, something better than the shit called Humans will probably evolve.”  

Needless to say, that got an arched eyebrow from the other half who said, “I think it’s time for you to turn off the tech.”

They were right.

As the screens went dark, I was wondering what had prompted such a strong reaction. 

Censorship of any kind is abhorrent to me.

Being told what to think or believe, especially in a passive aggressive way, is the quickest way to piss me off.

A steady diet of information bereft of facts or where the “facts” are presented in a clearly biased way, does nothing to enhance my calm or confidence.

Seeing rioting in the streets across the country where all the rioters are wearing the same gear looks an awful like a coherent insurrection.

If the rioters (or agitators within the rioters) are all wearing the same “uniform” all I can think of is the Brownshirts of Hitler or Mussolini’s Black shirts. Either way I can’t ignore the similarities in their actions today and those of the NAZI party in its beginnings in Germany.

Like the average German in 1933-36 I know something is wrong, I know someone is pulling the strings, I know someone is funding these “Brownshirts” but I cannot identify who that is.

I sense that there is an enemy to my way of life but am frustrated that I can’t specifically target them. Which simply increases the frustration and causes me as a person to do my best to ignore something that I can’t change. Like the people of Germany I just try to keep my head down and hope that it will all go away.

I’ve come to believe we’re reliving Germany’s experience. This is the same play book with some modifications that led average decent Germans to everything that followed Hitlers rise to power.

A short list of examples:

Growing censorship targeted at “Culturally offensive”, or dissenting opinions. See Cancel Culture and all the voices that have been silenced. Someone even questioning the narrative is attacked and labeled as racist, misogynist, a denier, X Y Z phobic… In short an undesirable.

Specific Targeting of a particular group or affiliated groups as “The Problem”. See the manner in which the Republican Party, or Police have been painted as “The enemy of the people”. For reference see Jews in NAZI Germany.

The creation of an aggrieved class and conflation of that class with the “Common people or Majority” Note that many of the BLM protesters are white bourgeois folks.

Violence, threats, and intimidation, is deemed acceptable if it’s against the bourgeois who are not supportive of the “cause” but people defending themselves from that same violence are labeled criminals.

Defining masks or other symbols, as “For the Greater Good”, then redefining them as a “Patriotic Duty”. What’s next? 2021 ANTIFA Armbands must be worn at all times in public? Whose cock do you have to suck to get an armband?

Encouraging public reporting of “perceived” infractions of regulations. A.K.A an informant network where turning in your neighbors results in tangible rewards or recognition of your service to the state.

Erasure and rewriting of History.  There was never a pureblooded Aryan race. That was a fiction of the NAZI party designed to create a higher social class, as a justification to subjugate anyone who refused the NAZI ideals. The functionality of this fiction was that anyone could be rewarded by being recognized as a long lost Aryan who the former ruling class had treated badly. It created license for those so elevated, to be ruthless and mete out vengeance for perceived ills inflicted upon they and their family for centuries.

Is any of this ringing a bell?

The problem for me is that I know it will not go away. I know this because of history. I can’t look away, I can’t unsee the patterns.

Thanks to COVID, and the complete zero traction I’m getting in my job search I unfortunately have nothing to distract me from watching in horror as the pieces snap together.

The carrot is that everything will be fine after election day. With the caveat; (Everything will be better as long as the left gets its way.) The Left has already said if they don’t get their way the rioting will continue and expand.

Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about Hitler’s rise to power.

The entire article is linked here. 

I’m putting some excerpts here rather than the entire article.

Reichstag fire, burning of the Reichstag (parliament) building in Berlin, on the night of February 27, 1933, a key event in the establishment of the Nazidictatorship and widely believed to have been contrived by the newly formed Nazi government itself to turn public opinion against its opponents and to assume emergency powers.

<Continues>

On February 28, 1933, the day after the fire, Hitler’s dictatorship began with the enactment of a decree “for the Protection of the People and the State,” which dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal, and property rights. Though the ensuing elections still did not give the Nazis an outright majority, they were able to persuade the Reichstag to pass an Enabling Act (March 23) whereby all its legislative powers were transferred to the Reich Cabinet by a vote of 444 to 94, so sanctioning the dictatorship.

My question is; which side will light the fire, metaphorically or otherwise. 

The Left says Trump is after a dictatorship. Honestly I don’t see it. 

Biden and Harris seem to be much more dictatorial.

Trump is arrogant, narcissistic, and bombastic but he’s not changed his spots throughout the course of his widely publicized life. Trump is pretty much today, as he’s always been. He’s results and goal driven and not afraid to fire someone that’s not doing the job.

Biden and Harris on the other hand are engaging in revisionist history about their own policies and lives. That makes me far more suspicious of them and their motives.

More worrisome to me is who is actually pulling the strings? The media is generally skewed left and can’t say enough bad about Trump or his policies instead of simply reporting the good and the bad.

Another question is to what end is someone pulling the strings? What’s the end game?

If as many on the far right claim George Soros is holding the leash then, is he hoping after all this time to create a Fourth Reich? Looking at his history and the fact that he was a full on NAZI could it be that simple? Or is someone holding Soros’s leash as the NAZI party did so long ago?

Maybe all of this is just COVID fatigue. Maybe I’m seeing patterns where none exist. Perhaps it’s a cycle of insanity that humanity goes through when our numbers become too great. Historically, there are ruins of civilizations all over the planet. Each of those civilizations thought itself too big or righteous to fail.

Perhaps this is how humanity grows and I’m simply unlucky enough to be stuck on this rock during one of the death & regrowth phases.

I can tell you this, If I could leave this planet I would. I’d prefer the sterility of the endless stars to dealing with the insanity and uncertainty of this planet infested with insane apes.

Apparently this is a Technology week.

After 11 years, we’ve decided to retire the venerable HP all in one printer.

The machine pretty much works, although its ADF feeder is prone to jamming.

Our reasoning was the cost of ink cartridges. A full set costs about $100. The cost of a new printer isn’t much more.

I have a nice Canon all in one printer sitting in a storage facility but it’s been sitting there for a year and once again we’d have to spend $100 to get cartridges for it. There’s also the unknown about its status. I’d never intended to have it sitting idle in storage for so long and at this point it may need a printhead replacement. Which means it’s cheaper to just replace the whole machine.

This led to the inevitable conclusion that buying a new unit with a warranty was probably the best solution.

Epson Tank PrinterAfter shopping around a bit, we decided to go with one of the new Epson tank machines. Costco was even having a sale on an acceptable unit.

This little thing is pretty dang neat. It’s smaller than the HP or the Canon, and produces really clear crisp prints. I like the no print cartridge aspect. Instead you just fill the tanks up from a bottle of ink. The bottles are much cheaper than cartridges and this thing is rated at something like 7000 pages per fill. This is a full color machine similar to the HP and Canon. The majority of our printing is black & white and the Costco version thoughtfully includes 3 black refills in addition to the Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow.  

The cost per page in just about equal to my nifty laser printer. The only reason we didn’t just go with the laser printer only is because it doesn’t have a scanner and it doesn’t know how to talk Airprint which is very nice if you need to print from your iPad or iPhone.

The new inkjet can print duplex (double sided), and the scan/copy speed is acceptable. It’s not going to win any races, but for occasional use it’s more than adequate.

I can even see a day when the Canon laser finally dies that we’d just go to having one printer. I like having the laser because when I’m writing it’s fast and cheap to print a manuscript.

If you’re in the market for a new machine take a look at the Tank versions of inkjet printers. You’re going to pay a bit more out the outset for one, but you’ll recover the costs over the life of the printer in supplies.