OH WOW! I’m late to the game on this one.

I admit it.

I didn’t watch or read any of the news over the weekend. I obviously noted that the Pope died on Monday. I’ve skimmed headlines flashing on my phone screen but other than the major stuff, I pretty much ignored everything.

Yesterday, I got a hankering to actually write. That was welcome, and I literally dropped everything to write while the muse was upon me.

Didn’t do too bad either. I’ve got my protagonist and antagonist lined out. I’ve got an interesting ally and the general tone of the story well enough along that I can pick up where I left off. It wasn’t too shabby a start. It was like my brain letting go of everything and just letting the ideas flow.

Today, I got back to cleaning and tossing more stuff, there’s still a lot to go and I’m working on disassembling tech.

I’m boxing up the stuff that makes things effortless, (meaning one cable connection from the computer to any possible peripheral device I might want to use). This simplification of devices means that if I want to use something, I’ll have to actually plug it in. Big Deal!

Anyhow, I had the news running in the background and heard some clip from Representative Jamie Raskin. I’d read several headlines about him on some podcast or other and as usual rolled my eyes.

But when I heard what he actually said, my blood ran cold. His quote wasn’t that the Democrat party wouldn’t look kindly on countries that facilitated the Trump administration agenda, as had been reported on many outlets.

His comment was, “When we come back to power — and we will — are not going to look kindly upon people who facilitated authoritarianism in our country.

Say what? Who the fuck does this asshole think he is?

Does he mean to say that the Democrat party will used their weaponized law fare system to persecute and prosecute average American Citizens who supported Trump? The Trump administration having now become synonymous with Authoritarianism. (Sorry, but the Biden Administration looked a lot more authoritarian on day fucking one, than Trump’s thus far.)

Is Raskin saying the Democrats will take a dim view of anyone who voted for Trump, wore a MAGA hat, drove a Tesla, agreed with Trump, spoke out against law fare, illegal immigration, high taxes, bloated government, wasteful spending, the transification & stripping children of their innocence, the denial of Due Process for J6 detainees, who spoke out against mandatory vaccines, DEI, and every fucking obscenity we barely survived under the Biden Administration? Just a reminder… We still don’t know who was running the country but we all now know it’s pretty likely Joe Biden was not in control.

Did this sitting congressman just threaten at least 1/2, perhaps more of the American People?

He did say the Democrats wouldn’t look kindly on people… Not countries.

I don’t know how to take that comment other than as a threat. You know what? I’m getting damn sick and tired of Government officials threatening me!

We already know the Democrat party will suggest imprisonment for people who do not comply with their asinine edicts. Remember COVID? Anyone remember Biden threatening people who didn’t take the vaccine? How about folks that spoke out at school board meetings? Let’s not forget Maxine Waters telling African Americans to go into restaurants and coffee shops to harass not just Republicans she disagreed with, but every fucking person in the place!

We know Democrats will imprison people with different political ideologies for 3-4 years without trial, bail, or due process. All the while clutching their pearls saying that Democracy and The Constitution are under attack.

We also know that the only time the Democrats are interested in due process is when a fucking illegal alien is rightfully deported.

Representative Raskin should probably consider that most of the American People look upon the last four long years, as having already paid our fucking dues.

If by some unbelievable method, probably involving cheating, the Democrat party regains control and comes for people who facilitated the Trump Administration, they better come loaded for bear.

How the hell do these morons keep getting elected time and again?

Raskin saying what he said, should result in his office being cleaned out and his shit sitting at the curb. He’s supposedly a lawyer.

Theoretically, lawyers are masters of the English language. I will find it hard to believe his inevitable walking back of his words as a misunderstanding, or mischaracterization, or being taken out of context.

Sorry Raskin… I can read, and my hearing is just fine!

There are times when my brain runs in the strangest ways

As I’ve chronicled, I’ve been looking for a job, in my field for a long time.

I read job postings daily. 

This morning, before dawn I was having coffee reading job postings as I do every morning. I apply to those positions for which I’m qualified and comfortable my skills would be well suited.

Recently, I’ve seen a trend where the job posting is clearly misleading.

The most obvious is;

Fully Remote” then further into the posting the requirement is that you live in the city the company is in. Further down the long list of requirements is that the company wants the employee to be in the office some number of days per week. 

That’s not a fully remote job, that’s what companies are calling a hybrid position.

It’s the old “bait and switch” and honestly probably creates an overwhelming response of resumes and applicants that the HR department has to filter.

A variation is where while filling out the preprogrammed application the prospective employee is asked if they’re willing to relocate, and what the relocation time frame is.

In other words they might consider you if you’re planning to move to their location on your own dime.

Again, this is a hybrid position at best, more likely, it’s a position in an office.

I’ve also been seeing a growing number of positions where the position title or description is completely different from the actual responsibilities delineated other down the page.

For example;

Manual Testing position

Then further down, “Must create automated testing using (Program de jour) from user stories.”

Then there are the endless typos or AI generated nonsense sentences  describing the work to be done, followed by a list of every possible buzzword that’s ever been used in technology.

This made me wonder if I’m the only person who finds HR departments nearly useless.

So I did a web search simply asking, “Is any employee happy with their HR department?”

The results were interesting in that, most of the articles returned were talking about working in an HR department, instead of if employees liked or were happy with HR.

It reminded me of the results you’d get during COVID if the question you asked was about alternative treatments.

Rephrasing the question didn’t significantly improve the returned results. There was a peppering of >10 year old articles about dissatisfaction with HR but nothing current.

One Forbes article (from 12 years ago) flatly stated, “Employees will ask for assistance from anyone but their HR department.”

I began wondering if the results were because the search algorithm was overwhelmed by negative articles and decided that it would “Improve” the world by masking reality.

There are people who seem to believe that sweeping the issues under the carpet is better than presenting the truth. The theory goes something like, “We shouldn’t reinforce the negative because that will compound the issue and cause more people to pile on to the beleaguered party.

You see similar results if you specifically look for images of black folks trashing or looting stores or fast food places. What you get is results of anyone but black folks engaging in these activities.

I know this because on the one hand “X” sometimes presents incident after incident, literally showing black folks fighting each other in Walmarts, Targets, or McDonalds.

But when I try to search for the actual incident to find out what the specifics were, why this happened, or who provoked who, there are few, if any results.

This leads me to wonder, is what I’m seeing on “X” some kind of AI hoax, or is the algorithm suppressing reports of the events?

I suspect the latter.

What this suggests to me is that truth may be entirely subjective. This is not because true is variable, but because either people can’t handle the truth, don’t want the truth, or the powers that be choose to obfuscate or shape the truth for their own ends.

3 days ago, entering “Senator Van Hollen” brought up article, after article, about his “Brave” fight to bring a ‘mistakenly deported’ man home from El Salvador.

Now that same search parameter displays Senator Van Hollen’s record in the senate and his biography. Adding “El Salvador” to the search and articles are presented about the Senator’s trip to El Salvador and that he’s defending “Due Process”.

It changed shortly after revelations that Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a standing deportation order, restraining orders against him, from his wife, and that El Salvador counts Garcia among the membership of MS13.

Senator Van Hollen has egg on his face, the public opinion polls regarding the Democrat party and its leadership dropped over the good Senator’s publicity stunt.

Taxpayers are not thrilled that the Senator used their money to demand that we waste more taxpayer money to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States, put him before a judge (spending more taxpayer money) only to have a hearing that will in all likelihood result in Garcia being deported again, (spending yet more taxpayer money).

We could have that hearing in absentia, or via zoom and then decide if Garcia should be returned to the US or remain in his home country.

The good Senator, with the help of the Media is trying to reframe the “Truth” in order to shore up both the Senator’s polling numbers and those of the Democrat party.

There are a few diehard media outlets like MSNBC that still maintain Kilmar Abrego Garcia was “mistakenly deported”. That’s just because their hatred for Trump is so strong that even in the face of a standing deportation order, they must paint the Trump administration as sitting at the right hand of Satan.

I find all of this amusing. It exemplifies the old quote; “This is how civilization dies, not with a bang… but with a whimper.”

When all data sources are tainted, facts are obfuscated, people are divided or polarized by falsehoods and misrepresentation, when truth is entirely subjective… Civilization as we’ve known it, is circling the drain.

The weakness of old age and infirmity means that a younger more aggressive and probably more authoritarian civilization will sweep in to fill the vacuum. 

We have historical examples. Rome, Greece, The Ottoman Empire, and Egypt, all stand as sign posts.

Issac Asimov’s Foundation touched on these themes. Even though it is science fiction, The opening chapters ring true.

Hari Seldon, through the mathematics of Psychohistory told an Empire that it was doomed. Seldon said there was nothing that could stop the fall, but there were actions that could be taken to shorten the darkness between the fall of the current civilization and the rise of the next. 

In the twilight of the Empire, truth was subjective, people believed what was most comfortable or that which gave them purpose or comfort.

I’m amused because no matter where I look, I see evidence suggesting that history, or the fantasy of Foundation is playing out real time.

The “Empire” known as western civilization is falling. As in Asimov’s tale, it’s rotting from within.

Life is imitating art.

So perhaps it’s time to start thinking about creating the First Foundation. Perhaps it’s time to start preserving all that we’ve learned, and locking it away to protect it from the fall so that when our species is ready to reach for the stars again, science, philosophy, medicine, and a dispassionate record of history can guide our descendants forward quickly, instead of spending 1 or 2 thousand years in barbarism.

This line of crazy thinking has led me to wondering if our ancestors addressed this particular problem and how they attempted to solve it. Is there really a library of knowledge under the left paw of the Sphinx?

How would I solve the problem? Stone monuments attract attention. Various religious groups today will destroy monuments they perceive as antithetical to their beliefs. Our own people remove statues they find heretical.

How would I preserve knowledge? Books and libraries are subject to burning. Stone is more durable, but limited from a spacial perspective. A technological solution could work, but is inherently delicate and prone to malfunctions, power issues, or damage. 

Maybe I’ve found a project to fill the rest of my days.

My coffee cup and pot are now empty. Time to get on with the day.

And this is how I get sidetracked all too often.

Have a great day.

I suppose he rallied for one last Easter

Pope Francis died.

I’m sorry to hear that. I disagreed with a whole lot of his opinions. I thought that he was too liberal and extended the olive branch too freely to people who would seen the church and western civilization in flames.

But he was a holy man.

Holy Men see the best in everyone and believe that goodness and decency will win out in the hearts of even their enemies.

Sometimes they’re right.

Since I’m not Catholic I have no place to express my opinion about Papal Edicts or the direction Pope Francis was taking the church.

A few weeks ago, I thought Pope Francis was on his way out. He spent a lot of time in the hospital. Then the Vatican said he was recovering. He was seeing people, and offered blessings at the Easter Mass. I truly thought he was going to hang around for another few years.

Even if I disagreed with him, even though I’m not Catholic, the Pope is a constant in my life and to some extent I look to the Pope, and others, for generalized moral standards.

I’m sorry Pope Francis is dead.

I think it speaks to his strength of will, or his faith, perhaps both, that he apparently pushed to make one more Easter Mass.

Sleep well Francis…

Always in the middle of the night!!!!

The second, of three, Nest Protect smoke alarms reached end of life.

I swear, I think smoke detectors in general are more of a pain in the ass than they’re worth. (I say that as someone who had a house burn down!)

I also have come to believe that the damn things are somehow built to sense sundown, then wait 6 hours before starting their bitching about low battery or malfunctions.

That’s only when they’re not going off because someone took a hot shower, or a bit of toast got overdone.

There’s nothing quite like being naked on a stepladder in the middle of the night trying to get one of these nuisance devices off the damn ceiling to shut it the hell up!

The modern machines all seem to have CO detectors in them and it’s the damn CO detector that goes out first. But rather than being able to tell the stupid machine, “Yes I get it, the CO detector is malfunctioning. There is another unit that is still functioning so stop chirping every 60 seconds and let us get some sleep…”

Nope! It’s gotta be taken care of right then. Like you’re going to be able to run out to the local hardware store at 2am and buy a replacement.

The Protects were literally the best of these nuisance machines. I’ve had these for 10 years and they have legitimately reached end of life. I’m not too annoyed, other than now I have to replace them with whatever bullshit machines are on the market today.

That’s thanks to Google’s masterful decision to keep fucking over Nest, (who they purchased a while back and have systematically destroyed.) Trust me, however much you hate Google, (and there are numerous reasons beside what they did to Nest,) it’s not enough.

I’ve hated smoke alarms since at least 1982. I had one in an apartment that pissed me off so much, (again at 3 am), that I leapt off the floor, snatched the damn thing from the ceiling and disemboweled it on the spot.

The Protect units were purchased after, at random, any one, of the three units installed in my house by the builder, started going off at random intervals for absolutely no reason. Always sometime between 1 and 3 am. (Not good if you’ve actually been in a house fire and are perhaps a little twitchy about fire!)

Those stupid machines were so bad we couldn’t use the stove in the kitchen without having the sliding doors and all the windows in the house open. Even then, it was 50/50 that they’d start that horrific screeching, reporting a fire that didn’t exist. This was only slightly more annoying than the smoke detectors in the previous house that burned, never raising a peep, even as they were consumed by fire.

But take too hot a shower… Then once again there you were, naked, throwing doors and windows open to make the damn things shut the hell up!

The Protects, solved most of those problems. I’m not looking forward to going back to the shitty overly sensitive machines.

Last night, at least, I knew what was going on. Even half asleep, I got the malfunctioning Protect off the ceiling. Unplugged it from the AC connection, pulled the backup batteries, and left the mess on the kitchen counter.

I don’t remember pulling the batteries, I was on auto pilot. I don’t even remember going back to bed.

From this you might infer that I’m very grumpy when my sleep is disturbed. That is true to a point.

If the source of the disturbance is the dog wanting out at some ungodly hour because he’s not feeling well. I’m totally fine with it. If it’s a child or even an adult that’s waking me for a legitimate reason, I’m not grumpy at all.

But a machine? (Including alarm clocks,) oh hell no! I loose my damn mind. This is especially true of a machine that’s decided to tell me about a low battery every 60 seconds at 4am.

Now my challenge is to strike a balance between price and minimal false alarms in my replacement smoke detectors. Truthfully, if the originally installed units weren’t wired into the house power, (and therefore there weren’t open holes in the ceiling where they were installed,) I’d be removing the mounting rings, spackling the screw holes over, and calling it a day.

What ever POS devices I choose, I take comfort in the high probability that I will not be living with the decision for long.

Yesterday was exhausting!

I was on the run from about 6:30 am, one way or another.

Road construction social 2219743733.The primary goal for the day was to get the furry one to the groomer. That is always a production. It’s not that he’s a problem getting into the car. He seems to like riding. 

The trouble is that he just won’t settle down. Although yesterday coming back from the groomer he fell asleep for just a minute, sitting up, with his head on my shoulder. This gives me hope that eventually he’ll settle in the car and then have fun at our destination instead of being excited from the moment he’s in the car to the moment we’re back home.

Honestly him falling asleep like that was really cute, sweet, and made it all worth it.

The morning went like this, up at 6, coffee, then 2.5 mile walk/drag up & down the mountain. Quick shower, then trying something new so that he can be comfortable and lay down. Didn’t work! Fight through a construction zone (that I wasn’t aware of). Get him to the groomer, another walk/drag around the grooming place so that he could smell all the other dogs that had been there before. Then inside the grooming place where everyone knew his name, Not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing.

Then run to get myself a haircut. Fight through more stupid traffic to the Target. Pick up things that I can’t get elsewhere. Stand in insane line, watch “The Usual Suspects” acting up and being assholes in the self checkout line. Get out of the store, almost get run over twice in the parking lot, while walking to the car. Hesperia has, (at last report), the worst drivers of any city in California. Fight my way through traffic again. 

Get back to the shopping plaza where the groomer is. Have a burger, well, order a burger then leave because more of “The Usual Suspects” were acting up and began trashing the place, (Ate my burger and fries in the car listening to calming music). [Note: I didn’t wait to take pictures, this one is from the internet.]

Walked 1/2 mile to the Walmart to pick up some really cheap Chinese items, stood in insanely long line to check out. Observed more of “The Usual Suspects” squabbling, yelling, and cutting in line. Got out of Walmart, walked 1/2 mile back to car, dropped off items and sat in car listening to calming music again.

Went into groomers and shopped for items necessary for the furry one. Watched said furry one being remarkably good while standing on a grooming table getting trimmed for Summer. I was trying not to be seen by him. Paid the bill. Furry one was ready to leave and I was walked/dragged around the building again.

Back in the car, fight through traffic on the freeway this time, get home, unload the clean furry one, then unloaded purchased items, put stuff away, and put car in the garage. 

I got myself a glass of water wondering why I was tired.

The now fluffy, furry one came inside and promptly took a nap in his favorite spot. I cleaned a closet.

The furry one, woke from his nap, went outside, then came back in with his favorite toy, dropped it at my feet, and wanted to play. So out we went to chase the ball around the yard.

I wish I had his energy!

Today… I’m still tired!

At least Mr. Furry is clean!

The plus side, is that during the day I didn’t hear or see one news show. I did catch that some moronic American senator was in El Salvador trying to get a deported MS13 gang member out of prison.

I’d ask WTF, but it’s pointless. The world is a madhouse, it’s easier to accept that, than it is to think about it.

I am concerned about the preponderance of “The Usual Suspects”. That stresses me out every time I go to the store.

Has Greenland decided to join the United States? Just Askin…

I hope everyone has a great Friday and excellent Easter.