Author: ness23456

Three Sentences Revisited

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Ai employees are warning us of impending doom in the near future and politicians are calling for legislation to prevent it. So our Executive branch of government meets with a band of Ai executives and allows Ai companies to regulate themselves. Anyone know a good third sentence?

In our country’s news dissemination history, there were only a few news outlets so we all listened and talked about the same news, often with different opinions. Now, in the modern world, we can seek out a news source we like, leading to characters of all kinds pushing “news” they know we want to hear. Any wonder why we are such a fragmented society?

Are you afraid to fart in public? Yes? That makes you a private tutor.

Aging is all about loss, acceptance, and adapting. Middle of the night sleeplessness used to be about career, romance, cars, and sports. Now, wakefulness is prolonged by what is the next thing to be “gone” from life, lost. And will I be able to make myself see it as good thing to lose.

Teeth. With all the sophisticated engineering evidenced by structures like the eyeball, why do teeth rot? Why are they not titanium?

Television–or any image viewing—has gotten more complicated than a Rubik’s Cube, and more expensive. Who needs 150 channels? When someone comes up with an “a la Carte” way of selecting channels, they may make millions.*

Healthcare is beyond explanation, these days, and should be treated differently than television streaming selection. It falls under the Declaration of Independence stated right to pursue “happiness”, and you shouldn’t have to take a moment to select a health care provider as you suffer a stroke and are taken away to the hospital. Free Market be damned.

Relationships should be outlawed due to the potentially prodigious amounts of fraud and deception involved in courting, wooing, uniting, and breaking up. In 74 years (yes, I had a relationship as a baby) of personal experience and anecdotal collection, finding two people who are honest in every stage of a relationship is impossible. Most relationship fraud is by omission, not commission, and is often a result of changes brought on by natural life progressions (see paragraph 4) and “Tribe over Truth” dynamics.

Guns have reached the point where no one cares about trying to regulate them, anymore. Manufacturers flooded the world with guns in response to hysterical future and present gun owners’ worries their guns would be taken away. We should research and decide if it would prevent harm to innocent children and spectators if we returned to the Old West style of gunplay, with open, visible holsters and High Noon gunfights.**

To my limited knowledge, guns have never been legally taken away from an innocent citizen, though sometimes they should be. We err on the side of the rights of gun ownership not public safety when we debate guns. At least, make laws to severely punish “lazy” gun owners whose kids bring their weapons to school for “show and tell”.***

On a lighter note, Daily Savings Time is about to happen. It has very little effect on me but some people have strident opinions. Surprise, I don’t. (Please look up the definition of “strident.”)

Another stolen joke: I entered ten puns in a Worst Pun Contest. Did I win? No pun in ten did. If you don’t get it…

*Sling had inexpensive “by the day” passes that made TV life easier. It worked great. They stopped it recently, without warning.

**Imagine a UFC style of settling arguments. We could have national Gun Fight Tournaments by age group and caliber of weapon. Healthcare suppliers could build and name Gladiator-type arenas with sand floors to soak up the blood.

***Several cases recently in the news feeds, which can’t be trusted, anymore. Ai slop. But sometimes true.

Common Sense? Civility? Compassion? Crap

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What a world. When a young man, I conducted serious conversations by mail.* Old USPS mail. Not “E” mail. A normal, lucky conversation span was send a letter on Tuesday, hope a local person gets it by Wednesday, hope they respond by Thursday, mail it on Friday, and I get an answer by Monday. When I used the phone, someone at the receiving location had to hear the landline ring before any conversation started and several tries had to be made before someone was near enough to answer. Even then, a father or mother might not have gotten the correct message to the son or daughter because of forgetfulness or old-fashioned parental caution. An aged parent or grandparent was always a crapshoot, especially if they asked you to repeat words.

These days a text, call, or email gets from my Personal Communicating Device (PCD), either a tablet, watch, laptop, or phone (TWLP pronounced twelp), gets to the receiving PCD, instantly*.

In all cases, however, the receiving party of any mode of communication has the power and the right to respond any time they want and in any way they want. Mailed letters were often responded to by a landline phone call with the accompanying requirement of me or another human being near enough to be an “answerer”. Thank God for answering machines, though they did add another level of doubt about the accurate receipt of the message by the intended. New, modern TWLP communications can also be responded to by the receiver in the way the receiver chooses, unless specific instructions say otherwise.

Modern or Old Fashioned, there is/was always an implied contract about what was required by both sender and receiver. Sidebar: In management schools and marriage counseling sessions, I learned about The Black Box (TBB) in the middle of all normal, human communications. Speaker A says “X” into TBB but there is no guarantee Receiver B hears “X” coming out of TBB.

Understanding TBB is the main impetus for the terms of the contract: the original sender is expecting an answer from the original receiver, unless otherwise clearly stated or dubiously implied. Note: subsequent communications can be outside the contract. especially if a responder enjoys sending insipid, repetitive texts.

“Ghosting,” per Google, “is when someone suddenly stops all communication and ignores all further attempts to connect without giving warning or explanation.” Ghosting has infected communications since we started talking to each other, and was easier—and unnamed–in the old days. Mail “didn’t get to me” or “I didn’t hear the phone ring” were rude, but still possibly innocent explanations for missed messages, especially given the time frame. Theoretically, a mailed letter or phone call could even be forgotten by the sender, himself**, without noting the lack of any response if enough time elapsed.

So what’s the harm in ignoring a received communication?

I’ll tell you. Forget about the “contract”, and think about the sender. It is a civic and societal duty to respond, period. It is also compassionate to respond, especially in romantic—or potentially romantic—situations. Especially if you are the “dumper” in a relationship and the “dumpee” is ignorant of his/her/their “mistakes”. The internet is full of stories about partners and spouses ghosting each other with dramatic and sometimes mortal consequences.

Common sense: communication can stop the drama.*** We won’t mention the Golden Rule, but imagine if every relationship had a breakup clause concerning implied communications based on the Golden Rule. And everyone obeyed the clause.

To all ghosters: how would you feel if you were the ghostee and someone did it to you?

You’d feel like crap. Please feel that when you ghost, too. Or worse.

*Indicators and notifications say so on my TWLP.

**Or herself. Or themselves.

***The sad thing about rules concerning society and common sense, is the number of odd humans who have no regard for either. If your partner or spouse is “out there”, all “contracts” are voided. But do NOT abuse this exception.

Science: Who Needs It

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Hormones. Atoms. Quarks. Neurons. Glia. Synapses. Epochs. Eras. Fossils. Quantum Entanglement. Paleozoic.

The list of science-related words probably never ends. When science gets near the end of the current list, they make up new words. Like muons, bosons, ganglia, and Superposition. And a compound personal favorite: Inherent Uncertainty (IU). Hm. Inherent Uncertainty seems the perfect description for the scientific process since once we learn as much as we can in 1996, we then learn more in 2006, and learn more in 2016 and even more in 2026. And, often times what we learn in 2016 might change or contradict what we learned in 2006. If we’re smart enough to notice, science never reaches The End of anything, like it’s an infinity Russian Nesting Doll. IU, right?

Nope. IU is not a commonsense description of the history of science research but a convoluted description of the strange world of Quantum Mechanics (QM), the enclave of Quantum Entanglement (QE) and “sub-atomic” particles like the aforementioned muons, quarks, and God knows (right?) what else. BTW*, the real scientific IU is from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (HUP) which states “you cannot simultaneously know both the precise position and exact momentum of a quantum particle.”**

That sounds like much of what modern science has become: the harder we look the more we learn about how much we really might not know, at this particular time. It also sounds like science is a ladder of learning, with each new discovery not really changing the past, but adding to it, making it bigger, brighter, smarter. Like building a home from the ground up by adding rows and rows of bricks until you get…where?

The idea that the discovery of new facts in 2026 may change the facts of 2006 is used by some as proof science has no idea what it is doing. The fevered and firmly believed opinion by some, then, is that science is useless and should not be depended on for solutions to life and society’s problems.

Stop a second and wonder if science doubters might not be right. Remember when protons, electrons, and neutrons were the “building blocks of nature”? I can still see the cute little models on Mrs. Timian’s desk just before our practice nuclear bomb safety drills.

I can’t say with certainty science is always right. I cannot even say it with Inherent Uncertainty, either. But…what else is there? If you want an internal combustion car to drive you around the world, where do you start to build it? Your own guesses and hunches? Your friends?*** Oddly enough, whatn school were the caveman scientists from who learned how to barbecue animal flesh? Or engineer arrow heads. I see a bunch of cavemen hunched over a rock, studying a chalk drawing on how to assemble a bow for the arrows. Ad, yes, maybe a cavewoman or two. Grunts, galore.

Warning: If you hear and read about science****, you could end up with applesauce for brains, or talk in mnemonics, a language spoken by The Select Few (TSF).

But there is hope, out there, in areas of study far, far away: There is a God’s Particle, The Higgs boson. It really exists and was found in 2014 in experiments at CERN, and The Large Hadron Collider. Please, Google it and learn more about what we know on this date, September 28, 2026.

And then try to keep up.

*With only 26 letters in the alphabet, will we run out of abbreviations and be forced to add a number: QE2, for example. Wait, isn’t that a ship?

**Per Google Ai. And why the hell not? And who wants to know, anyway?

***This kind of sounds like the premise of some a chaotic movie: “Let’s try this! It will be fun!”

****With out being a scientist.

Nuance? A Norwegian Tale

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Nuance was described in a past essay. The word comes from “nubes” the Latin word for cloud but then the French got involved and romanticized it into their own word for “shade” or “slight variation”, per Ai. My Ai goes on to add in the lovely English accent I selected: “Think of it as those little, delicate distinctions that can make a big difference.”

There is a beautiful illustration of nuance across the ocean in Norway. Norway has been ranked the happiest nation in the world for nine consecutive years, according to The World Happiness Report.* But happiness does not inoculate anyone from misunderstanding an idea because of a lack of knowledge about nuance. Norway recently raised their country’s Wealth Tax rate despite the argument that raising a tax on the wealthy would make the rich leave Norway for lower tax countries. After the new tax passed, many wealthy Norwegians left the country.

Showing true confirmation bias, many news outlets reported it as a “tax exodus” and determined The New Wealth Tax is too much of a burden for the rich. The new Wealth Tax is 1% to 1.1% depending on rich you are. Kind of high, right?

From: Money & Macro 28m 9-24-2026 Norway raised taxes on the wealthy and millionaires started leaving – the headlines missed the biggest part of the story “Norway’s decision to increase its wealth tax was followed by a noticeable wave of wealthy business owners moving abroad, (and) produced headlines that portrayed the policy as a failure. But the transcript argues that the amount of taxable wealth leaving was relatively small and that higher wealth-tax revenue more than offset the departures. Its analysis instead points toward Norway’s capital-gains exit-tax rules as a major reason entrepreneurs had an incentive to move when they did. The broader lesson presented is that modest wealth taxes and aggressive exit taxes can create very different economic incentives.”

For a good, sleepy read, look at “The High Cost of Wealth Taxes”, by Christine Enache for the Tax Foundation Europe, dated June 6, 2024. It makes the case that taxing rich people doesn’t generate any new revenue, is illegal, and only four countries in the world still use the tax. Norway and Switzerland are two of those countries and both are in the Top Ten of Happy Countries. Coincidence?

WTF. Taxing rich people is illegal?** Or is it taxing them more than once that is illegal? Why would it not generate revenue? Or does it just not generate enough?

The whole issue is one big, bag of nuance. But it appears a lot of that “nuance” is “chatter”, “fluff”, even misinformation meant to make sure governments know NOT to tax the rich any differently than other citizens.

If you are rich or hope to be you want low taxes or none at all. Why? There appears to be a rich mindset that says this: “just because I’ve figured out a way to make more money than you, don’t make me pay more for the privilege.” Nuance? Yes. The few rich people I know have a very nuanced view of the non-rich. It’s not just the poor. It is an ambivalent belief about how the rest of us are not smart enough and greedy enough to take what anyone will give us.

The actual impetus for Norway’s Tax Exodus wasn’t related to the new HIGHER 1% tax. It was related to a previous law that was about to take effect, about what wealth is and how it gets “counted.” Just like in America and other rich countries, the tax code used to tax us, the citizens, is riddled with holes where nuance used to be, or strangled by layers of nuance when a simple sentence may have been enough.*** Even better, all of this is understood by tax attorneys, and advisors whose sole purpose is to use nuance, create nuance, or eliminate nuance so their clients can make, keep, and do whatever they want with money.

Holy crap there isn’t enough space for this subject. Stop reading.

But remember nuance. The lack of seeing it, recognizing it, and understanding it is ruining our world’s discourse and civility. Nuance is the opposite of opinion and is always present. Think of it before you speak. To paraphrase Dr. Wright: “A conclusion (opinion) is the place where you got tired of thinking.”

*Google It.

**I have anew appreciation for Robin Hood.

***Damn lawyers. We’re almost to the point where “simple sentences” are extinct.

What Can We Do?

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The world is—and always has been—a crazy place. In 1970, for instance, when the world was going to end, I considered The Peace Corps and other similar agencies for a career where I could fix all the world’s problems. But nothing happened.  The intense mix of problems and where to start fixing them was too big, too hard. Since I was young and immature, my non-decision was it was too hard to do anything at all. I hopped on my motorcycle and took off, looking for drugs, sex, and rock and roll* to cover-up the disillusionment, and my failure to address it.

That same d-word is being used a lot, these days, so here are some things to help you cover it up.

Give blood. I won’t explain it here, but command you to download the Red Cross Blood Donor App and research it for yourself. This is the minimum you can do without effort. Go lay down, drip blood into a bag, grab a free snack, and go home. Just do it, with apologies to you-know-who for the phrase. If you’re afraid of needles, get over it, you wuss. Imagine the poor, unfortunate, dying patient your blood may help and stop being so self-centered. It isn’t about you. Wuss.

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet. I know, it’s hard to get real news then, right? Hard to be informed. But this is a math problem. Right now 60 percent of the internet is fake, wrong, or intended to fool you. Do you know the difference? No. Don’t say you do.

Don’t have an opinion. Opinion has been part of life for all my 74 years so…my opinion is don’t have an opinion. If we don’t know the truth about anything, why are we so sure about anything? Public discourse is littered with opinions from people who—after questioning—can’t say where, who, or what they learned their opinion from.** It’s mainly a MAGA/Republican thing, but Democrats have caught on and are rapidly ramping up to do the same thing: manipulate the public. Us. Forget who is doing it and just keep this thought in mind every time you read anything: What are they*** trying to do to me, now. It’s not a question but a statement.

Finally, take pride in being who you are and doing what you can do. Buying a fuel efficient car. Turning off lights. Saving water. Rescuing pets. Helping a friend, neighbor, stranger feel better about life, or just help them get in a doorway or up a flight of stairs. Stop being an ignorant consumer, how many pairs of shoes do you need? Look for God everywhere and don’t be ashamed to admit it.****

Crap, I need another “finally”: you are the master of your domain. If you’re unhappy, depressed, or disillusioned, it sometimes requires an internal examination and adjustment. It’s not always the big, bad world’s fault.

And if none of this helps, talk to someone. There are lots of good therapists and counselors waiting for your call. Find a living, breathing, caring human who will listen and remind you what really matters: you get one chance at life. Don’t let the world try to prevent you from giving it your best shot.

*Not really. Just an apt phrase for the time. Sex, yes, but no drugs and one certainly didn’t have to look for “rock and roll” in the 70s. It was blaring from every car, transistor radio, and Ed Sullivan Show. Don’t bother googling.

**Yep. That is a preposition and that is the end of the sentence. I could easily have rewritten the entire sentence but I don’t want TO. Shoot me.

***”They” is anyone with an interest in getting us and others like us (?) to believe and behave a certain way. Watch sports opinion shows for non-political examples. You’ll gag.

****This has nothing to do with religion. I should use a lower case “g” for God, but have respect for Them all, so upper case it is.

QE to the Rescue?

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You all* must be leery of my adolescent crush on Quantum Entanglement (QE). Generally—and innocently—speaking, science has the power to fix everything in the world and make us all happy. Unfortunately, money and greed, the two driving components of a Capitalist Society, may take over and ruin things. We will have a chance to see that first hand with QE, soon. Will QE survive monetization? Or will the Jokers use it to take over the world? Tune in next week to the same Bat time, same Bat channel.**

Here is a QE refresher article titled  “Physicists help uncover ‘spooky’ quantum effect in the Large Hadron Collider” from the website physics.org, by The University of Oxford dated  September 14, 2026:

“Entanglement is the phenomenon in which two particles from the same origin remain connected, even if they move far apart in time and space. If something affects one particle, it will also affect all the particles with which it is entangled. This means that measuring a property of one particle instantly tells you something about its entangled partners, no matter how distant they are. Albert Einstein famously called entanglement “spooky action at a distance,” and the phenomenon has been demonstrated in a range of systems, including photons, electrons and trapped ions.”

FYI, is it just me or is this what some identical twins claim happens to them, even if separated at birth?

Three days later an article titled “Quantum teleportation is poised to change the world” was published in Physical Review Letters*** declaring “It sounds like science fiction – that the quantum state of one system can be transferred, or ‘teleported’, to another system a great distance away at close to the speed of light.”

Yeah. It does sound like fiction, doesn’t it? But QE experiments in China have measured the phenomenon at 1,000 miles, so far. Another American Lab has even used QE to actually transport a pixelated picture from one lab to another lab instantly.

Wow, holy crap, yippee, and uh-oh at the same time? Sure. Imagine transporting human organs for transplant, for example. No need for refrigerated carriers, send that heart by QE. Now. And want to vacation in Spain but only have a few days? QE it. Or get to the beach right after work. And you could sleep so much longer in the morning without a commute to your job…which could be anywhere in the world!

As excited as I am about QE, the reality may be much less personal and positive. Imagine our militaries taking over QE for defense purposes. Military minds must already be agog at the idea of getting personnel and equipment to a battle site at the speed of light. They must be salivating at the possibility of moving a 70 ton armored tank from Fort Drum in NY state to Tehran, Iran in less than one second. Or resupplying an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean with the touch of a QE button.

QE may never be able to do any of the things described in this essay, but what if it can?

You gotta love Science and its under-appreciated step-cousin, Science Fiction. They create a beautiful thing when they work together: They create Hope.

And you don’t need QE to send that anywhere the world.

*If I was still in North Carolina it would be “y’all”.

**It’s a 1960’s thing. Google it if you care to learn some useless shite.

***Disclaimer on Physical Review website: ScienceAlert stories are written, fact-checked, and edited by humans, never generated by AI. Has Ai gotten do bad we need warnings about it?

Why? Because.

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After writing the last essay, I overheard a RadioLab podcast about the world’s population.

That essay’s lamely supported assertion about not much changing in the world suddenly became a lame, unsupported truth: massive changes are already underway and will forever change the world.

Don’t puff your chest out and think you knew all along climate change would be the major problem because it’s not. At least not yet. The “other” problem is already changing things in parts of the world and soon, its full effect will be felt in America.

The real, immediate problem: Population Growth. Specifically, the lack of population growth. In the late 1900’s, population growth was exponential and hit 3.7 billion in 1970. Experts labeled the high level of growth a “Population Bomb”. It threatened to outpace societies, systems, and the earth’s ability to supply food. My own personal world views are often shaped by the concept of constant growth since more people means more financial expansion, more building, more manufacturing, and a large population needing a centralized government for health, safety, and happiness. I often called America a big, stable, seaworthy ship capable of floating and lasting for centuries.

There are many different data points that could be mashed-up in this essay. Some sites, for example, “estimate” population growth to continue and we are already over 8.3 billion. With immigration and emigration issues, the total population figures can confuse population comparisons, but simply comparing birth to deaths tells the story we’re discussing. Checking births versus deaths reveals America’s changing growth rates. In 1960 there were 4.2 million births and 2.43 million deaths. Do the math. In 2026 there were 3.60 million births and 3.10 million deaths. Births declined while the general population increased.* 2027 figures may show more deaths than births!

Notably, China and other Asian countries responded to the 1972 Population Bomb by severely restricting new births in their societies. All those countries have recently reversed those restrictions and put in place new programs to generate more births.

America is already seeing the results of a population that may be “downsizing”. When Social Security began paying Old Age benefits in 1940, the system used taxes from over 150 younger workers to support a payment to one, old retiree. Our current 2026 system is using three (3!) younger workers. Is the difference caused by inflation or population loss or something else?

 Another problem is the “Population Bomb” caused the building of new schools to handle the new students. Due to America’s fragmented public and private school systems, getting accurate data is a crap shoot, but there is a consensus among the experts that grades 9-12 have had steady enrollment for the last 20 years, but total pre-school, elementary, and middle school enrollments appear to be declining. There are 3 closed schools in my town, right now.

The South Korea Ministry of Education, for comparison, has closed “4,000 schools and 17 regional offices” as the country’s student population shrinks.”**

America’s consumer driven, capitalist economy depends on new workers who become new consumers and generate regular growth in economic activity. *** So do other counties, even Socialist and Communist based countries.

Looks like regular growth is over. What will happen?

Ha. What do I care? I’m outta here, and–for the sake of my grandchildren–I hope someone in power notices this essay.

But first: Economists have predicted 10 out of the last two recessions. Ba dum dum.****

*The website, “Worldometer.com” shows a consistent 1-3% growth in the world’s population since 1972. Since 2020, that growth rate has never been more than 0.88% and has been declining every one of those 7 recent years. And that is with high levels of immigration.

**The Korea Times, December 28, 2025.

***An important complication in our current immigration crisis. We need workers.

****Am I aging myself by continuing to use the old “rim shot” comedy signal?

Why?

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There is never any shortage of subjects to write about. Or talk about. The world today is ludicrously different from the world of my younger years, but the amount and scope of problems are about the same.

In the 1960s*, the war, civil rights, women’s right, climate change (yes, way back then), voting rights, tree-hugging, love, sex, algebra, the Exquisite No Bra, the end of The Bullet Bra, there was just so much to worry about that old people often warned me the end of civilization was near.**

With the young deaths from The War, the riots in the cities, and an older generation intend on making my cohorts and I toe the “shorthaircutcleanface” regimen from the 1950s, it did seem like The End was near. My father personally offered to end my world if I did not get my haircut.

Ah, good times. One good thing about my father is he loved bars/taverns. If we were with him, we loved them, too, especially the patrons who felt it was the right time for me and my brother to learn the evils of alcohol. And pickled eggs.

Flash forward to the present and what are we worried about? The End, still. Our Democracy is threatened, again, our natural world is at peril, still, and our capacity for destroying each other has increased. We can kill people from afar with effortless ease and without the time-worn threat of nuclear involvement. Through Ai, we can even wipe ourselves out with a “fox in the henhouse” attitude that seems to enjoy the eggs without regard for how long they may last.***

And we can instantly tell someone they are a butthead from long distance. We can even put it in writing so the butthead can review it at his/her/their leasure. ****

Soon, the magic of Quantum Entanglement might make it possible to insult the butthead face to face and beam back home before they understand what butthead means.

Here begins an age-old problem. This essay was started with the best to intentions and clearest of “point to be made”. But you can tell by the footnotes my brain has taken the nearest exit from the constructive, intelligent speed of the super highway to the slow-paced, drowsiness of memory lane. A cogent, pithy, well-thought-out essay is now as extinct as a pterodactyl. (Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom? The “p” is silent.)

What do you call a person who can’t fart in public? A private tutor. Hope you don’t have to think about that one.

Or anything else. The World is The World and it has been for billions of years. Can we do anything to change it? Or course we can, look at history.

But can we do anything to change it and make it better? More livable for all? Happier for at least The Majority? Even if we change the world for the better how long will we be able to enjoy it?

Meh. Let’s say not long, and believe there is life after death, a better life, a fuller, life, an easier life with no Ends to worry about.

There was an advertisement for a self-help book “How to Solve 50 Per Cent of Your Problems”.

Ever the optimist, I bought two.

Full disclosure, if I ever write a joke of my own I will make sure you know it.

*Conveniently forgetting pre-1960 years of farming, using a baseball bat with the wrong grip, trying to shoot snakes with a cap gun, building snow forts in snowbanks as the plows were still running, and—you get the point: stupid kid.

**Apologies for mentioning the bra controversies but it was puberty and my mother bought all my clothes from the Sears Catalogue, so fashion (ahem) intrigued me.

***Pardon me for kind of enjoying this symbolism/metaphor/mini allegory.

****Yes, I do do this. Do do. Ha.

What To Say, What To Do

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What in the hell* is happening to the world? Excuse me while I sputter and mumble and collect my thoughts.

DJT has renamed another geographic entity. Apple and Google both said they immediately adjusted their maps to record the executive order. My google maps used both names with Lake America from a distance and Lake Ontario when I zoomed in. But the dual names lasted only 30 seconds before Lake Ontario disappeared. For good. What in the hell? FYI: we still have the Gulf of America.

Is there a Trump supporter reading this who can explain Trump’s need to rename everything? Is he marking his territory? And how much do these name changes cost? And how much will it cost to change them back? And who pays???

Bah humbug. Let’s ignore DJT and move on to better things.

I’ve complained about drivers not using turn signals, but it might be me that is in the wrong. As an older American who tries to ignore news, I’m wondering if our traffic departments have announced a new way of signaling turns. Maybe an executive order from someone? The new way I’ve seen many times today is to signal a right hand turn by getting as far left in the road as possible. And to make a left hand turn, get as far to the right as possible. Who says an old dog can’t learn a new trick. I have adopted the new system enthusiastically. ***

The memory supplement ads are interesting. Wonder how many watchers tell themselves “Hey, I need that stuff” and then forget to get it when they’re out shopping.

There was finally an ad for one of my diseases.** A gray-haired photographer says he was going blind until he started taking the drug in question. Now he’s back behind his camera taking pictures…and smiling.

With much of America in a bad mood maybe we should all take any drug advertised on television and start smiling. There’s an evil soft drink commercial where young people do nothing but smile and laugh as they hold bottles of soda upright, with the labels facing the camera.

The truth is finally making it into advertising, at least for Airline ads. I wasn’t going anywhere, but was curious about current airline fares. 30 minutes after I emptied my online cart and logged off a certain airline’s website, I got a TEXT: buy your tickets now before dynamic model pricing raises the fare! I’ve paraphrased because the text disappeared. Google Dynamic Model Pricing if you haven’t read my previous essays about it.

Under the Are They Listening To What They Say, heading: The current administration has “Special Envoys” flying all over the world to broker peace in some of the areas engaging in war-like activities, some of which have been going on for years. There may even be a Board of Peace meeting somewhere. A reporter had the chance to ask one of the “Special Envoys” about the success of the Special Envoys, since there are active hostilities in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, The West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, and The Congo. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCPDA) “there are 65 active armed conflicts involving states, which is the highest recorded count since 1946.”

In response to the reporter’s questions one Special Envoy said they are “working hard” for peace per the instructions of President Trump, and “I can’t guarantee success, but…we are going to do everything we can…to try and make progress.”****

One of the Special Envoys has been working hard for peace since 2024. An additional Special Envoy joined the team in January 2026.

An old Trump-supporting friend of mine argued there would be no wars under Trump. “He ends wars, unlike Obama and Bush.” There might be a Nobel Peace Prize in there somewhere.

Enough. It’s time to take a nap and stop thinking.

*Per Google: ”’What in the hell’” is a rhetorical question expressing extreme confusion, surprise, or anger. The word hell has been used as an emotional intensifier…for centuries.”

**To paraphrase Will Farrell in the movie Elf: “I know that one!”

***Text book example of passive-aggressive language.

****The entire, complete quote is available online. It has been edited here, for brevity, not to change meaning or context.

The Internetmess

ness23456 Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Journalism training taught me to report the who, what, where, when, and how (herein referred to as FACTS) of a story.* Old time newspapers, with limited paper size, required FACTS to not only be in the story, but to be reported in a certain size to “fit” the story into the paper. Many a time an editor asked me to “cut” a story, to remove words, so the article would fit in the inches of space between the advertisements and other stories. Picture a tetris puzzle game**. The publication of a story—and its placement– was sometimes decided more by its size than its subject***. The need to fit into a certain space inspired reporters to write clearly and directly. Adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, articles were removed and deemed unnecessary, to make room for FACTS.

In our modern internetmess (sic) news supply, however, not only are FACTS hard to find, but they are often buried at the end of a large, cleverly disguised unrelated mashup of opinion full of adverbs, adjectives, heresay, rumors, and bullshite. And when reading the crappy story, finding FACTS is not only a chore, but also a waste of time since there might not be any. Internetmess headlines are often not about the story they are heading but a clever way of getting you to click on the story. Old style newspaper headlines were meant to grab attention, too, but there was a skill to writing a snappy, short headline that lured you into reading a longer story full of FACTS. Most legacy media sites still have dedicated headline “writers” whose job it is to get readers to actually read the FACT-based stories competing for time and space in old newspapers and new 30 minute news broadcasts.

But, alas, that is all in the past even with unlimited internetmess space probably a blessing. The internetmess has unlimited room for FACT-based stories and articles, with 24 hour publishing deadlines. Which means there are no deadlines. No more “Hold the presses!” shouts by editors as new stories suddenly “break” before a printing or televising deadline.

But is FACT-based journalism popular in the new unlimited time and space?

You might think “no”, but you’d be half-wrong. FACT-based journalism is still out there, but the supply of critical thinkers looking for it is dwindling fast, as immediate gratification from click bait and sensationalism suck away at readership. When I begin my morning news search, I am immediately bombarded with features about naked woman, ex-boyfriends murdering the ex-girlfriends, who-said-what-about-who rumor-reporting, look-what-stupid-shite-happened-in-sports, and any political story slanted to what the internetness thinks is my political persuasion. Some of these are even Ai generated, untouched by human hands or minds. My toast is gone by the time I’ve sorted through the mess and found a report or story worth reading. Breaking News: I get more toast!

Ah, but there is the problem, isn’t it. What is worth reading? What is worth?

The problem is not the internetmess. It is the people who live in it, and it looks like it will be a long time before old-style, FACT-driven journalism returns to popularity. Hope I live long enough to see it.

PS Has everyone noticed how broadcast journalism news is always “breaking”? And why do all the primetime announcers tell the stories before turning it over to the “field reporter” who says the exact same thing? Actually, I’d rather hear the same story twice than hear an advertisement. Bet broadcast news will soon be 5 minutes of news and 25 minutes of ads.

There must be a reason, too, why there are so many drug ads in network news shows. Any one know the reason?

*Except when writing an “essay”, or lengthy opinion blob.

**And those old “sliding tiles” puzzle games where you moved one tile at a time to complete the puzzle. You had to see many moves ahead to be successful.

***Unless it was a really, really important story. Remember: Hold the presses?