Fresh New Day Lies Ahead, Possibility for new Routines

 This early morning I woke up between one and two, finally making it official with some fresh coffee and ten minutes of living room floor running in place.  Along this journey I missed about recovering my ability to cover 5K distances, most preferably through light jogging.  Will I be able to do any of this during the approaching Saturday morning?  Dunno, will have to see what comes.  My progress will need to come in small, humble steps without anything overtly ambitious.  Ultimately I want to return to a habitual routine of doing weekly 5K Parkruns, and maybe down the line an occasional race of longer distance...I'm talking Florida Track Club  or US Road Running.  A few weeks ago I was experiencing some difficulty staying vertical during shopping and medical visits, and asphalt-surface walking was markedly limited when I noticed how taxing lifting my feet and legs was during these attempts.  Anyway, this coming Saturday I'll see if I can't get myself up early enough, show up...and follow through!   in the meantime, growing a reasonable routine during the rest of the day, including watching what I eat, reading and studying, will determine my success level.  once the day gets going earnestly in a few hours, I'll have chances to take some personal initiative with my life.  That will include trying out the white Camry, to see if it runs properly, and maybe spin it a little down my neighborhood streets.  The plan includes intentionally avoiding the excessive media news/politics/war/opinion coverage plaguing us over the last few years and weeks...  

Day Progresses into Decline

Today, after my early morning rising and activity, progressed more or less into a span of rest and inactivity, me spending much of it in bed or on the living room couch.  I still ran in place for a few more minutes before leveling off.  Tomorrow morning they're staging another Depot Parkrun 5K.  I want to show up there and do at least one lap, with Melissa doing the valuable driving.  We're sitting right now in the dining room while AI Alexa is playing the piano version of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear...very pretty. Equally NOT very pretty is this overbearing missile war happening right now between USA, Iran and Israel...enough of that on the news! I suspect that the president dictator others elected will turn against his own people once he impatiently declares victory and moves on to new perceived enemies that challenge his egomania...he'll use his own handpicked cronies as proxies. I still think that people...especially some of the more creepy ones from Utah...have lost their minds with their violent  rampages against each other. And I include Florida's Dixie and Marion counties in that indictment. Not a nice picture at all.  Now for me to digest my last food of the day.  Either I'll get up tomorrow morning at a good, early time or we'll just put off the next Parkrun until another time...

New Day Beckons New Direction

 Here we are again, at the start of a new calendar day. It is nearly five, and back in 2/71 I would again be waking and rising before sunrise to get a head start on things.  I just brewed a pot of nice-flavored coffee, sitting here to write this.  I have some ipf running to do.  Anita and family are to begin their long drive here from Austin, planned arrival some time late Friday...looking forward to seeing her.  I'm holding back on my invective against certain media figures...maybe I'll give them a chance to be more reasonable.  Were this 1998 att the post office, we'd right now be finishing up our incoming Gainesville scheme mail.  Since I'm not planning on going anywhere today, let's just see what the day brings without fanfare...

Choosing One's Response

 A few days ago, near the start of he '26 Winter Olympics, I was dismayed to hear on the news about Trump going on a "you're a loser" angry rant against an athlete who simply answered a politically-oriented question.  This president always has an open line to contact me and discuss anything he wants, and if the highly improbable were to happen and someone shoved a mike and camera before me with a highly charged question, that's how i'd reply.  You see, I can't always control what happens to me, but more likely I have the option of being able to choose how to respond. And it's within my chosen responses that I have the opportunity for personal growth, and perhaps being able to take a positive step to help this sadly progressively degrading world we live in...

At Doughnut Shop Again, with AlphaSmart

 

I'm sitting here in my nearby Dunkin' Donuts writing this on the above-pictured AlphaSmart portable word processor, which is completely off-line and runs on AA batteries, automatically saving whatever I type in one of the device's 8 built-in files.  Now I do have a cord for it that allows me to transfer my writing to another computer...that's how you're able to read this! This doughnut shop first opened during the COVID-19 era in early 2020...I remember voting that March in the Florida Primary and then going through the store's drive-through, only to be told that the employees were "in training" and that the grand opening wouldn't be for another few weeks.  As I remember, Lord Voldetrump was president back then as well, and I was eager to support Joe Biden in his campaign to unseat him.  I felt that Biden did a credible job in his four years as our president. Apparently, though, you have to be a show-biz whiz in front of the cameras and mikes to make it in this social and mass media-based society we're subjugating ourselves to nowadays.  Biden in his earlier years probably would have come out looking and sounding better, but from 2021 to 2025 his best efforts resulted in a more subdued and less dramatic presidency: it worked for me, albeit not for the attention-deficit general population. Yesterday I was here typing out another blog article when an old friend from a now-defunct church came in and we talked (or more precisely, I listened to him talking).  My church buddies present a kind of predicament to me.  This guy was meeting with a couple of friends regularly on Monday afternoons to discuss "Jesus", but when they did get together they seemed bent on discussing sports and politics, the latter with an built-in presumption that the Democrats were villains. But that's the way it is for me with people I like from church: the overwhelming majority of them are Trump followers who get their information from FoxNews and their opinions spoon-fed by people like Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, Greg Gutfeld and Mark Levin.  If Trump says something it's automatically true and you can't argue otherwise.  Sigh. So with these good folks I have the choice of either consciously avoiding discussing news with them or consciously avoiding their presence, period.  And, sadly, the trend for me has been to just stay away from them and leave them to their own self-imposed feedback loops and cult personality idol worship...

News, Media Manipulation and Protests

It's all-too easy in recent days to get overly wrought about the news hitting the airwaves...the political extremism that's sadly becoming mainstream, and the intensifying international division that includes several areas of armed conflict across the world.  I wrote last Sunday about the nationwide protests being organized against Trump for his perceived overreach with executive orders and his lavish self-indulgence at taxpayers' expense, exemplified by his heavily-hyped birthday/military parade to take place tomorrow.  In Gainesville, as in many locations spread across the land, there will be a protest meeting called "No Kings" tomorrow morning from 9 to noon, taking place at Roberson Park on 600 SW 6th Street.  I've expressed interest in attending it, but we'll just have to see how I feel about it all after my Depot Parkrun 5K race that's just a few blocks down the road.  Melissa thoughtfully reminded me to not get so caught up in the news, and she's right: there's only just so much I can do about what's going down around me.  So I'm keeping my peace and serenity in the face of the confusion, chaos, anger and fear, some of which I suspect is deliberately being pushed in the media to manipulate us...

Nobody's Perfect...But What Was Bill Maher Trying to Accomplish?

One of the problems with writing a blog over an extended period of time is that I may extol the virtues of a public figure, be he or she in government, academia, news media or entertainment.  Then a little while later the same individual becomes enveloped in scandal, or they may say or do something that is completely abhorrent to me, causing me to regret my earlier praise.  But I realize that this is a fallen world, with its people prone to display that fallen nature within themselves...and I'm not superior in this regard.  That having been noted, it still grinds me when someone like Bill Maher, whom I've praised for his outspokenness and general common sense, deeply disappoints me by doing something like what he recently did when he essentially went over to the White House to suck up to Donald Trump, following this event by praising the Narcissist-in-Chief to high heaven.  Last year, in the midst of the presidential election, Maher seemed dead-set on running down Biden and the Democrats while propping up and promoting Trump...I don't get it.  But I just tuned in to his latest show for his monologue and old Bill was making fun of Trump again...but with absolutely no credibility to his words.  I'm sorry that the American people were collectively so foolish last November as to return to office a convicted felon who, from what I can gather, is working on behalf of Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence to implement their agenda.  But that's my opinion...you're entitled to yours. Maher's recent love-fest with the Republicans...even to the point of making a smiling appearance on the Gutfeld show...makes me wonder whether someone somewhere had discovered something on him that they could expose if he didn't "play ball" with them.  Just wondering...

Congratulations to Masters Golf Tournament Champ Rory McIlroy

I watched a bit of the Masters Tournament this past weekend...yesterday Rory McIlroy managed to pull off a sudden death victory over Justin Rose to win his first Masters, completing what the golf world calls the "Grand Slam" of victories in all of the pro sport's major tourneys.  Congratulations, dude. The sports announcers were all full of sympathy and concern about McIlroy's failures in the past to get this one last tournament title, and wasn't it great that he finally pulled it off.  Rory, who has been coddled and guided since early childhood when he was discovered to have an aptitude for the game, has of course long been a very rich multimillionaire with worldwide name and face recognition.  So no, I'm not on board with the emotions spilled out on his behalf.  On the other hand, the social media seemed overly concerned about his relationship with his wife and her degree of support after the tournament...really, as if that's anybody's business.  Yet unlike with other sports, in professional golf you're expected to make a big show of being with your spouse and kids after knocking down the ball on the last hole.  I'm okay with everyone coming together at the end, sure, but this does sort of open up the athletes' private lives to unwelcome media scrutiny.  I've known a kid who grew up in a family where his own father was a coach in a certain sport, and he was groomed from early on to become a star player in it.  Everyone around sucked up to this kid for being such a big-shot player and he gained a lot of popularity...and I think it all went straight to his head.  I hope he's enjoyed a good life since leaving his "glory days" behind at my high school, but like McIlroy, if I hear of him having done well in that sport since then, there's really nothing for me to say beyond those simple congratulations... 

Another Jigsaw Puzzle by Thomas Kincade

I just finished another 500-piece jigsaw puzzle by artist Thomas Kincade.  I like the scenes he depicts...this one is definitely a place I'd like to hang out at!  On a completely unrelated subject, I'd like to briefly bring up the widespread outrage I'm picking up on in social and mass media over what our current, thoroughly disgusting president has been doing on a wide range of decisions.  It's not that I don't generally agree with the criticisms I'm reading and hearing, but rather that the main problem, as I see it, is that American voters are responsible for the mess we're in.  THEY voted the jerk into power.  I have only one vote.  People had all the information they needed FOR YEARS to vote otherwise, but that didn't change anything.  So go ahead and spill out your outrage, for all the good it will do...

Political, Media Manipulation Will Only Get Worse

A few weeks ago, while surfing through YouTube in their section devoted to running, I "ran" across a couple of Canadian middle-age brothers who decided to tackle distance running and triathlons in order to get themselves fit after undergoing some health scares.  They're really a couple of top-notch athletes, it turns out, and they have their own channel committed to their ongoing efforts and accomplishments.  These two are, however, a bit insufferable with their self-promotion and putdowns of those they don't feel measure up to their standards...I felt early on that they held themselves to be on a higher plane of existence than me.  That's okay, they have their thing and I mine...to each our own: I don't HAVE TO watch their videos.  I cannot say the same regarding our recycled president and his musky wingman.  It's clear that the convicted felon that my own country saw fit to return to office has, as a centerpiece of his strategy, the notion of keeping himself the focus of media attention EVERY DAY with some new outrage to say or someone to offend.  Sadly, I think he's on to something...America is hopelessly hooked on reality television and celebrities: the more off-the-wall they are, the better. Some folks think that all they have to do is outlast this president and then things will return to normal, but I think the change is permanent.  From now on future candidates, on both sides of the political divide, will apply the lessons in mass manipulation they're learning here to their respective campaigns. If you think it's bad now, wait 'til AI and quantum computing attain their full realization and seamlessly merge into our mass and social media, forever blurring the distinction between fact and fantasy. Hell, it's already happening.  At least those Canadian brothers are real (I think).  On the other hand, it seems to me that the American voter doesn't even care anymore what is real or not: they just care about how it all makes them feel...   

Media Manipulation and Sensationalism: Turn It Off

We're definitely living in an age of media manipulation and sensationalism.  Although I tend to avoid news and opinion channels, the few times I drop in on any of them are loaded with messages of outrage and doom, regardless which "side" is expressing them.  The default position seems to be that the world is falling apart and it's those bad guys over there who keep saying and doing bad things, and we're so good because we vehemently react to them.  Whether it's mass media or a social media site like Facebook or YouTube, the lead into the featured story, is often (if not usually) captioned by some enticement at the viewer's emotions instead of a reasonable representation of what's to come if they keep watching or decide to click on the post or video.  I don't think this is going to get any better in the future.  I do think that when someone around me starts to rant and rave about something political or in the news, my first response...regardless whether I agree or not with their opinions...is to question where they receive their information from and how was it presented.  In the meantime, for people's general mental health I recommend a drastic tapering down of news and opinion input from mass and social media...regardless of the source...and to focus more on what good they can, in their individual daily living and decisions, do for the betterment of themselves, their loved ones, and community.  When it's time to vote, sure, inform yourself and do your civic duty...but you can't live on this crap 24/7...

A Brief Note About the Recent Election

Just a brief note on the recently transpired general election.  Yes, we are all on a runaway train...hopefully it won't crash.  Never before have I felt so alienated from those around me.  I feel that too many of my compatriots are in a state of voluntary self-brainwashing, comfortable in their own designed (by others) social and mass media feedback loops.  The funny thing is that, when politics is factored out of the equation, everyone for the most part seems pretty normal and coherent.  I know many wonderful people in my life who, for some reason, go off the skids when it comes to politics.  Oh well is all I can say, I guess it's part of being a human being in the year 2024.  On the other hand, I don't have to be in a state of voluntary servitude to media.  Just turn it off, or at least pause a moment before settling on a channel or posting.  This is just as important following such an election as it is preceding it.  As I mentioned in a previous article, I'm done with it all.  Sure, I plan to occasionally read up on the issues and candidates and vote in future elections, but beyond that, don't bother me about your political notions, which were probably spoon-fed to you by some mass-media hack or social-media agenda-driven foreign hacker...

Pretty Much Ignored the Political Conventions in 2024

Have you been following the political conventions this year? The Democratic version is just finishing up and, as with the Republicans a few weeks before, I thoroughly ignored it other than happenstance momentarily hitting up on a station covering it while surfing the radio or TV.  When I did run across the convention, inevitably someone would be up there giving an insanely giddy and emotional speech, doubtless (accurately) assessing the susceptibility of the general population to manipulation.  Cynics like the late comedian George Carlin have expressed the futility of even voting, period.  I'm not at that point...I still vote...but beyond giving upcoming elections a brief-but-reasonable piece of my attention, I just let it go and let the fools freak out on Facebook, Fox and the other propaganda outlets.  And, as I am more and more getting accustomed to say, believe whatever you want to believe...

A Podcaster's Take on the Reticular Activating System

A few days ago Mindset Mentor podcaster Rob Dial discussed something that drew my attention.  Although by no means a trained scientist, he has made no secret of his interest in neurology, especially with regard to how cognition affects our behavior.  In that episode, he brought up the concept of Reticular Activating System, or RAS.  According to Dial, RAS is the means our brains use to filter out the enormous amount of information our senses pick up (he cited 11 million bits/second), down to what we can consciously take it (only about 55-120-bits/second).  I don't know the science behind his claim, but I see his point and agree with it.  People can make their own deliberate decisions as to what they see as significant and also choose to diminish awareness of things they perceive as irrelevant or trivial.  The problem is when people allow others to filter out things for them...there is a word for this: brainwashing.  In case you're not getting what I'm driving at, Dial gave a simple example.  Let's say you're driving down the road a few miles.  Someone later asks you about the red cars you saw and it's likely you didn't even notice them.  But if on the same trip you had decided that red cars carried some significance, you would have been taking notice all around you.  Political propagandists, be it on social or mass media, do something similar, especially when pointing out flaws or mannerisms of their imagined opponents.  What all this results in are separate threads of shared cognition among population groups, depending on their members' chosen sources of information.  Which in a sense is a voluntary form of brainwashing.  What Rob Dial suggests is that each of us can sit down with pen and paper and work out the things that we want to emphasize and take in on our respective daily walks of life...that is, self-brainwashing, but not as a dog on someone else's leash!  So for me I'm finished with all the political BS and bias...you can believe whatever you want and worship whichever personality cult idol you want.  I am not triggered by the kinds of things others use to arouse mass fear and outrage...be a sheep and follow that crap if you want!  Life is too short and precious for me not to stop and assess the things that I as an individual deem to be important.  This doesn't mean that I don't deeply value those close to me, and I still see myself as being in the larger community of society around me.  But enough is enough: if Dial is right, brainwashing is going to happen whether someone does it to me or I do it to myself: I'm choosing the latter... 

Sinister Trend Shifting My Political Allegiances

I don't know whether others are feeling as I do, but I'm starting to feel a shift...a fundamental one...in my political leanings.  Not that the so-called "leaders" and candidates that I'm starting to lean toward are themselves worthy of following, any more than those I've preferred up until now...they're full of their own flaws and demagoguery.  And the chief one among them is, sorry to say, a complete buffoon who defines the word narcissism.  But I see something sinister and foreboding going on in my society, and it's being pushed primarily from the end of the political spectrum that I have been supporting for many years.  Comedian/commentator Bill Maher has covered this phenomenon extensively in his monologues on Real Time with Bill Maher, and I see it all around me in the media and corporate environment.  So that buffoon I mentioned notwithstanding, where I go this November 2024 election is up in the air.  But I'm realistic about it all, knowing that my one vote is just a drop in the ocean, and I don't pretend to tell you or anyone else what to think or do... 

Stepping Back from Manipulative News

In case you might be wondering why on this blog I'm not deeply analyzing and reacting to all the different developing stories in this election season with the corruption charges, wars, terrorism and dictators, it's not because I'm covering up my eyes and ears to the media onslaught.  Rather I have come to a point in my life where I know that I have some degree of control over some things, beyond which I can do little about them.  It's 2024 and the press is a hotbed of manipulation, not just on FoxNews.  One of my Florida senators, Marco Rubio, whom I've never supported, was interviewed a few days ago on ABC's Good Morning America and got the hostile treatment when he simply expressed his own opinions on various topics, opinions several of which I might add I disagreed with.  But it's all in the presentation and how different "news" sources frame the real messages they are trying to get across to their audience.  I've associated in the past with people who are addicted to this kind of thing and have learned to reduce or even cut ties with them because of their obsessions...especially when they get outraged because I dared to express a thought they disagreed with.  To them I say, some are addicted to gambling, others to substances, still others to materialism, and so on: have fun letting yourselves be continually manipulated, in the end it's YOUR choice to play that game...

News Outlets Manipulative, Revolting

When I start up my computer, I get this Microsoft news feed on my screen.  It is loaded with provocative article headings, designed to inflame the readers' passions and have them click on them.  The underlying article is almost always completely different in tone and message from its misleading title...unfortunately, it's not just on my computer screen where this happens.  Even on the evening news, the host will feed teasers about a really important news development that he or she will present later on in the show...the actual story is often usually as short as the teaser!  I am so bummed out on the news, not so much by what is happening, but rather how it all is presented, even on so-called unbiased programs and sites.  I truly pity people who actually rely on and believe these manipulators of information...even more so the ones who voluntarily impose upon themselves a bubble in which they seek out sources that reinforce their biased narratives and avoid all others.  I'm looking forward with some trepidation to the next national election, in which millions of information zombies may well elect the next president and Congress.  Maybe Musk is right: is it too late for me to sign up for Mars?

Quote of the Week...from Ernest Hemingway

I like to listen.  I have learned a great deal from listening carefully.  Most people never listen.

                                                                         ---Ernest Hemingway

In spite of my high school English class experiences practically ruining it all for me, I later came to read most of Ernest Hemingway's classic novels, among them For Whom the Bell Tolls being my favorite.  I especially appreciated his stated plain writing style, avoiding fancy and cryptic techniques employed by some of his contemporaries that often garnered them undeserved critical acclaim but made their works largely unreadable by the general public.  Today being his birthday, I thought I'd throw in one of Hemingway's quotes in celebration, and this one rang true to me...well, mostly true.  I think most folks, when engaged with others in conversation, are only half-listening, at the same time preparing the next thing they will say themselves.  On top of that, people tend to hold on to personal narratives concerning just about any person, place, thing, or issue.  They will be happy to "listen" for a while if the speaker is affirming that narrative and be equally happy to zone out or cut them off if they diverge from the script...and if the message is a mixed one, with some welcome information said along with some unwelcome facts, then it's a simple cognitive sleight of hand to accept the affirming stuff while ignoring the rest.  I can extend this all to reading, too, as well as whatever media channels one tends to prefer plugging their respective brains into.  If the message affirms a dearly held narrative belief system, regardless of reality, then they'll be a loyal audience...this is the world we live in today, where the population insulates themselves within comfortable belief bubbles where feedback loops reenforce distortions and lies as long as they fit the pattern.  Yet Hemingway died in 1962, so this sort of thing's long preceded the Internet and mass media manipulation tactics of today...

Follow-Up on Tuesday's Political Article

I thought I'd follow up on Tuesday's venture into politics on this blog to clarify where I stand in an area that causes so much confusion, fear and rage among some folks.  For one, I neither campaign for nor "endorse" any candidate or referendum issue stance...you're all big boys and girls, figure it out for yourselves.  But this blog IS a major outlet of free speech in which I can lay out my views on this thing or that...politics just happens to be a (minor) facet of my life and what I'm interested in.  As for my leanings, I tend to be an "old school" Democrat...albeit currently registered as Republican...who believes in equal opportunity for all regardless of whatever demographic category happens to be hung on them...but I'm also averse to people getting carried away by identity politics and the various "groups" they see themselves belonging to.  I am very skeptical of the media as it stands today, with the figures both in front of and behind the camera and microphone often with hidden (and some brazenly clear) agendas and biases. My preferences tend to be in the political center...conservative with national defense and security and liberal with civil rights and social safety nets like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  I believe that there is a strong role for government to play when it concerns public health (including pandemics), the environment, and the building and maintenance of transportation and communications infrastructures.  But government should do whatever it can to encourage the development of a free-market economy...sometimes the best way for that is to back off and do little.  I used to watch a lot of the floor debates of the US Senate in recent years, and whenever a speaker (from either party) enunciated the above points, I have agreed with them.  Two days ago, I wrote that I was supporting Tim Scott for the Republican presidential nomination, but here again another factor comes into play: for all practical purposes, Senator Scott is a stranger although I like his demeanor and positive attitude...I still could be totally wrong about him.  Well, I guess I could string this article along further about politics, but I'm sure I'll get plenty of chances in the upcoming weeks and months as the 2024 presidential election approaches...  

On Runaway Train in Politics

I haven't written much on this blog about politics...I'm not sure what good it would do other than just having something out there on the record.  Sometimes with these elections I feel like someone stuck on a runaway train with no control over my destiny while the rabble swinging these contests in different states and districts are dupes for whatever campaign tactics the candidates and media perpetrate.  It does me no good to see through everything, with my one measly vote per contest. And now, it appears, that one of the major parties sees no wrong with attempting to undo the results of any close election they lose...fascism, pure and simple, and one of their leaders who refused to certified the electoral vote count on January 6th, 2021 is now the Speaker of the House, while the then-sitting president who instigated all of the election denial widely leads in that party's polls to regain its nomination in 2024. Runaway train...and me riding it into the cloudy future...