Oh, be quiet, Kitty. Jeff Bezos owns you now…
Earlier today I said that at some point, I’m going to write a post about how tired I’ve been getting lately of reading and hearing the news of the day, and I might just stop at some point, because I’m sick of hearing the same unpleasant stuff over and over.
This is not that post. I don’t have time now to write that post. But as a tiny example of what I’m talking about…
Right after I wrote that, I went for a walk around the neighborhood. And I started out by listening to the last half-hour news summary on NPR. The stories were:
- Mass shooting with multiple fatalities in San Jose. I definitely don’t ever want to hear about one of THOSE again. Especially since I know we’re not going to do anything about it. (And no, that’s not a pitch for gun control, because as you know, I’m pretty pessimistic that we could ever pass any gun control that would actually deal with the problem. But I’d sure like to be offered some hope.)
- Secstate Blinken in Jordan. OK, I do want a summary about that. But I didn’t need the long digression about how Hamas doesn’t want aid from anybody because they don’t need it because Iran keeps giving them all the money they need as long as they keep firing missiles at Israel and getting them to strike back.
- Amazon buys MGM. Mildly interesting, but you notice how all our major economic news lately is about people buying and selling entertainment content? Does this bode well? I enjoy my movies, but maybe we should start shifting back to making useful things…
- Where COVID came from. I forget what the upshot was, but I think it was probably like the other gazillion stories I’ve read and heard, which said, “We don’t know.” In fact, I’d be perfectly happy for you to not mention the subject again until you DO know. At least, thank God, we didn’t have to listen to a discussion of the President of the United States saying “Jina” caused the “Kung Flu.”
- There was some sort of plot to pay bloggers in France to pass on lies sowing doubt about vaccines. Something was mentioned about Russian involvement. Not that I want the Russians to go back to putting nukes in Cuba and shooting people trying to cross the Berlin Wall, but at least back then they weren’t perpetually insulting everyone’s intelligence.
- The Dow was up. OK, nice. But talk about monotonous. One day it goes up. Another day it goes down. It seldom does anything interesting, and if it did, it probably wouldn’t be good.
After that summary, I switched to a Kara Swisher podcast that promised to be interesting, but it wasn’t.
So I switched to Pandora. I do that a lot lately.
So what is this? Ennui? I’m just getting kind of… jaded from this stuff. Was it always this tiresome and repetitive, or is it me?…
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By the way, you know how I said maybe the Russians wanted to kill us all in the Cold War, but at least “back then they weren’t perpetually insulting everyone’s intelligence?”
That’s not the problem. The problem is that every time they go to insult our intelligence, it turns out they’re right. In fact, they may be overestimating us.
If we would just stop embracing every stupid thing their bots try to brainwash us with, we’d be fine. But Americans — and maybe the French, too — just lap it up and ask for more. And our enlightened democracy just erodes more and more.
In fact, that’s kind of a constant thread in most of the news I’m tired of. I’ve just had enough stupid…
Amen, brother!
A sizable portion of our population being willing to promote conspiracy theories plays right into the Russian government’s hand. It’s aids them tremendously in attacking and undermining democracy. China too.
It’s reinforces their beliefs that a central agency has to be strong in order to stamp out the crazy citizenry because- without a powerful central government- the people will believe anything.
We have always felt like we were immune to that level of brainwashing. Little did we know that – to Russia and China- , we were perfectly ripe for it all along.
“A sizable portion of our population being willing to promote conspiracy theories” is group insanity. I have to be careful, as I do A LOT of business with this group. It is group PTSD Dissociation/Fogue, and it is real. This is REALLY cult like, and as a country, we need to see it that way. But what in hell does a national intervention look like?
Last one has a name – the Civil War.
It’s you.
I’ve noticed that many people, as they get to and then pass a certain age, tend to withdraw and find the larger world less and less compelling. Some start to resent being imposed on by it reminding them that it’s still out there.
Well, if you could just get them off my lawn, we’d be fine…
“Her specialty was bourbon…”
”
A few more:
Anything about the British royal family
Anything about the Pope
And especially, anything about Donald Trump
Well, I’m with you on 1 and 3.
Except, of course, what with the entire Republican Party being in thrall to him and trying to change the electoral system across the country to ensure we elect nothing but idiots in the future, I don’t yet feel that, as a concerned citizen, I can look away…
The sainted Tim Scott.
There are few cowards that are more obvious than Tim Scott
https://www.abccolumbia.com/2021/05/28/s-c-senators-meet-with-officers-family-of-fallen-officer-in-jan-6-attack/
Better than the podcast on the “rabbit hole”: this 3-part series on new news outlets vs. legacy media, in particular at the local level. It focuses on the “209 Times” in Stockton, CA:
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/29/992017530/the-chaos-machine-an-endless-hole
In other news, here’s what is likely the worst baseball play in history. Not even my 9-10 year old little league team would do this.
Oh, that’s beyond sad. All he had to do was step on first. Checked the comments … the batter who ended up on second later scored on a base hit. The Pirates coaches really need to re-teach their players the fundamentals of defense ….
Yes, you’re totally right, and I’m sure the coaching staff and manager told the first-baseman so.
But I have a little sympathy here. How many first-basemen, even those in the majors, have ever been told what to do “when the guy running to first turns and runs all the way back home?” The guy COULD have touched the base. He COULD have concentrated better on tagging Baez — but he was distracted worrying about stopping the guy from third — the guy running home from the NORMAL direction.
And at each split-second, he was dealing with something he hadn’t anticipated. And also dealing with guilt — watching that, I can almost FEEL him thinking, the instant he starts chasing Baez, “Uh-oh. I should have touched the bag first!” It slows him down in chasing.
Baez didn’t know what was going to happen next, either. Notice that he paused to celebrate the guy being safe at home BEFORE noticing that he had a clear path to first, and taking advantage of it. If he’d had a clearer idea what was happening, he’d have been running past the first-baseman as soon as he let go of the ball throwing to home. Instead, he wasted at least a full second before heading back to first….
But there were two outs … he steps on the bag, he doesn’t have to worry about what the guy on third does or does not do. I will say the second baseman should have covered first when the first baseman was drawn off. but to give him sympathy too he was probably watching all this in slack-jawed astonishment ….
Exactly.
OK, guys… I’m going to admit I didn’t know there were two outs, and I should have. I mean, it said that right in the box in the upper left.
But in MY defense, who was looking at the box while all that was going on?
Zero sympathy. Two outs, force play ends the inning for the Cubs and the run can’t count if the batter runner is forced out at first.
Indeed. Also, the first baseman ain’t exactly hitting the cover off the ball. He needs to be playing some really good defense to keep his job.
Best play of the year,so far:
60% of voting senators just voted to establish a commission to investigate 1-6. This was a popular piece of legislation. Yet it lost. By comparison Trump, on his own, took money from a congressionally authorized military budget for wall construction that was not popular. Our system is horribly broken.
Republicans and conservatives are huge hypocrites
I have went from being a Middle of the road conservative 10 years ago to rejecting them totally, including ridding myself of several conservative trump boot licking friends. I don’t want that in my life. They aren’t honest and can’t be trusted under any circumstances. Total rejection
Could you name some political organizations I can truly trust?
I’ve been seeing a guy who’s a conservative Republican but he’s not his politics..
Most people aren’t honest
I say that not to use quotes..