The George Floyd Effect

I think it's starting to happen. The whole world has flipped its lid. And it's been slowly rolling around for years, let's face it. With the ubiquitous corruption we all encounter on a daily basis even if we're trying like gangbusters to avoid it, we're all just a bunch of latent looters, arsonists and vandals anyway, (or as the largest single cause of this situation might say himself, "or worse."), aren't we? Are we as far removed from our primitive urges as we pretend we are? Or do we just need the right catalyst to revert all the way back to our primeval roots where brains were undeveloped and violence was the solution to almost everything?

Maybe Covid isolation and cabin fever has hastened this collective mental eruption. Not sure. But I, for one, have been awaiting anxiously, praying for this sort of thing. Not just for George Floyd or corruption and racism within police forces, though I am glad to see it. I've always been a HUGE Floyd fan. Ar ar. Too early to joke about? Well then you're gonna hate this:

 

Black lives DO matter. I'm 100% behind that! However, there are a number of things we need to watch out for. A number of things that could send righteous indignation spiraling out of control into the exact same thing those righteous people are indignant about. Let me give you an example. An obvious example. I hope I don't get any opposition because it seems like an obvious example to me, but then, I might not be so emotional and illogical about this situation as some otherwise very intelligent people I've seen doing, saying and posting things that aren't very smart. You have probably seen it too. You may have even seen this meme:

I shot Martin Luther King Jr. So did you if you're white! We should feel guilty about this. Because we're white. That's the message behind the meme. Well I don't feel any guilt about my skin hue because it wasn't my choice. I don't claim any part of the shooting of MLK Jr. because when it happened, I wasn't quite a year old yet. I couldn't even operate a spoon let alone a gun. And having studied the man, and grown up to support virtually all of his major messages, I am confident that I wouldn't have shot him, nor would I have supported his shooting in any way. In fact, I would have protested it. But I need to feel guilty! Why don't I understand? My skin makes me a murderer! It sounds absurd when it's said like that, doesn't it? But the absurdity is exposed through logic. Sometimes logic is blocked. Sometimes purposely. I don't know, but maybe this meme was put out there with the purpose of creating the very same violence Dr. King opposed so vehemently, only in reverse. It doesn't matter to some people whose vested interests are to create separation, segregation and fighting as a form of distraction from more important things that they don't want people protesting about. Black people hating white people is just as good as white people hating black people. As long as they don't land in the middle, they'll keep fighting.

This is undoubtedly the kind of thing MLK Jr. would oppose. It's just flip-flopping a very bad thing. You can't convince me that he wanted black control over America. He certainly didn't want black only schools, restaurants and drinking fountains, whether the good ones were for the white people OR the black people. To tell you the truth, I LIKE the back of the bus. I never understood the Rosa Parks story. But do you think it would matter whether the black section were the front or the back? Of course not! The separation doesn't matter to certain people who enforce it, so long as it's there. It can be flip-flopped, and this is sometimes, in these situations, what happens. People get emotional, caught up in group dynamics, peer pressure and protestor power and they go too far. When they get what they've fought for, they keep on going for more.

Not being from the U.S., I have no skin in this game, but having lived in areas of Canada with high concentrations of Indigenous people, (who we still ignorantly call "Indians,") I can tell you that over the years when they went from having their land stolen and even getting killed by the white man, to having special rights and freedoms, it hasn't brought about harmony. We no longer call the Inuit Eskimos, but insisted on calling the Native Canadians Indians until very recently. The tone deaf fact that they are still referred to as "Indians" in most or all the legislation that has been drawn up to deal with them, should give you a clue that there has never been any intention on the part of the lawmakers and politicians of Canada to create equality between Canadian natives and other people. I dream of a day when natives and other Canadians realize that we're equal, the Canadian government has screwed us all! To borrow a familiar phrase, separate, but equal, the government has screwed us separately, but equally. But I think that realization is precisely why we are strategically kept at loggerheads. If we were truly equal, and how hard could that be to bring about, honestly, we could unite against the common enemy: the people who own us all.

Did you know that native Canadians were not considered Canadians, nor could they vote until 1960? And the sexism! Until only a few decades ago, when a "stutus" "Indian" woman married a "non-status" man in Canada, she lost her native status and privileges whereas if a Swedish, ginger woman married a "status" Canadian "Indian," she got "status" and privileges. I know a girl named Zoe of Swedish heritage who married a native and had her housing, food and education entirely covered by the Canadian government. And nothing is ever covered by the Canadian government, it's covered by the Canadian people. Do you think for half a second that the drafters of the laws that enabled this situation DIDN'T anticipate the jealousy, resentment, hatred and conflict that would result from them? Of course they did! That was their major purpose!

The "calculation of Indianness" is a thing in Canada! STILL! I don't know if it includes comparing your skin colour against swatches like you're trying to choose a dark beige tone for the living room drapes, but it might as well, eh? This is just one of many examples of the state of ugliness that exists right now in Canada. Here is a long and ghastly summation of it. It was the result of intentional overcorrection, and this is what happened in some other areas in Canada as well. People from other countries have a lot of advantages in investment, government assistance and other areas. This does the opposite of creating equality or harmony. We like to portray ourselves as a happy, multicultural country, but the government is constantly fighting against that by creating inequity in employment laws, business laws, and many of the basic things that make up Canadian citizens.

I can very easily see this happening in the US. This current situation will be abused by those who want division. Look who you have running the country! He's the one I referred to as "the largest single cause" of recent escalation in disharmony in the US. As if you didn't know...

I'm trying to think, if I were a lifelong pacifist, left wing, socialist who believed strongly in the equal treatment of all citizens in my country, saw what happened to George Floyd and many before him, chose to protest against racially-based violence, had a passion roiling inside my whole life, found a voice in a protest, a strong voice, in massive numbers... would I power trip? I don't know. It seems unlikely, being a lifelong pacifist, but who's to say? However, if I were a scumbag looter, arsonist, car-flipper, mugger or whatever, ANY large exhibition of social unrest and civil disobedience looks to me like a green light! For another example from Canada, when the Canucks lost the finals in 2011, I seriously doubt it was just hockey fans doing the rioting. Perhaps the scumbags who came out to join and escalate happened to be Canuck fans, but that wasn't what made them crazy. That's my opinion anyway. I've lived in Vancouver. There are lots of assholes there who don't need much of a catalyst. I'm confident the same could be said for the cities where the protests have gotten out of hand in America.

But, here's another thing to watch out for, and I've seen some keen-eyed Americans already doing so: those with vested interests in creating separation and conflict within your society are just like the looters, they don't need much of a catalyst either. I have seen pictures and read articles about conveniently placed piles of bricks along protest routes.

Now who do you suppose put them there? Those who want things to escalate so that they can write off the entire group of protestors as a pack of asshats. The same thing happened back when people were marching on Wall Street and getting closer to what they really SHOULD be protesting in America. The media showed the worst of the protestors (who may not have been conscientious protestors at all) doing drugs, acting erratic, and by association wrote off all protestors demanding very real and urgently needed social change in the country.

In summation, I think it's great, the protesting I'm seeing in the US and around the world. I'm worried that it might get carried away, and I'm even MORE worried that it might, by design, distract us from other things that are far more worthy of our efforts. Indeed, if we protested with such gusto, the things more worthy of protest, and WON, I think police corruption, a lot of racism, and other things that keep us from harmony, would all melt away. Unfortunately, I don't have the links or examples or proof of what I believe is true for the whole world, likely never will, so I would be written off as a conspiracy theorist with the aplomb of Wall Street protestors and current social activists being written off as thugs. I maintain that someday we'll all figure it out and get really angry and protest in throngs that dwarf the examples we're seeing on social media these days. I say, "we," but doubt it will happen in my lifetime, if at all.

At the very least, this is good practice. I hope the protestors won't be considered rioters and their message won't be buried by the media. I believe there ARE some things FAR more worthy of protest, and I would definitely advocate angry, violent protest in those cases, but in this case I hope the indignation will suffice. And I hope equality can result, not reversed inequality in which black Americans are considered superior to other citizens. Reasonable heads. That's what I wish upon my American friends and neighbours now in this trying time. At the very best, I hope they will prevail and I hope the success proves to be a catalyst to encourage other more urgent social change in the US and worldwide. I am actually encouraged to see this and I'm behind the protestors! This could be a turning point that may in future be called something like the George Floyd effect. If it is, let the dominos of corruption fall!

The Abnorm

The Abnorm

 

It doesn’t take a person much more than a day on the internet before he, OR SHE, finds

that this great big world of our owners’ is made up of all kinds.

It almost seems anything these days that doesn’t create a media swarm,

why, that’d be the ephemeral, fleeting evanescence we euphemistically call “the norm.”

“I want the same rights as a regular person!” the feminist shouted in a big hullabaloo.

As an old, white male there not looking to get laid, I was nearly lynched when I shouted, “Me too!”

I don’t have anything against alternative lifestyles and such, it’s just

my boyhood, Wheaties box, manly man hero becomes a lady and I MUST perform as if nonplussed.

It just gets a little too complicated when something that clearly ain’t the norm

comes up and to even register slight surprise, well that’s just bad form.

If you’re thinking I have no understanding of gay people, you’ve got my number.

Why, I get an odd, uncomfortable feeling just from washing a cucumber.

But, “I have plenty of gay friends,” says the phobia justifier.

He, OR SHE, knows that if one doth protest too much, one will be thought a liar.

What’s the big deal? Fake or real, as long as they ain’t hurtin’ nobody.

I’m old and maybe a bit conservative, but I’m no fuddy-duddy, buddy!

Don’t pretend to get God. He, OR SHE, mighta mixed some rainbow in with the straight

just for a little variety. And when God finished, He, OR SHE, said it was GREAT. (Or fabulous.)

This just in: my brothers daughter, Judy, is now identifying as a young boy named Justin, just in

time for Christmas. So I’ll need to return that “Girl Power” cross-stitch I got her/HIM. It’s all about adjustin’.

Or maybe I’ll just hang on to it, just in case he (or she?) changes his mind,

and finds she maybe wouldn’t mind all the hormonal boys at school chasin’ her behind.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in everybody doing what it is that makes us all happy.

The body’s just a body, not SOMEbody. If you got a lemon, trade it in, and make it snappy.

All of that being said, I want to say this as nicely as I can:

I don’t want to watch The World’s Strongest Woman, or The World’s Most Beautiful Man.

I’m a good-natured naturalist, I guess. I adore Nature in all Her forms.

It’s seems so simple, it’s gotta be wrong! So I guess I’m a member of the ABnorm.

Memory or Meme-ory?

Have you ever been talking to someone about current events and they say something like, "I remember reading recently that..." and what follows is complete bullshit? And you wonder where the hell they read that garbage. Well, it might not be memory, it might be meme-ory.

Here's a good example: In the wake of the recent mass shooting in Nova Scotia, Canada, the Trudeau government (capital L Liberal) has offered more than the requisite thoughts and prayers. They've banned assault weapons. And immediately, out come the tears and the violins and along with them nowadays, the insanely brainless memes. And, as I've wondered at before in these pages or posts, not necessarily put on social media like Facebook by insanely brainless people. Some SMART people are sharing them.

Things like this:

Now, I might be able to understand posting this without doing a thorough check on the AR 15 if the last word weren't there. But when you're questioning the intelligence of the PM by ironically calling him a genius, you'd better have your facts straight or you're gonna look like an idiot.

Here are the details on the AR 15. All I did was Google, "Has the AR 15 been illegal in Canada since 1977?" This article, in which it clarifies that in 1977 the AR 15 was restricted, not made illegal, makes that "genius" remark backfire on the posting party - to use firearm terminology. In trying to take a pot shot at the PM, their weapon blew up in their faces. I'm not a big fan of this PM, but he's taking a lot of flack, to use another - I'm just gonna use them all up here and now: he's under heavy fire, facing the firing squad, in the firing line, drawing enemy fire, under siege, in the piss, facing trial by fire, under a hail of enemy fire, taking a barrage of enemy fire, getting strafed by enemy fire, getting sniped at, being pelted, flamed, blasted, blazed, peppered, plugged, and picked off. And he doesn't deserve it. I believe that this was the right thing to do, and I believe that the majority of Canadians believe it was too. But try to say that to people who post stuff like this:

Posted by a good friend of mine who is exceptionally intelligent in my opinion. And he's not one to go defriending people who differ. So to this I commented, "Yeah, I miss my old Death Race 2000 car.

For the youngsters, that was a movie starring David Carradine from "Kung Fu," which is a TV show you're also unfamiliar with. In the movie, people compete in a race in which the winner is the driver, or team, that commits the most vehicular homicide.

I continued my comment on the post thusly: "I also miss my butterfly knife and my switchblade. I mean, where the hell have my rights gone? Why, do you know it's actually illegal for a guy to own a flamethrower nowadays?"

The humour may go unappreciated, but I had a good time.

Then there's this one:

and this one:

EDUCATE YOURSELF! (this means I'm right and I'm mad, so don't bother educating yourself, just trust me) These weapons can spray out up to 1200 bullets per minute folks. So yeah! Point made! Trudeau is just being unfair to people who want dangerous LOOKING guns, right? Weapons wearing scary outfits. Maybe they'll SCARE those dangerous deer to death while hunting with them. If not 1200 rpm. should oughta get you a kill shot in there somewhere, eh? If you don't mind crunching on bullets while you eat the meat.

Turns out, gasp, this meme is also bullshit. In fact, the Ruger Mini 14 was USED in an infamous mass shooting in Quebec back in '89, and it IS on the list of assault weapons to be banned.

Finally, and maybe the best of all, there's THIS beauty:

 Do I even need to? Probably not, but I will. Umm... we don't have the same rights and freedoms as our armed forces, though that seems to be the assertion here. I wouldn't mind getting behind the wheel of a tank. (I'm sure it's not even a wheel, but I don't know that and I like it that way.) It would sure be cool to get stuck in traffic and be able to just crush cars in my way and get to where I'm going. Yeah, that would be acers! But I hasten to point out that that would be homicide, another thing we can't get away with that our armed forces can. In fact, that is, as horrific as it sounds, one of the purposes of the assault weapons they carry. I feel like this point is not getting through to a lot of people. When you cry out against a government that bans assault weapons, weapons that are perfect for killing people, it doesn't sound that much like you are bemoaning any loss of legitimate rights and freedoms, it sounds like you might just want to kill some dudes.

So don't be mislead, people of Canada. Educate yourselves! We're lovers, not fighters. But we DO have a military, police forces, (and hockey players) who do a pretty good job of fighting for us. As I repeated way back in elementary school, if you want to fight, join the army. And from what I hear from my hunter friends, (I prefer fishing. Never tried hunting.) if you want to hunt like a REAL man, grab a bow, not an AR 15.

Post script: I just noticed that the meme I downloaded was not quite the one I got for the last one. The one I tried to download pointed out that the military weapons and the civilian ones are the same. Like the previous memes, they just look different.

PPS: For those who want to make an argument about protecting home and family, I think if we want to call ourselves a civilized society, we need to satisfy ourselves with putting one or two holes in an intruder rather than 120. This is real life not video games. But that's just like my opinion man.

Blinded by the Light

I woke up early today for no good reason. Just got up with the sun. It's on days like these I most appreciate being a Corona shut-in because I can take a nap. I LOVE naps! I've said it before, but just an hour long nap makes me feel so great! Like I'm getting away with something. I'll be taking one or even TWO today no doubt. And the sleep! It's probably double the value. It's one of those wonders of nature that can't be explained. Yeah. For sure. Around noon probably. In MY life, this is what passes for a nooner. There's no WAY I'll be pulling an all-dayer today!

So I slowly worked my way out of bed by updating my games, checking email, messages, Facebook, and some other sites. Then switched from phone to computer and had coffee and toast at my desk while verifying the lyrics of the soundtrack of my last dream before waking up. Manfred Mann no less. Blinded by the Light. Not racked up like a deuce, another roller in the night, but revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night. So with a boulder on my shoulder and feeling kind of older, I tripped the merry-go-round. Then some silicon sister with a manager mister told me I got what it takes. Meanwhile Go-cart Mozart was checking out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside, and little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-whirly and asked me if I needed a ride. Coincidentally, that was exactly what my dream had been about!

Well, almost. Actually, I write the above because as I opened up Facebook, I was reminded of a post that I had made two years ago. At the time I was feeling much like I did last night and posted the following: So I type, "How to disable autocomplete on my Kindle." Well actually I type " How, " which becomes "Haw," which is underlined in red squiggly. Now I have " Haw t, " because I typed the t before I realized "How" was changed to haw even though I hadn't even typed "hee" before it. I backspace and retype "How" but autocomplete inserts a space so now I have "H ow," which is also underlined in red squiggly because evidently autocomplete suggests words that don't exist. I say to the 14-year-old in the room, "I thought electronic devices were supposed to make life easier." He says, " They do! "

As I sit imagining back to a better time when I wasn't so boulder-on-my-shoulder older and that hit song came out, not the original by The Boss in '73, but the one released in '76 by Manfred Mann, the one I listened to in my dream as I was boot-skiing down a hill, taking a steep ramp and doing a lay-out back flip with a half twist, (I'm not kidding, that was part of my dream!) I'm struck by the massive advances in science and technology since I was nine or ten and first getting into music that wasn't my Mother's. All those lyrics, and the fact that Bruce Springsteen wrote that song, did I know all that at 5:30 when I got up today? Nope. For most of my life I thought that song was about a douche and someone getting wrapped up in it somehow. ??? And by the way, what's a douche? I didn't KNOW!

Not a lot of people KNEW the actual lyrics either. And how could we? We had to buy the record, (this was before we could tape the song off the radio on our ghetto blasters (a term I cringe to type - can you imagine THAT term catching on today?)) put our heads as close to the speakers as possible, crank up the volume and guess. Just guess. And we had to live with that. Yet somehow, even though every one of our friends had a different hearing of the lyrics, they didn't disparage all of society and its mass ignorance at not hearing what they had heard. We didn't engage in death threats to family and pets of people who differed in their hearing of the song. We waited to hear it from the experts. The only experts. Not even Dick Clark if he had Manfred Mann on American Bandstand could be trusted. We had to hear it from the band, or the Boss. Then we knew it was fact.

Today we can find out in a minute by Googling the lyrics.

So science and technology HAS made things easier in some ways. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't use it every day, in fact DEPEND on it every day. But last night when I was trying to post a new assignment for my online students, I wasn't thinking of the positive side to technology. It was a lesson I'd made long ago for a class of Koreans on present tense and adverbs of frequency. Sometimes, never, once in a while, usually, seldom, etc. Well, what do you know? This week's lessons for my kiddies included present tense and adverbs of frequency. So why not use the same lesson? Sounds easy but it turned into a technological nightmare.

The problem began during the video. I have to make a video at least 20 minutes long, each week. In it I review the past week, give pointers on common mistakes I saw made, give kudos for good things I saw, then introduce the topics for the week, the book assignments and I give them one assignment to be submitted online to me. I usually show them in the syllabus (Microsoft Word document) where we are. This week I had made a summary of my video in written form (Microsoft Word document). And I wanted to show them the old handout I had made years before. I had listed things at the bottom of the handout such as, brush your teeth, visit your grandparents, check your email, sleep in, etc. I had used it as a conversation class handout so I had just typed, "Talk with your partner or partners about how often you do the following..." I changed that to "Write 10 questions and answers about how often you do the following..." Then I tried to save it onto my desktop as a new file. What I got was, "Syllabus save." So I tried again. "Week 8 Lesson saved." I tried several more times but I just couldn't save the new, slightly modified handout to my desktop. But it showed up as saved to the desktop (about 6 times) IN Microsoft Word. And I was able to keep all three MSWord files open. So I made the video. That went okay. But when it came time to upload the handout, and the assignment, to the university LMS, I couldn't do it.

Microsoft Word gets confused when you have more than one of its programs open at the same time. I have a pirated copy of Word (I mean, who doesn't?) so it might be a glitch in the copy, or the actual program might be messed up. Either way, I was sure the second it happened, that I'd encountered this before. Maybe once, maybe 10 times. I sometimes take a long time to pick these patterns up. If you try to save something to your desktop, I guess it has to go through its flawed computer brain about 50 trillion times that you want to save THIS document, not the other two. And that can take up to SECONDS! Even MINUTES! Excruciating! But when you try to save the file 6 times... well then you're into some seriously frustrating time wasting. And if you don't know what's happening because the last time it happened, you said to yourself, "I won't need to remember this because it won't come up again. When will I ever open multiple files in Word again?" And the time before that. And the time before that...

What makes things worse is the brief glimmer of hope you get when the message comes up that the file you are trying to save will need to be converted into a more recent version of Microsoft Word. Is this okay? "Ah HA!" you exclaim. That must have been the problem. So you click "allow" and it changes to a more modern version of MS Word and disappears into the netherweb again.

That's when you start doing desperate things. You start throwing your mouse, gently so it doesn't break, but roughly enough to let the gods of technology know how furious you are. Then you bang on your desk and swear a bunch of times as you try to save again, only compounding the problem. Then, as a last resort, you seek help on the internet. "Why can't I save a Microsoft Word file to my desktop?" you type into Google. You get some other person's plea answered by computer people who shouldn't be answering average people's pleas. "Well it is not recommended that you save any programs to your desktop. Here's what you do: you open up a ghost file using your ACR configuration in some upper gump font. But first you're going to need to change the ftp protocol icon in your registry. It's super easy!"

You wade through all of THAT self aggrandizing crap until you come to, "Open up Windows explorer, go into view, then change desktop setting, then check "show hidden files" and uncheck "don't show hidden files." So you do all that and voila... your file STILL doesn't show up on your desktop. But you still try to save it a few MORE times further compounding your problem.

Then you search another thread and find, "Have you tried refreshing your desktop? Just right click on your desktop and then choose "refresh." "AAhhhhhh, I KNEW there had to be a simple solution!" you say. So you go ahead and do that and finally, your problem has not been solved. But you do a couple more test saves, just to be sure. Further compounding your problem.

So, like usual, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I started searching all over my computer to see if all those files had been saved in another place even though every one of them I had definitely chosen the desktop as their destination. They were all showing up in Microsoft Word itself marked as "saved to desktop," but I couldn't see them on the desktop and I couldn't drag them and drop them to the desktop from Microsoft Word itself. I tried copying, transferring, exporting as pdf, you name it, I tried it. Meanwhile a couple hours have been wasted.

Finally I looked in Windows Explorer under "recent" and there were about half a dozen word docs marked saved to desktop, and a few pdf's with the same designation even though exactly NONE of them actually appeared on my desktop. So, I minimized my screen, selected one of the pdf's and dragged and dropped to the desktop. IT WORKED! I now had one of those files on the desktop. I needed that because on the uni's LMS, Canvas, files can be uploaded from your desktop, but not from Microsoft Word or some other locations. In fact I just make pdf's because some or all MSW files don't even show up as files that can be uploaded. But pdf's work. And as you see your successfully saved to desktop pdf appear, there's an oddly faded Word file taking shape on your desktop. MS Word is nearing completion of the 50 trillion checks on the first of 15 files you unsuccessfully tried to save to your desktop. WHY I OUGHTA....

Something that should have taken an hour took FOUR! Can any among us think of all the great knowledge and entertainment technology and computers have brought us at times like these? Well if you can, I envy you. And I bet it won't be long before I open up a few MS Word files simultaneously again and say to myself, "What harm could it do?"

I depend on technology almost as much as I depend on essentials like water, air and... light. But sometimes I am blinded by the light. I thank you.

The Great Mask Debate

Well, I'm all moved into my new apartment. I already like it better than my last place. Right now I'm in a better desk with a breeze blowing in my window carrying FRESH air, not cigarette smoke and SKhynix chip smell with it. The fresh air and the ability to USE my nice, comfortable mattress instead of having it stored unused in my useless loft, make this place better on their own. But wait, there's more!

I have a better top loading washing machine. I know how to clean the lint catcher on this one. And let's face it, side loading for a thing with water? It creates a need for door locking that creates stress. Brand new too! Still has the warrantee papers in it. My toilet is better too. Not one of those "smart" tankless toilets that you can't fix when they go wrong. I know I'll get a few witnesses to THAT! Tanks, but no tankless.

I also have TV here and at 2 today I'm going to watch the Kia Tigers playing a pre-season game in another empty stadium. It's weird watching baseball this year so far. Players don't know what to do to celebrate. No high fives, no butt patting, no hugging. They're coming up with new social distancing methods of celebration. Weird but fun.

I got a free microwave and have already used it. It's nice to have. It opens up more food options. Most unhealthy, but new, and that's nice. My fridge is better designed so even though it's smaller by a bit, I think it'll hold just as much or maybe more. It's got the awesome ice area too. With the weather already getting hot, I'll use that a LOT. And the stove is a gas range. Not the gimmicky modern touch electric burner that turns itself on if you put something on the burner and sometimes doesn't read your fingers when you WANT it to turn on. And speaking of electronic gimmicks, I have normal outlets, not the ones with the protruding buttons to shut them off. My old apartment had those right at couch or chair level so if you moved, you might hear a beep and suddenly a light, or your computer, that was plugged into the outlet, would shut off. And sometimes you wouldn't hear the beep. With my laptop, it didn't shut off. It just changed to battery power. So 4 hours later it would run out of power. Very annoying.

I don't sleep in the living room so I have more room in the living room. My bedroom, instead of being a sauna of uncirculated air with a three-foot high ceiling that you had to get to via suicide staircase, is nice. It has a better desk and I can use my computer in my bedroom OR just haul it out to the living room if I want.

The bathroom is not as good. There isn't as much storage for towels, TP, and bathroom goods. Plus the water from a shower pretty much soaks the entire floor, whereas in my old place the shower was enclosed, though I never shut the door because for a person of my size, that was not easy. But I like the adjustable shower in the new apartment. Showers are nice. And I didn't think this would be the case, but the water pressure is just as good. In fact the first time I turned on the faucet in the sink was to brush my teeth and I blasted the toothpaste right off my toothbrush. You have to be careful.

I didn't think I'd be saying THIS either but I'm even closer to work living here! And that's really nice. I pay 120,000 won less a month. That's gonna be a savings of about 1650 bucks a year. I am on the second floor instead of the 3rd so I haven't used the elevator yet. Don't think I will. I haven't heard, or smelled smoke, from my neighbours yet. I think I just have the parking garage below so I won't disturb anyone if I thump. I listened to music pretty loud the first night I was here. I shut it down at 11. No complaints.

No complaints from me either. ...about my apartment. There IS one thing that has bugged me a little bit this week. It's an old pet peeve of mine, or a specific example of it. I've been sent the following meme by a handful of friends:

Have you seen this one, have you heard about this? I like the humour. I have really enjoyed a LOT of Covid humour! People are getting very creative. But this one bugged me. I think it's the beginning. No, it's not the glaring mistake using the word "is" instead of "this." Although, if the person really WERE smart enough to be trying to educate people on mask wearing, something that even experts are still debating, you'd expect them to take the time and care to do at least one edit, no?

I think the thing that bothers me with this one is the tone of superiority. Like this person is trying to educate the ignorant masses. And, sorry to the handful of friends who posted this, it makes the posting party seem a little arrogant by re-posting this arrogant meme. I doubt the person who created this meme was an expert, but even if he/she IS an expert, we know that the experts don't know. Two of my Facebook friends posted this in the last few days. Now, this is not a good article. In fact the beginning and end contradict each other. The headline, which is all a lot of people will actually read, is about the WHO flip-flopping again on mask usage. And if you recall, I said this will likely be like butter or eggs: bad for you, then good for you, then bad for you. Well now it's bad for you. But no sooner did the writer finish this article than it was now, according to the CDC, GOOD for you again.

If you read the two articles, not just the headlines, you can begin to understand what the "experts" are up against. How would one go about scientifically studying and gauging the confidence that comes with mask wearing? And how on earth can we get an accurate measure of how many of us use the masks correctly? The big one for me is mentioned in the second article: how much more often do we touch our faces when we wear our masks? I wear mine when I go out and usually I go out to places I need to get to by bus or subway holding onto the steel bars that hundreds of other people have grabbed the same day. And when I get to the grocery store by bus or subway, pushing the grocery cart that who knows how long it's been since it was disinfected? All the while adjusting my mask and touching my face at LEAST 10 times as often as I would otherwise. This absolutely increases my chances of contracting the virus, which, because I can only spread it if I've got it, increases my chances of being that one person in 10,000 who has Corona and doesn't know it yet.

So what do you do when a friend militantly and completely convinced by this thoroughly unscientific meme, posts it while saying they are pissed off at people who just don't obey or understand or share the same knowledge (dare I say wisdom) that they have received from people who still don't know what they're talking about? I tried humour. You know, fight fire with fire, just in case they weren't completely sold on the argument's veracity and perfect illustration of why we should wear masks. Like, "Yes, this DOES make it simple. Not accurate, but simple." Or "Who wants to walk around all day in urine-soaked pants? Ewww!" Even "Wearing pants makes me touch my junk more often and nobody wants to look at that. I say free Willy or the female equivalent of Willy... Wanda?"

But people who embraced the humour in the above meme, somehow failed to react the same way to mine, which lead me to the conclusion that they actually ARE placing some faith in the wisdom of this meme. This goes back to another of my peeves: Why don't we do our own research? We have more time now during quarantine. We have a world of knowledge on the internet. Why do we still place our faith in people we assume are smarter than us and have done the research for us? People we don't even know sometimes. Do we have THAT little confidence in our own intellect? Or are we just too lazy/tired to do our own research? Who made this meme? If you totally believe it, what about it makes you believe it? Is it the superior tone? Is it that you were previously convinced? Is it the humour that makes you think the creator was smarter than you? I too believe really funny people are almost always really smart and vice versa. I didn't know the answers to these questions. So you know what I did? I did some research.

Of course I can't find the answers to the mysteries about this that are giving the experts fits. But there was knowledge available to me that would help me wrap my brain around this situation a little better. These numbers are ALL inaccurate. But they will give me, I thought, a better idea of our situation than I had at the time. So I crunched them. I took the world population of 7.8 billion, used the estimate that it would be at the very outside, two weeks before someone with Covid 19 who doesn't know it will break down and get tested. It follows that the main reason we wear the masks to protect other people is the possibility that we might be one of these so called, "stealth carriers." Then I checked the current numbers, again fairly wild estimations but a bit better than nothing, of how many new Corona cases there had been in the previous two weeks. That number was about 100,000. GOOD! Easier for my calculations. So all I had to do to find out how many people there might be walking around with the virus unbeknownst was find out what percentage of the world population actually are diagnosed with it every week. Of course, this will give us much too large a number since the majority of people get tested long before the two-week point. Some get tested before they have any symptoms at all. The number I got was 0.000013% of the world population.

In other words, if you are walking around IN THE WORLD, and you meet 10,000 people today, 1.3 of them will be one of those stealth carriers. In the U.S., which has almost 1/3 of the Covid cases right now, your odds will be increased. In Korea, where we just had a day with NO new cases, odds would significantly decrease. I live in Korea and am not worried about coming into dangerous contact with a carrier at all. I wash my hands and hardly ever go out so I'm not that worried that I might have the virus. Also, Koreans have been behaving well in this crisis. Social distancing, hand washing, testing, etc. So I don't worry much at all about whether I would get infected if I just went out without my mask. But I don't do that. Why not? Well, it IS better socially to wear the mask. I don't want to be publicly berated or silently despised by Koreans any more than I already am. But there's also THIS.

We are, once again, at the mercy of the lunatics. The people that are responsible for those warnings on strollers to remove babies before folding. Or the windshield cover warnings to remove before driving. THIS is why we wear our masks right now, I think. Because if we didn't, one asshole could infect a LOT of people, and they'll infect two friends, and they'll infect two friends, and so on, and so on...

So the real question is, are the increased odds of contracting the virus that come with wearing masks enough to offset the dangers that come from not wearing them? Without the nutjobs in the world, I'd probably say yes. It could be safer to NOT wear the masks. But because of those psychos, it's probably still a good idea. As you know if you are a regular reader, I HATE when someone tells me something is for my own protection. Because very often there's an ulterior motive. But, I think I'll still wear my mask. Korea has done well with this virus but I've learned from MANY years in this country that there are lots of whackjobs here. I've read stories of random poisonings in recent news, so it happens. And there have been people who knew they were infected but went to church anyway hoping the Lord would be their protection.

Anyhoo, the verdict is, better safe than a victim of some unhinged jagoff. It's unnerving when our safety is dependent upon the general public because the general public includes morons! But here we are. I'll keep wearing my mask and maybe we all should. The sacrifices we make for the few!

Cognitive Dissonance

I'm going to post a video here:

Or at least this will be a link to the video

Do yourselves a solid and watch this video. It's a conversation between two guys. Jay Bhattacharya, who is a professor of medicine at Stanford Medicine and a core faculty member at Stanford Health Policy. His March 24, 2020, commentary in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.” He's interviewed by Peter Robinson, who I guessed, and Wikipedia confirmed, is a conservative talk show host. So that's important. Also, look where Dr. Jay's commentary was published. That's also important.

I think it is fascinating to see smart people coming to not-so-smart conclusions! And the examples are endless. But I particularly enjoy the examples in direct proportion to the smartness of the people and the extent to which the cognitive dissonance is exhibited. The problem with examples such as these is that a lot of people see truth and logic instead of the willful suspension of it. Because they see that the people ARE so smart. I think we tend to agree with people who show intellect because we are conditioned to think that because we may be less intelligent, we can't be right and they can't be wrong. In this way, a lot of us get convinced of the wrong things. The other problem is at this sort of level, that is often the purpose. Now I am not saying either of these guys are trying to convince anybody of anything, or not. But I absolutely AM saying that many will use this conversation and Dr. Jay's commentary, to back their personal points of view, and those points of view are not very smart. I'm talking, if you haven't guessed, about the opinions of rich, greedy assholes who want their minions to get the fuck back to work because they're losing money.

Don't forget, while you are watching, that Dr. Jay IS an expert on the virus, but he also has a doctorate in economics and is introduced as a friend of the conservative host. It is also mentioned that they had a "previous conversation." They rehearsed this interview and I can't help thinking it was to strategically plan their inferences. For further clarification, notice that at no point did the doctor say he has a test or any research that proves the currently accepted guesses of the world medical community about the deadliness of the Coronavirus/Covid 19, are wrong. He just says that they're just guesses. Well I hope we all know that. Since little is known, even by the experts about this NEW virus, we need to be smart and assume that.

I don't believe there is any irresponsibility on the part of Dr. Fauci in predicting the rate of deadliness as a mortality rate of 10X that of the flu. He makes it very clear in many statements that the models used in predictions such as these, are based only on assumptions. The only possible irresponsibility might have been if he had stated this as an absolutely infallible fact, which we've gotta understand, he didn't.

I mean watch the actual footage. He makes several qualification even within that to make us understand that he's only trying to make us understand. These are not precise statistics or studies. He was speaking from what the data he'd seen to that point SEEMED to indicate.

It is expertly explained by Dr. Jay, though in a frustratingly halting style of a man trying not to make any mistakes or trying to remain politically correct, how nobody can KNOW what Dr. Fauci has said. He talks about a test that measures antibodies in the blood that is needed and I'm sure he's right. Dr. Jay even says he doesn't know either. There's nothing shocking here. We are all aware that nobody KNOWS because it's a new virus and testing is just beginning. But these two guys are trying to make Dr. Fauci's statement seem intentionally misleading to the public. "What's Dr. Fauci up to?" is one pretty charged question asked by Peter Robinson. "He should not be saying that," he continues. "This is a little on the mind-boggling side," Robinson adds. Just after Dr. Jay says that Fauci is reflecting on what his guess is, and I am reflecting MY guess on what it is. So if Dr. Fauci is seen as irresponsibly overestimating the danger of this virus, then this is a video in which they are doing the exact opposite. If one prefers to err on the side of caution, then Fauci is actually LESS irresponsible than these two smart guys calling him irresponsible.

It's fascinating how this happens! Let's break it down. Next they get into how the press likes to promulgate fear - a tactic I have said many times the rich or Republicans hate because it equates to the press stealing their best weapon. Then they talk about how the universal quarantine conditions are very costly. Dr. Jay very carefully explains how he doesn't just mean costly to the economy, but costly to people, how ever honest, or accurate that is. Remember, PEOPLE are NOT his area of expertise but money and medicine are. He says that a global economic collapse will cost lives, so he's not comparing dollars with lives, but lives with lives. Then Dr. Jay goes ahead and makes an alarming, and unconfirmed estimate on par with or worse than what they are slagging Fauci for making and says universal quarantine could lead to the loss of millions of lives not just in the US, but worldwide.

What comes next is astonishing! They actually talk about HOW people will die and they get so VERY close to a much better, more humanitarian, even, in my opinion and many others', a better solution economically, but they steer clear of the obvious path of conversation! This, I suspect, is why they needed to rehearse this interview. Right around the 18 minute mark, Robinson says that in his lifetime the GDP has quadrupled. If suddenly we're all poor and we go back to 1950's standards of living, what's wrong with that? What's the mechanism that kills people. And the answer (they avoid) is the rising cost of EVERYTHING. The rapid inflation that has systematically made more money for the rich and made life worse for everyone else. And I don't mean just monetarily. These same rich people have polluted the earth, destroyed animal habitat and in the opinion of ANOTHER really, really smart person, this is what has CAUSED the Coronavirus.

Well, as we all know, to go back to 1950's standards of living, we'd have to go back to 1950's prices. When a friggin' PENNY was worth something. When a house was 7 thousand and a car was 2 thousand. The GDP has quadrupled but the cost of living has WAY more than quadrupled. Look at the price of a house nowadays or a university education! But any good capitalist knows jacking up these prices since 1950 has been the number one job for every corporation, big business, bank and politician since even before then. We certainly can't just undo all their hard cheating, lying and thieving in one fell swoop! I think Robinson hit on a wonderful solution here, but purposely sidestepped it. If we just reduced prices of everything when we come to the end of this Coronavirus pandemic, we'd be broke, but we wouldn't starve or die!

But to even suggest DEflation, as you can see, is far more extreme than suggesting deaths in the millions. They're scared about people becoming depressed and losing hope, they're scared for poor countries like India, they're scared of shortened life expectancy... cue the alarmism they pretended to tsk tsk in Fauci. Then they settle on the ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTION: you gotta work. By the end they're defending Trump and promoting Big Brother. Constant surveillance? Just dealing with new viruses and diseases routinely coming up? How bout no? Let's get to the REAL causes instead of finding extreme solutions that enable the continuation of those causes. This reminds me of cows. You put cows in modern, close-quarter, cow factories and they're out of their natural habitat. They eat grass. With cows so close together, there's not enough grass. So you feed them corn or the shit they now feed them. Their stomachs (all four of them) can't handle that. So don't go to the obvious solution and put them back out to pasture, that'll "LOSE" you money. Develop a drug to fix their stomachs. Then the meat gets contaminated and the milk does too. Suddenly, HOLY SHIT, out of NOWHERE we have mad cow disease and hoof in mouth disease and who knows what? But the assholes need to make their money. So let's set up interviews with cow experts/capitalists extolling the virtues of the new and improved vaccines for all cow diseases.

Did you come to this conclusion? I didn't right away, I must admit. But this is what we need to do so we don't get sidetracked by smart people with ulterior motives. These guys are smart. I don't doubt that. And they certainly know there are other solutions than what they are offering. They may even know that telling people they need to go back to work before we can fully understand this virus IS irresponsible. More irresponsible than old Dr. Fauci. So why are they doing it? This is something I mentioned last post without definition. It's a psychological theory called cognitive dissonance and it's what I find fascinating in these types of conversations. Here's the definition.

I see it SO often in people and its largest trigger by FAR is money. When people, just for example, can believe that they are followers of Jesus, but true capitalists, it is fascinating the lengths of creativity they can go to in order to combine the conflicting ideas. Now, note I said "true capitalists." If you give to the poor like Jesus commanded, and your gifts multiply because of it, 1) you are not a true capitalist and 2) you are the exception. True capitalism is profit at all cost and that necessarily includes screwing the poor, semi-poor, middle class, upper middle class and if you can, screw the other rich people too. But do it in the name of the Lord! That just doesn't add up. But Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz!

The two dudes in this video are showing that creativity I talked about. The old "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" argument illustrated by calling Fauci irresponsible then getting highly technical medically and economically is truly creative! And you need to be pretty sharp to spot its bullshittedness. It's a challenge I relish. This time at home has been largely wasted if you're like me, but I've done a little of this BS busting and it makes me feel like I haven't wasted it all. And it's my pleasure to share it with you.

Bye Bye Bernie

Here is a very good article about the American perception of socialism. American views on socialism are described as "tangled," "all over the map," "ground into the dust over the years," "a straw man," "the boogeyman," "the Robin Hood thing," "an unthreatening egalitarianism," "the unfinished business of the New Deal," "(the) name for almost everything that helps all of the people," "the epithet they have hurled at every advance people have made in the last twenty years," "a good thing," and "a bad thing."

This article is from the New Yorker, but don't let that scare you away. It's not written in highly intellectual language that most wouldn't understand. In fact, I was amused by the baseball bat flipping, mike dropping, slam-it-home point beautifully illustrated in the ad on the left hand side of the article that obscured about a third of several paragraphs making them very difficult to understand. Somebody paid for this ad that makes the topic of this article, socialism, difficult to understand. Somebody paid to force this ad onto my internet, which I pay for every month. It's a fantastic illustration of capitalism making socialism hard to understand. You don't need to understand every word of the article. Just take a gander at that ad. And, while you're at it, try to get rid of that ad. It's impossible. This little form of capitalism, which is annoying internet subscribers everywhere, and obscuring understanding of socialism, is impossible to get rid of. And I'm not even IN America!

But, if you didn't get the same ad I did, or if you aren't yet convinced, the article is well written. I advocate a thorough reading of it on this day when America's best shot at some policies that they DESPERATELY need, Bernie Sanders, just ended his campaign leaving the American public with a choice between Trump and Biden, Synthol Injection Republicanism, and Republicanism Light. A giant douche or a turd sandwich.

AGAIN.

Well, we know Donald Trump is fond of fearmongering when it comes to socialism. Its detractors will often site countries where socialism has failed, like Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro, but that's somewhat akin to saying that Joe Exotic's tiger farm failed because of his choice of hairstyle. And the cognitive dissonance can be cut with a butter knife when you mention countries where it has worked, like Finland, Sweden or the U.S.A. Trump ignorantly spouts alarmism like "I'm running against a crazy bunch of socialists," or "America will never be a socialist country," like he knows what the damn word means. He clearly doesn't. There are lots of words he doesn't understand despite his claims to have the best words. Here's a word that the Washington Post writes, "explains why Trump should not be president." The last line of the article is pure gold! We have a president, unfortunately, who is often wrong — but never in doubt.

There are endless contradictions in the US when it comes to what the socialism haters say and what they do. Not the least of which has been the state intervention (not just under the Trump administration) in economics in ways that are commonly associated with hardline socialism. Ron Kind, a Democrat, refers to it as "authoritarian socialism." And, of course, it brings to mind:

When it comes to contradictions, the word "capitalism" is another historically tangled web of social encoding it would seem. Here's another article from the Warshington Post. It seems that young people, who have not been so saturated by Pavlovian sophistry (yet) tend to blame capitalism, or the way it's being practiced in the US, for some bad things like the widening gap between the haves and the have nots, financial crises and the bailouts that come with them, the realization that the "free market" isn't really a thing, basic necessities like health care and a living wage not being provided to people who work very hard, and economic growth not translating into good jobs for them. They aren't swallowing the rhetoric as easily as their Cold War progenitors may have. This gives me hope for the U.S. even though they're going to suffer through yet another bogus election soon.

But before that, Americans are going to suffer through something that just might have a better chance than Bernie Sanders had of straightening out some shit in their country. Covid 19 the Coronavirus. I recently learned that it's not named for being the 19th incarnation of Coronavirus, but being the one discovered in 2019. That's right, it was synthesized in China in late 2019. NOT December 31 as recorded on the WHO website. But earlier. And the WHO, though knowing about it in 2019, waited too long before they did anything. Much like almost everybody, probably just didn't want to piss off China. Who they knew had just ordered researchers to destroy records and declare themselves liars. The fucking corruption in this world!

I'm hoping that the exposure of this specific corruption of the world, their leadership, the greed, the heartlessness and the fragile nature of the economic systems that can't even survive a month without paycheck to paycheck workers going broke, will wake some people up in America and other countries. Maybe the essential employees of Walmart and Amazon who are risking their lives right now to keep the countries where they work from Armageddon, will be paid more than the least amount that they can possibly be paid by law. I always think of Chris Rock when I think about minimum wage. He said that you need to understand your employer's position. They WOULD pay you less, but they can't by law.

The strangest thing about all this is that amidst this tragedy that would have been eased tremendously by policies that he has supported all his political career, Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. Universal healthcare is a must. Coronavirus is proving that. Science is working on a vaccine. What if the man or woman who could have cured this virus couldn't afford to get an education? Bernie supports educating everyone who wants to be educated. Even parents. Bernie supports free child care. And the worth of teachers (toot toot) is being recognized now not only for their child care purposes but the educational purposes as well. Bernie believes teachers should be given a much deserved raise across the board. How is it that at the time when the country needs him most, his support can't even match that of a dead wood candidate like Joe Biden? I don't believe it. It's another national con like the one that got Trump "elected" and that got Hillary "chosen" as the Democratic candidate in 2016.

Perhaps two straight, or possibly even concurrent, tragedies like Coronavirus and a second term for the worst president possible may awaken the revolutionary spirit in America. Maybe a write-in vote or two or several million for Bernie Sanders might put the runaway train back on the rails. I doubt it, but we can always hope.