Doomscrolling or doomsurfing is the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of negative news. – From Wikipedia
My Apple News application is configured to show me Science, Technology, and items related to mens health. I’ve blocked CNN, Breitbart, Mother Jones, MSNBC, Vanity Fair, The Rolling Stone, and a plethora of others.
Unfortunately, blocking these publications leaves a white square in my News feed telling me that I’ve blocked the publication and asking me if I’d like to read the article anyway.
Uh… Nope!
What I’d really like, is for the little white boxes to disappear too!
The actual publications that I read for news are more local publications from places that I’m interested in.
Think of it like reading the local news papers from various cities around the nation. The Idaho Statesman, The San Diego Times, The Lexington Herald, there are some Texas papers I’ll skim as well. (Before you ask, I can’t stomach the Los Angeles Times!)
I find that these publication are often a bit more hometown and they’re balanced between human interest stories, local events, and national news.
It’s nice to read about a community rallying behind their high school football team. Or that the local school baseball teams are having a car wash to raise money for a local charity.
I read one article about car washes, being coordinated so that for a period of six weekends, a patron could have their car washed by one of six local school teams and the proceeds would help a community center that had a fire.
It’s that kind of thing that makes the “Bad” news palatable.
It used to be that, only the most egregious faux pas of the D.C. elites would make it to these local papers.
The papers being local meant that the journalists writing for them, were interested in presenting the hard facts and then after the meat of the story perhaps they’d opine about how this, or that, might affect the local community.
I like that kind of reporting. The journalists know which side of their toast is buttered and aren’t necessarily attempting to grandstand to “Hit the big time”.
They’re locals, they’re interested in their town or state and their reporting reflects that.
The papers I mentioned weren’t generally bashing or praising former President Trump, nor have they been bashing or praising current President Biden. They are just reporting the facts. What did the President say, how might the policy affect their particular community.
I guess you’d call it “old school” journalism. Report the story, keep your bias to yourself, if you feel the need to express your opinion then do it on the Op Ed pages.
Lately though, it’s like all the news is just plain bad. Everywhere, (at least in all the papers I read or scan,) there’s almost nothing but bad news. Be it national events like Ukraine, gas prices, or baby formula. Or local reporting of shutdowns of businesses, construction sites, or oil drilling operations, the news is bad.
These local entities are still reporting how the various events are affecting the local community and they’re doing it in personal, first person interviews. Then they move on to the next story.
Stock Photo
The Father of 4 who lost his job because the business he worked at closed, and who said it didn’t really matter because he couldn’t afford the gas to get there anyway. There was a ray of light. He was interviewed in the process of roto-tilling what used to be his backyard and teaching his children to plant vegetables. His wife still had her job, he was staying home watching the kids, instead of paying for daycare. He’d decided that a productive family activity was to plant a vegetable garden. He was going to learn the art of canning later in the summer and fall.
The mother who drove 100 miles one way to stock up on baby formula. She brought light into the story because she shared what she had gotten with other mothers in town who were unable to find formula. She’d then started a formula bank at her church where she and other moms pooled their resources. She thanked the men in the community who were helping by buying a can of formula if they saw one during their daily commutes and dropping it by the church. She commented that many of the men helping out didn’t have children themselves.
The causes were the bad news, the balance was the journalist speaking with people in the community asking how they were adapting, then reporting that, as part of the human interest.
Yet even with the rays of light, the overall news is just bad.
On the one hand, I’d like to look away and just ignore it all. On the other hand I get curious about what’s happening outside my little mountain town.
So I open the News app, and alternately have my heart broken, or become enraged. Sometimes both at the same time.
I simply can’t reconcile that our leaders seem so out of touch, even when they must have the best information flooding into their ivory towers.
How can they apparently ignore the plight of so many who are struggling?
Why are the elites talking about “Taking Action” on issues that don’t directly address the issues that are first and foremost in people’s minds?
You know, minor things like;
Putting food on the table Getting to and from work Feeding the children and babies Paying the mortgage
Right now, the vast majority of average folks don’t give a rats ass about trans-rights, gun control, racism, green energy, CRT, the latest Tic-Tok trend, Hollywood, or even COVID.
Notice, I said the majority… There will always be the few that are so narrowly focused on their cause, that they’ll refuse to see the bigger picture.
Average folks are focused on basic needs. Broadly speaking… A functioning economy.
That requires jobs, the ability to get to aforementioned job, and affordable basic staples in the store. Anything beyond that is un-necessary and complete bullshit.
The elites will no doubt be appalled to discover that all their grandiose “actions”, “plans”, or whatever don’t mean squat to folks just trying to get by.
I’ve got to stop looking at the news. It just makes me sad, and pisses me off!
I leased my vehicle 3 years ago. At the time I treated the car like a long term rental. I knew I loved the car, but was always worried that it would be taken from me.
I wasn’t really aware I was doing this, but I didn’t customize anything about it. The one thing I did was have the typical BMW chrome grill swapped out for a blackout version. It was cheap to do and I’d simply mentioned it during the leasing process. While we were wrangling with the finances, the service folks just did it.
Other than that, I didn’t really do much else. I barely customized the dashboard and didn’t program the seat position. The car remained exactly as it was delivered. (Necessary repairs even returned the car to delivered condition.) I didn’t even load any music onto the internal hard drive built into the car.
On HWY 2 near Llano, CA. It’s a nice drive if you’ve got the time.
I know all of these little things are fully programmable, and easily changeable but there was something about it.
In the back of my mind I was always thinking, “This isn’t really my car. I don’t want to get too attached or invested in customizing stuff because at the end of the lease I’ll just have to do let it all go anyway.“
I’ve never understood why, when I get into a loaner car or a rental car there’s always a long list of other people’s phones programmed into the cars electronics. Why would you do that? Why take the time and then leave traces of your phone and/or call log in a car that’s not yours?
In my case I’d programmed my phone into my leased vehicle but there was only my phone and I always figured I’d wipe it when the lease ended. I even made myself a checklist in the “Reminders” app on my phone.
That checklist was to pop up on the day before the lease ended so that I’d have the time to systematically walk through all the things I needed to do and check them off, one by one. The thought at the time was, “I’ll do it all before I’m at the dealership and then it’ll just be handing them the keys, heartbroken.“
The checklist listed things like;
Unpair the phone Delete all call logs Delete all Navigation records Delete “Home” location. (As an aside the location was never set to my address, just the town. If you can’t find your way home in your own town, you should hand the keys to the nearest bartender!) Remove anything of a personal nature, check glove compartment, under seats, map pockets, trunk, etc. And on & on.
I deleted that checklist today.
I went to the store yesterday in my car. On the way home it occurred to me that now, it really was my car. After unloading the grocery items, I walked over to the CD shelf and grabbed a bunch of my favorites. (Yes, most of my music is digital and exists on my phone, but I’ve been loading CDs into the 20GB hard drive for music built into the car. )
Now that it’s mine, I’m not hesitant to start making it mine.
I removed the satellite radio option from the display (Sirius Satellite can kiss my ass!) $23 a month for what? They are out of their damn minds! Introductory offers be damned, If you can provide an intro offer for $5 a month, you can damn well offer the service for $5 a month. Frankly, that may be too high a price because you have to deal with Sirius Corporation and that is a freaking nightmare at any time.
If you assume from that statement that I don’t like Sirius corporate practices, You’d be right. It was a nice idea and worked well for a time. At the point that I terminated my subscription, I hadn’t spoken to anyone on this continent for years. Each time I had to speak to a representative, they inevitably screwed something up. Honestly, it got tiresome to have to spend hours on the phone over multiple calls to accomplish what should have been a straight forward task.
Besides, CarPlay works much better.
I’ve reconfigured almost all of the menus, and displays. I’ve programmed the seat settings. I’ve even started programming favorites into the radio buttons. (Although there isn’t much worth listening to on local radio stations. On a lot of the stations, I’m not even sure what language is being spoken.Maybe English?) I’ve set up the master key, and I’m considering other little things to add that fit me.
Generally speaking BMW fits me right out of the box, but there are always little things that make the vehicle feel more like home.
Now, I’m not worried about miles driven on the odometer. When looking at tires I’m thinking best value for the dollar, not just the cheapest Chinese brand that will fit. I am just as worried about rocks flying on the freeway, dents, and dings. That will probably never change!
I get in and really smile. I smiled before but it was always reserved because I didn’t know if I was going to have my heart broken when the lease ended.
I drove my 1 series for almost 10 years. It was in excellent condition right up to the day it was totaled, it made me smile every time I got into it. My heart was broken when it was killed by a stupid bitch running a red light. The only gratification was the stupid bitch didn’t get away with what she was trying to get away with.
There were a lot of witnesses that told the cops, She ran the light, not me. Once she heard what the witnesses were telling the cops, she stopped limping around and holding her neck.
Miraculously, she also started speaking and understanding English. Can you say insurance scam? She thought she’d blame me and get a big settlement, (after all I drove a nice car… Right?) That’s a laugh! She still tried to rake my insurance company over the coals and cause trouble for me. That fell apart pretty fast when the police report made it to my insurance company’s lawyers.
When I looked at turning the tables on her, I found out she was an illegal, had no drivers license, and had been involved in 5 other accidents in the last 2 years, all of which she got large settlements out of.
I remember asking the police several weeks later how it was possible that she was allowed to remain in the country when it was pretty obvious that she was committing crimes for her income. They just shrugged.
I’m glad I leased this car. I’m equally glad that the lesson I learned is that I don’t like leasing. I got lucky that this lease worked out to my advantage and I’m thankful that some higher power pulled a string or two for me. Otherwise, things could have gone very differently.
I had a 3 series for a while. It was a good car, it just wasn’t me. It’s odd, that car and I never bonded. According the the mapping and phone data that was still in the navigation system, it had been preowned by a Chinese person in Wisconsin. The voice actuation never worked right. I guess maybe the first language it learned was Chinese, and it didn’t do very well with English as a second language.
When I got the 4 series, I remember handing the 3 series keys to the dealership and felt nothing at all. I never looked back at the 3. That was weird for me. Once I bond with a car, it’s really hard for me to let it go. Usually, we’ve been through a lot together and the adventures are good memories tied to the car itself. It’s easy for me to forget about the 3 because we made no memories together. It almost felt like the car and I tolerated each other but I had no desire to cruise up the coast in it.
The 3 would often do something weird and fail with no warning at all. Invariably when it was most inconvenient (on the way to work at 4am, instead of on the way home from work at 2pm.) Maybe that’s why we never cruised the coast or anything other than drove to work and home. I never had confidence in the car.
My current car, on the other hand, we’ve been coast to coast. We’ve seen sights and cruised areas in this country that I’d never seen before.
We stopped in Amarillo, TX because it told me something wasn’t quite right 120 miles outside the city. We didn’t limp in to town, we drove in under full power. My car did me proud and I didn’t mind stopping to investigate the issue. As it turned out the repair was minor, the TX dealership didn’t have the part. Fortunately it was something that could be documented, and reset. The car was fine to continue the trip back to California, a permanent fix could be made once we got home.
I’d have happily hung out in Amarillo waiting for parts if it had been necessary and not grumbled about it at all.
I suppose the difference is that the 3 had been preowned. The 4 had been driven, but I was its first owner. We bonded at about 100 miles an hour on the 52 in San Diego. It was instant, and we were communicating with each other intuitively, and have ever since.
It’s strange but I remember looking out the big windows of the dealership in San Diego and of all the cars out there, the 4 felt like it was looking back at me. As if it was alive and wanted me to take it home.
The car looked like all the others but I could feel something else. I didn’t know it was a manual transmission until I sat down in the driver’s seat. It was sitting in a line of other 4’s they looked indifferent and cold, but my 4 looked warm, inviting, a bit cocky, and forlorn.
As I walked out the double doors I knew I should just wait for the loaner car so the 3 could be fixed again and shouldn’t be looking at another vehicle.
I went to my 4 and knew it was built for me, it had been waiting patiently for someone like me to find it. It was the only manual transmission in the row. When I got in and fired it up, the display showed it had been driven about 2500 miles. When I pulled out onto the road, I knew they’d been a rough 2500 miles. Probably some dealership salesman or various people who thought they’d like to try a manual transmission.
Either way, those miles had been rough, the good news was, they were few in number. When we hit the freeway I could feel the engine blowing out the bad shifts and the clutch opening up for me. When we hit 90, the salesman got nervous but kept his mouth shut. At 100 mph he started shifting around uncomfortably.
I wasn’t meaning to scare him. The car and I were talking to each other. I could feel the machine singing with joy at actually being driven the way it was supposed to be, by feel, not by someone watching a shift indicator on the dashboard.
We leveled the acceleration at somewhere over 100 mph, dropped speed, and turned around to head back to the deanship. I knew as I made the turnaround to get back on the freeway heading the direction we’d come, that neither I or the car could be separated. I hadn’t felt that good about driving since I’d lost the 1 series.
The lease was an option that worked for the moment and within a month I knew I’d found a worthy replacement for the 1 series. During the lease, I worried that something would happen that would make me have to give up the 4 but I promised it, and myself, that I’d do my best to keep it happily in my garage.
It wasn’t until yesterday that the reality hit me. I’d kept my promise, (some might say it was a selfish promise…)
I’ve always had a “feel” for machines. While most machines and I get along great, there are some machines that feel special, they feel like they have a soul. I’ve repaired machines that I swore were messing with me just for kicks and a little kind attention. Those machines became my favorites to service and repair. They usually made me smile with their improbable antics or malfunctions. Often, they just needed some tender loving care and I’d see them again in 6 months or a year.
I know a few folks who believe some machines have souls, so it’s not as weird as it might seem. We’ve all been in offices where one person couldn’t get a specific machine to work properly no matter what. The machine works fine for everyone else, just not that one person.
That’s a machine soul trying to tell everyone something. I noted years ago that machines with souls seem to know who the jackasses in a business are, and they’re not shy about broadcasting it to the rest of the company.
My 1 had a good soul and we went through a lot of crap together. No matter how bad my 1 was feeling it never left me stranded. It would get me someplace safe limping all the way if it had to.
The 3 was indifferent and cold, it was a common car just like a thousand others on the road. The 3 had no problems at all just stopping wherever it was.
The 4 wanted to be loved and driven. It wanted to have someone who appreciated it in the drivers seat. It has a good soul. I’m confident that it will always do its best to get me where I’m going, or warn me ahead of time that something is wrong. Even with its nose smashed up and a puncture to the floor pan caused by a semi tire retread in the lanes, my 4 yelped but kept on going. It got me home safe that night, and the next day we were at the repair shop.
I’m lucky the 4 picked me, (or caught my eye,) that sunny day in San Diego.
Maybe, depending on the cost of the registration, for Christmas I’ll give the 4 a proper name printed on a classic black & yellow California plate.
For the time being, I’m letting it know that now it is truly mine and we’ll take care of each other and be just fine.
I wonder if this is how people felt about horses?
Later in the day…
While loading CDs, I plugged one in from Rush. I couldn’t help but laugh when Red Barchetta, started playing. It reminded me that in California by 2035 all new vehicle sales are mandated to be electric only.
Just 13 years from now, unless Gov. Newsom decides to speed up the timetable. It will take some time for California to make all gas vehicles illegal to own, or operate. The legislature will probably get around to it by 2045.
It’s funny to think that I might live long enough to watch a song play out in in real life. I could survive into my 80s and watch high speed chases where the perpetrator is only guilty of joyriding in a gas powered automobile.
I hope that I’m watching it from an old folks home located in another state. The only problem I might have, is pissing off the other old folks by rooting for the gas powered vehicle to outwit and outrun the electric police cars.
What are they gonna do about it? Deny me my pudding?
As of Thursday I no longer have a leased car. Whew!
While I’m not planning on driving all over Hell’s half acre, (especially with the price of gas,) I’m happy to not have to worry about the mileage on the vehicle anymore.
That means that if I have to take a trip I won’t be worried about the miles, and I can just freakin enjoy myself.
And I still have a car! I was tuning my bicycle up just in case.
In other news, I lucked out because the buyout of the lease versus the blue book value of the car left me about 18K Above Water. How often does that happen? At the credit union I was like, “The car is worth 18K more than the lease buyout? Are you sure about that? Whoo Hooo!”
I’d looked at other vehicles and when I compared their prices and MPG it became obvious that the math worked out best for me to keep what I’ve got and drive it for another 10 years. I’m very happy with this car, and its got most everything I want. It’s comfortable and well, BMW isn’t making them like this anymore.
I’ll also put my 31.5 MPG average against most all of the new vehicles too!
So that’s a load off my mind and has improved my outlook on life in general.
Now I gotta figure out a way to make money.
I’m going to Scarlett O’Hara that for the time being… “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Now it makes perfect sense why 4 different BMW dealers and BMW Financial have been lighting up my phone since January. They were looking at sliding me into another lease and making a hell of a profit on my lease return. Trouble with that, is that most of the current line of BMW products I don’t like. Those that I did like were fabulously expensive and didn’t have all the options I wanted, apparently due to the chip shortage.
I’m sure that the telemetry my car was sending to BMW was a factor too. They could see that I was way, way, under the milage for the lease and that of course increases the resale value.
Sorry guys!
BTW you really should get some people on your phones that don’t require a universal translator to understand. Of the 4 dealers, the only one that was clearly comprehensible was a guy from Orange County. Not only that, his message was direct, to the point, and he wasn’t hemming and hawing with a bunch of chatter in the background.
As it happens, that is the dealer I’ll be working with from here on out. The local dealerships have all kinda gone to shit since they’ve been purchased by larger multi-dealership conglomerates.
That’s a pity too.
One of them used to be family owned and while they were family owned, they were freaking fantastic. Sales, & Service were both top notch and the job was done right the first time. Sigh… 10 years of doing business together flushed down the tubes over a 1 year span.
I won’t darken their door if I can help it, not even to purchase windshield washer fluid.
I guess I’ll have to make an appointment for two new rear tires in the coming months… I was putting it off in case I had to turn the car in. Hey! I’m not gonna plunk down a chunk of change for tires I’m not going to use!
The next routine service, I’m going to get a new 4 series keyring… Just to celebrate!
