Question about Scariest Stephen King Villain

 There was an open question posted on my Facebook news feed: which Stephen King villain character is deservedly the scariest?  The comments varied, but the one that resonated with me the most was Randall Flagg, the murderous manipulator from his epic The Stand.  Donald Trump, who speaks and acts like he thinks he's the Supreme Dictator and expects his lapdogs to obediently follow suit, to me seems to pattern his entire presence on the King antagonist.  In that novel Flagg takes advantage of a deadly pandemic in order to establish absolute tyranny over a stricken planet.  i wonder just how far he is willing to go as he attacks civil order here, vulnerable internationals, and even entire nations.  "Our" Trump mentioned in passing that Cuba is "next"...I wonder what unprovoked violence he is about to inflict on a place that, in a more peaceful, reasonable world, could have become a very prosperous, attractive tourist destination.  When I was growing up, Fidel Castro and Krushchev were scapegoated for being America's Cold War antagonists.  But now that they're gone, the Playground Bully seeks only to incite passions and fury. When is he going to turn against his own people? He's already been vilifying our erstwhile allies in the last several days.Where are Hegseth, Noem and Bondi going on all this?  It makes me want to switch to all-day, live Major League Baseball.  I recently watched the Dodgers play Arizona, the Yankees play San Fran, Milwaukee play the Chicago White Sox, the Rockies versus the Marlins, the Reds against the Red Sox, and Philadelphia against the Chicago Cubs.  In viewing the MLB Channel, I'm getting to know each team by their players and staff. 

I can't stand our so-called leader going off at the mouth with his brash, offensive remarks and dismissals: he sounds just like the guy on Twilight Zone (Sounds and Silences episode) who wouldn't shut up. Now it's 4:30 AM and time for me to sign off and get our sweet Peewee Daisy all riled up....

Camped Out at Nearby Starbucks, Studying and Writing

It's a little difficult to maneuver myself through each day without the outside news and opinion world encroaching on my attention and my increasing sense of unease at the way things are going down.  Still, here I am, relatively healthy while undergoing greatly appreciated high-level medical treatment that is apparently coming in a timely manner.  While warned about possible side effects of yesterday's hormone therapy injection, I was also advised to be active and go about my business as before.  So that I am doing, sitting here in my closest Starbucks drinking a hot cinnamon dolce latte while studying foreign languages and writing this article.  The day stretches ahead of me, and so does a planned neighborhood walk later on.  This evening they're holding the second "grief care" support group meeting at Trinity UMC...not certain as to whether I'll be attending or not.  One thing is for sure: I have little patience to just sit there and tolerate others with their high-handed self-glorifying speechifying.  Speaking of putting up with people putting up their own walls in front of me, it all reminds me of the frustration I fell into a few years ago when I got more deeply into Facebook and made several friend requests of former classmates.  Many accepted and many simply ignored the requests...so be it.  I've later discovered that the wisdom that's supposed to come later in life and temper people's outlook on themselves, their role in society and their political leanings usually comes slowly, if at all.  I sometimes read how some of my "friends" react to a provocative posting and see that folks have a defensive instinct to instantly respond in a knee-jerk, "offended" manner to viewpoints they disagree with, as if reading a contrary opinion somehow poses a physical threat to them.  After the recent horrible assassination of a young conservative voice, the trolls came out on this social media site in force, causing me to wonder whether I shouldn't just shut down my account permanently.  I used to post links to this blog on it for years, but in early 2021 I decided that the often idiotic negative trolling I'd get...usually from a tiny number of old Nova High School classmates...made the whole exercise and effort unworthy.  So I post my articles independently of Facebook and tend to avoid activity there. And what do you know, the company's algorithms have decided what my interests are and load up my news feed with posts reflecting their conclusions: lots and lots of stuff about the Beatles, especially John Lennon...  

Musical Artists Speaking Ill of Colleagues in the Trade

I was watching YouTube videos about popular music groups of the past and noticed that some of the preferred posts feature what different musical artists think about their colleagues within the trade.  Specifically, I just saw one video that listed five artists who didn't like the Beatles...and of course they explained why they felt that way. They were Lou Reed, Quincy Jones, Trent Reznor, Michael Stipe and Julian Casablancas. To me, all of these "artists" come away from their bashings appearing like musical snobs who think they know better than plain folk like you or me.  Since the only Reed song I've heard and liked was Take a Walk on the Wild Side and he seems to have no singing voice to speak of, I'll dispose of him up front.  Jones was a renowned record producer and heavily aligned with soul and jazz, a stickler for technique when it comes down to playing musical instruments. Unfortunately, I've never been all that into either of those genres.  Reznor, the frontman for Nine Inch Nails, only did one song, Head Like a Hole, that I liked, and Casablancas fronts the alt-rock band the Strokes, which produced a couple of songs to my liking, Reptilia and 12:51.  But Stipe and his band R.E.M. I've long considered among my favorites because their music and lyrics strike a strong emotional chord with me...like the Beatles did.  I think a lot of the divisive rhetoric is being magnified on social media as clickbait to build up user volume and revenue. People can believe what they want, just as I do.  My general view of the aforementioned critics is you can have the music of Reed, Jones and Reznor...no loss to me, and Casablancas isn't talented enough to even enter a conversation about anyone else...leaving Michael Stipe for me to scratch my head about in puzzlement.  But in honesty the Beatles themselves didn't hold back in what they thought about others, especially John and George.  I don't idolize anyone, and I can't think of any musical act that always produced stuff I liked, including the Beatles, which I regard as the greatest popular music act of all time..  

Trump's Truth Social Memorial Day Post

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

The above was our duly elected president’s social media post for yesterday’s Memorial Day observance, which is held annually to remember and honor those who have fallen in service to our country over the course of its history.  Had someone like Joe Biden or Barack Obama published anything resembling the filth that appears above, I have no doubt that FoxNews “journalists” like Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin and Jesse Watters would instantly sweep down in collective, fervent condemnation of the president, pronouncing judgment on his mental state and demanding that he step down from office.  But Donald J.Trump is their boy and, to them, he can do no wrong.  At my postal service mail processing job over the years I’ve seen the type of rant similar to that above from time to time on the outside of envelopes…written and sent by obviously mentally unstable paranoids suffering from extreme delusions. So, my fellow Americans, this is the individual you saw fit to lead this nation….

AI Moving Fast Over Us

I have lately been noticing on YouTube and Facebook that artificial intelligence, or AI, has exploded in growth with the number of posts and channels dramatically increasing.  What's more, not only the AI-generated text but also its video presentation are coming chillingly close to resembling actual known people's images and writings.  I wonder how the Internet we've grown used to will look in just, say, five years and whether it will be recognizable.  AI presents its own challenges, especially coupled with the development in quantum computing that stands to massively empower processing speed and memory.  What's real and what isn't...that looks to be the fundamental question ahead of us as we trudge forward into this brave new world.  I've already seen commercials where users are using AIs as confidants, seeking personal advice from them..."really"?  What's the future going to be like?  Maybe each of us will have our own AI accounts, and with special glasses and audio we can have anyone we want around us, down to our most stringent specifications...who needs all those icky real people?  In the Ron Howard-directed award-winning movie A Beautiful Mind, mathematical genius John Nash, played by Russell Crowe, hallucinated his own circle of friends and colleagues...but it was revealed that this was an element of his schizophrenia.  Are we entering a time of mass insanity...or have we already arrived?  What a time to be alive...

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...

Pain is Here, But Blog Goes On

It's been a while since I missed a daily entry in this blog...this past weekend I skipped both Saturday and Sunday.  The reason's simple: I'm riding out a period of constant and recurring physical pain, a type of which I've experienced in the past and which I'm hoping and praying will end soon...yes, I'm seeing a doctor.  But life goes on, and so does this blog, which I've always defined for myself as a writing exercise and discipline. It's also a good way to work out various issues in my mind, be they personal, societal, or news items. Sometimes I'll sit down to address a topic and find myself changing my point of view as I write, the process itself aiding me in my reasoning.  For that reason, along with many others, I encourage you to start a blog of your own...tailoring it to your own special interests, of course.  Back during the decade before Facebook came along, personal blogs were the rage on the Internet...I loved randomly going through others' blogs and reading their stuff, especially the ones whose writers shared my interests.  But personal blogging diminished significantly after mega-social media sites sucked in so many people that they became the places to go on the Web...and many blogs ended or were never started.  I plan to keep on with my blog as long as I am able and Google keeps it going...hope you enjoy it...

Quote of the Week...from Oscar Wilde

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

                                                              ---Oscar Wilde

Late nineteenth century Irish novelist and playwright Oscar Wilde is probably best known for his book The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he has a lot of witty things to say about this thing and that.  As for the above quote, I'm assuming I'm not to take it literally for I can come up with a lot of things in life worse than being talked about.  But I get what Wilde is trying to say here...let me expand upon it a bit.  It seems that in today's world, more than ever before, people at large are letting themselves get caught up in two seemingly diametrically opposite offenses. On one hand they are obsessed with privacy about their personal lives and while in public are sensitive to anyone passing their low threshold of what constitutes undue attention.  But on the other hand, they want to be known by others...in a good sense, of course...with their sense of self-worth tied in to how attractive their appearance and personality shows in public...and being ignored is offensive.  I just saw a social media post laying out a number of ways someone can determine whether another is stalking them in their gym...then saw an ad for my own gym that emphasizes how one can use it to make their bodies look like those of professional models, an obvious appeal for those prospective customers wanting to turn others' eyes toward them.  Social media is kind of peculiar in this regard, too, with the clamor for privacy always a major beef among various sites' users...yet they're using the sites to come out into the public arena, aren't they?  I have come to believe that while privacy is a legitimate and major concern for people to have, the fear of a future in which everyone has forgotten them becomes worse...as Mr. Wilde so eloquently stated.  I think people in general are unrealistic in that they want to control who pays attention to them and talk about them, while if they are realistic about it they will acknowledge that there's always going to be some unwelcome reactions to their presence and message  Still, there's a limit to what I'll put up with on this blog with some past trolls...you don't have to agree with me but you also don't have to be a jerk about it...   

Some Stuff about Facebook

First of all, before I go further, I deeply appreciate you readers of this blog, all of you.  Chances are very strong that you access it from Facebook, where I post my (usually) daily entries.  But I have to admit that I'm not very enamored with Mark Zuckerberg's social media site, since it is largely there for people to bond with one another and establish social pecking orders.  For me, I'm more like the Goth Kids in South Park who say screw the established order...we're going our own way and if you don't like it, too bad.  I had a friend request the other day, not an uncommon occurrence but still annoying, since the overwhelming number of my Facebook "friends" are people who, although connected with me in some way, I have never even had a simple pleasant conversation with.  Yet to Facebook they are "friends".  You don't have to interact in person to have a conversation...I value those who have taken a few moments of their lives to type in a comment to one of my posts...or even hit one of "like" icons.  Anyway, this young man who friend-requested me is someone I've never met but seems to have some affiliation with the church I used to attend...or at least organized Christianity.  I checked out his posts before responding and he is heavy on both Bible verses and subscribing to far-right-wing political propaganda, including bashing in a hatefully personal way Anthony Fauci, the epidemiologist who spearheaded the fight against COVID-19 in cooperation with Presidents Trump and Biden.  Worshipping the two gods of Religion and Politics may seem for some to be totally compatible...and it's true that if you're into some of the homegrown paramilitary groups flourishing here in America, the fusion of the two into one mega-god to idolize might sound alluring.  My take is simple: restrict your automatic acceptance of things requiring faith to that faith which you have adopted, and keep a skeptical eye on the other stuff that you (and I) are being constantly deluged with in this scam-filled digital media age...

Quote of the Week...fron Neil deGrasse Tyson

While casting shade on Elon Musk for what he's done, is doing, or will do, try to pause and remember that he made electric cars a normal thing in society and he commercialized space...for cargo, satellites & people. Count him among those who are inventing civilization's future.   ---Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may know that I'm a fan of Neil deGrasse Tyson, science popularizer and astrophysicist, the director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, the narrator of the Cosmos TV series after the death of its originator, Carl Sagan, and a strong advocate for space exploration, both manned and unmanned. I think he hit just the right chord with the above Tweet (I'm a follower of his) about the exorbitantly wealthy entrepreneur Elon Musk, recently much praised and maligned after buying and taking over this social media site. Tyson's politics are clearly far to the left of Musk's, who has signaled with some of his Tweets a willingness to pander to the Trump crowd and their conspiracy theories and agendas. Yet Musk has indeed pioneered the mass production of electric cars with his Tesla and worked with liberal president Barack Obama to develop a future manned Mars project under his SpaceX company...breaking the multi-year dependence on Russia to launch our own astronauts into space. There are two chief points I'd like to make. One, the very nature of being a public figure/leader, be it in any field like politics, business, sports, academics, or entertainment, jettisons one into public scrutiny and there will always be something objectionable about their behavior or views that comes out, either with their own consent or not. Two, we seem to be suffering lately from what I term the "Fonzie Syndrome" where just because someone is thought of as "cool" or thinks himself or herself cool then whatever they say is supposedly Infallible Wisdom and Truth...millions of Trump worshippers are totally into this fallacy: for them the Orange Man IS the Fonz. And I suppose super-rich folk can get a swollen head about themselves and pretend expertise in areas beyond their specialties...Elon's foray into Twitter I believe betrays this very human frailty. I wish he would focus his attention more on the transformational technology for which he will ultimately be honored in history instead of this current misguided detour.  The latest breaking news is that he just resigned as the company's CEO, although since he's still the owner I don't know how much that's going to change things...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Who are you going to believe...me or your own eyes?.    --Groucho Marx

The witty, acerbic member of the twentieth century comedy team Marx Brothers, Groucho Marx had a lot of funny sayings...another I like is from the movie Duck Soup: "Why, a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can't make head nor tail out of it."  The above quote I did select sadly has a lot of relevance to today's world of disinformation, conspiracy theories and innuendo. I, like you, am a fellow traveler through this strange time of mass digitalization and nearly universally available news sources due to cell phone/Internet technology as well as a multitude of different "news" channels on television, tailored to reinforce the preconceived notions of their viewers.  Social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, and search engines like Google employ algorithms to discern their users' interests and politics...and then present material that promotes them.  I distinctly remember Trump's 2017 presidential inauguration and the general sparsity of people attending it in person...and his claim to the effect that it was a record-setting crowd.  And then his yes-people went out into the media to parrot that false claim.  About all these mass shootings, the Covid pandemic and the 2020 election, I've seen these issues all for what they were and yet the media is loaded with those promoting denial and lies: and people believe them and not their own eyes!  I'm not sure people in general haven't changed...they've always had this kind of tribalism to them that sways them to accept "facts" that are untrue just to fit in with their group.  What's different is how this omnipresent digital input is affecting how different folks distinguish reality from fantasy...or whether they actually want to...

Quote of the Week...from Elon Musk

 the bird is freed                                                      ---Elon Musk

I thought I'd keep the language sloppiness to this Twitter submission by the richest man in the world, who just bought Twitter and made it his own private company to do with as he pleases.  As is the case with business innovators and tycoons, I have a degree of admiration for Elon Musk and his vision for the future.  This is especially true with his SpaceX plans to travel to and eventually settle the planet Mars, and his Falcon 9 rockets kick major ass, to put it crudely.  One problem that seems to infect people of this stature, though, is that because they have shown themselves to excel in a few things, then that means they are geniuses in everything...which clearly isn't the case.  Musk says he wants Twitter to return to the old days during the Trump presidency when anyone could put out any disinformation on this social media platform with no accountability other than that of dissenting comments.  The only problem I see in this is that it's already been established that foreign governments hostile to the U.S. have used venues such as Twitter and Facebook to plant false narratives under fake identities in order to unduly shape public opinion and influence elections in favor of candidates more to their liking...I've heard no acknowledgement of this problem from Musk, though.  Well, although I tend to avoid making "tweets", I've been on Twitter before Trump, and stayed there during what I regard as a fascist demagogue's reign as our 45th president. I will continue to be there as well after Elon Musk's takeover, but I wish the dude would focus his attention more on his companies' wonderful accomplishments and plans in future technology and not be so full of himself...which I recognize is probably a complete waste of my wishing efforts... 

Quote of the week...from Sheryl Sandberg

Done is better than perfect.    --Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook...you can react to that information in either a positive or negative way.  I have my own mixed feelings about this pervasive social media site.  It does connect people across the planet and years, reuniting many who had lost touch for decades and live far from one another...I like that.  And it gives me a link through which I can place my daily blog articles...another thumbs up.  But it also tends to bubble off people within likeminded groups, reinforcing the same biased political and social narratives while diminishing alternative views...that's a problem. And I'm not so keen on the tendency for this social media site to be focused on personal bonding and popularity over the exchange of information and truth. Having said all that, I picked the above quote of Sandberg's not for what I think of Facebook, but because it's so appropriate to just about any area of life...at least outside the operating room or nuclear facility, that is.  It's all about the tendency for some people to have difficulty starting, much less finishing, projects because they are obsessed with avoiding any mistakes in the process.  And mistakes are the catalyst in learning, very necessary for eventually attaining excellence in anything. Most folks, though, do not want to be responsible for anything that makes them vulnerable to criticism...or even worse, derision...from others.  YouTube, Yelp and Goodreads are loaded with critical comments...some of them reaching essay length...blasting the creative efforts of contributors, sometimes in very hurtful language.  I remember finding an Arkansas pastor's efforts at teaching Biblical Greek on a YouTube site.  For introducing interested people to the meanings of ancient Greek expressions and words of the New Testament, he fulfilled his purpose although he obviously didn't pronounce like a native.  For this he was rewarded with a pretty nasty comment on his site by a native Greek speaker who was offended that a nonnative would undertake this sort of effort and that his lessons were worthless. People with different agendas and narratives than me will often strictly scrutinize what I do and say and be readily available for criticism, even if it involves twisting things completely out of context or cherry-picking for items to ridicule.  That's just human nature in one of its common, crappy forms, and I'm not going to seek an impossible perfection in my daily walk just to appease massively imperfect, heavily flawed critics.  And now I'm done with this admittedly imperfect article: time to move on to the rest of my day...

June Features Five Planets Aligned in East Before Sunrise

I don't watch Lawrence O'Donnell's opinion show on MSNBC, nor do I follow him on social media.  However, for some reason I probably would rather not know, a posting of his appeared on my Facebook newsfeed page with a topic I wouldn't normally associate with him and his politically oriented output: astronomy.  It revealed that sky-gazers in this month of June 2022 are getting a special treat...if they are early-risers, that is.  The five planets visible to the naked eye...Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn...are strung out close to each other in the eastern predawn sky along the elliptic, in that order starting from the horizon in the constellation Taurus near the Pleiades (Mercury) and extending westward (up and to the right) in Aries (Venus), in Pisces (Mars and Jupiter, visually close together) and Aquarius (Saturn) on the far west end of the planetary spectacle.  The most difficult planet to spot will most definitely be Mercury, for while it will have enough brightness to be visible, to observe it I'll have to catch it just after it rises but just before the sun...and it'll be just above the east horizon so there can't be any impediments like trees or buildings.  I'm going to bravely try to get up early...totally against my current habits...and see whether I can't get a glimpse of our innermost planet: it will be down and to the left from very bright Venus.  Of course, if it's cloudy or foggy I'll have to try another morning.  But this planetary alignment phenomenon will be out there for most of the month.  By June 24th the moon will even be a part of it... 

People Magnets

Some people are like walking Facebook accounts, attracting "likes" and real-life emojis everywhere they go.  I call them "people magnets" as a general term, although the reasons for their popularity are usually more specific.  It's hard for me to criticize any of them for this alone...it's the people hanging all over them that bother me.  Yet, if for the sake of argument at school or my job I was assigned to tutor or train, say, famous pro basketball jock Kevin Durant or rock legend Mick Jagger, in a subject or my assignment for two or three days while in a public setting, I doubt that I could get very much done because of the clear distraction that their presence would cause with others continually dropping by to chime in with them and pour out their affection.  Yet although I actually like both Durant and Jagger, I would be stuck in a situation where I was yoked with someone open to distraction and still being expected to perform my job duties in the middle of it all while both being thoroughly marginalized and thrown completely out of my normal work routine.  But one doesn't need to be a famous athlete or entertainment celebrity to be a people magnet...people attractive to the opposite sex, as well as certain individuals with underground connections and influence, can fulfill this role and, I imagine, are much more likely to plague my humble existence.  But the result is the same: instead of being able to function at work in a respectable manner I would have to endure the repeated encroachment of other people on what I am being forced to do along with being demeaned throughout the process. The only solace is that the "people magnets" tend eventually to move on to other conquests and leave me alone...

TikTok as Forum for Diverse Ideas & Opinions

I have had the short looping video app TikTok on my smartphone for a few months now, never putting out anything on my own but rather just scrolling through the randomly appearing posts of others.  My use of it reflects how I used Twitter: to get people's brief reactions to what is going on around us as well as their general philosophies of life.  Before, when I used Twitter...and social media in general...what I saw was pretty much set in advance by my choice of people I followed and was thereby inherently slanted. When I flick through video after TikTok video (I don't follow anyone or participate in their interactive options of reactions to posts), I'm getting more of a cross-section of viewpoints about most anything, but weighted heavily in favor of current events and issues.  And since the people putting out these videos are for the most part neither celebrities nor anyone I personally know, I am not having to deal with inner conflicts about those individuals whenever I happen to disagree with a posting (and that happens a lot)...I can focus on the message, not the messenger.  Some of the videos out there do stretch the standards of modesty and propriety a bit, but I suppose in a free speech environment it's better to err in that direction than in that of censorship.  Speaking of censorship, just about every mainstream social media platform practices some sort of content regulation and TikTok has its own issues as well...seems that criticism of some autocrats has been suppressed in the past and there was a recent scandal in which a site urged students to vandalize their schools.  I also know that Trump hated TikTok and wanted it banned in the United States...had it not been for him I probably wouldn't have even considered it: thanks, Donald, in a backhanded sort of way.  Is this app perfect? No way...not by far...but it is always interesting.  TikTok as I see it presented is a crazy, chaotic kind of digital bulletin board, a welcome, more grassroots kind of entertainment to check in on whenever I get tired of the contrived and narrative-driven mass media news programs I see on TV.  I'm not necessarily recommending it for you, but I've seen it as a good source for independent opinions and information...although as with everything else it's crucial to be discerning in filtering it all through and not automatically accept everything I read or hear...

Quote of the Week...from Asha Rangappa

Facebook is primarily a mechanism for bonding, not bridging.  Studies show that in the vast majority of cases, people live in self-made echo chambers on Facebook that reinforce their existing views of the world.                                                                    ---Asha Rangappa

Asha Rangappa is an American lawyer and former FBI agent who has served as commentator on several networks and shows, most prominently CNN.  I chose her above quote because on different levels it totally resonates with what I've grown to think about Facebook over the past eight years that I have been active on it.  Originally when I signed up for my account on that social media site I had set up my profile and then pretty much stayed clear of it...until I perceived that the masses worldwide that were driving the blogging revolution in the first decade of this century had almost totally abandoned their own blogs and turned to Facebook for the sake of convenience...and for that "bonding" with folks they already knew.  So I had a choice to make: continue blogging on my own or post links to my articles on Facebook.  I chose the latter and from 2013 through 2020 I did just that while increasing over time my number of Facebook "friends".  But this site has an insidious algorithm that limits who can access my links on their newsfeed...even "friends"...and my readership wasn't really improving over time.  But since I was checking Facebook to see reactions to articles I posted, I was also observing the behavior of other users...and it's very true like Rangappa said, that people react to others' postings more as a bonding statement than to cross bridges and get to know others more and exchange ideas.  The fact that access is typically confined to a predetermined, insular community doesn't help, either.  Facebook makes it all a popularity contest with their "scores" of how many people liked a posting or commented on it.  I am glad I went through this long-term experiment with Facebook because it solidified in my mind the intransigent and socially fragile states of thinking within people at large.  As long as you're saying something they already agree with, they're okay with you, but even if that's so they have to evaluate what they perceive as your popularity level before they are willing to publicly chime in. I also have been dismayed at reading the marginally insane posts of folks that I know in real life to be rational, functioning adults: are they just assuming different personas in social media, or is the "echo chamber", bubbling-off tendency in Facebook turning their minds over to the dark side?  No, I had enough and stopped linking this blog to that site starting in 2021...interestingly, although I no longer get the sparse instant "likes" from some articles, the anonymous bean counter on my Google account shows no decline in readership, and I'm writing just as freely and happily as ever...

Collectors of People

One character that struck me hard in the J.K. Rowling's wonderful Harry Potter series was introduced in the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  He is Professor Horace Slughorn of Slytherin House, brought out of retirement by Headmaster Dumbledore to shed light on archvillain Voldemort's early strategies when he was Slughorn's pupil at Hogwarts Academy many years before.  To this end Dumbledore asks Harry, a celebrity renowned throughout the magical world, to allow Slughorn to "collect" him...after explaining to him exactly what he means by "collect".  I'll try to do the same here, but maybe you already know what it means if you've read the book or saw the movie adaptation. This character made a big impression on me since he reminded me greatly of some of my old high school teachers.  First of all, you need to understand that where (and when) I went to high school they deliberately kept teachers more distant from the students, instead constructing the curricula around what they called Learning Activity Packages (or LAPs) which were pages stapled together and handed out to students.  The (erroneous) presumption here was that we students were all miniature, mature, and motivated adults who could be counted on to diligently and responsibly go through our LAPs on our own...and if we needed a "teacher" to help us on something they would theoretically be around to assist us.  Although not all of the courses were conducted this way, it did relieve the faculty of the burden of preparing individual lessons for each day in front of the class...and therefore made it more likely that many students who weren't doing too well would slip through the cracks.  I see all these pro-teacher union ads on TV and the teachers are always so personally engaged with each of their students...I wonder how many teachers I had over the course of my elementary and high school years who even were aware of me as one of their students, much less interested in my progress (or lack thereof).  But if one of us were to excel and become lauded for some accomplishment, such as acting, singing, playing a musical instrument, sports, or in a more academic area like debate or mathematics, then all of a sudden you'd see certain teachers rushing to the forefront to be identified with them.  Never mind that in some of these cases the students' accomplishments and skills were directly attributable to private classes away from the classroom or because of their own parents' occupations and tutelage.  And yes, a lot of the students' achievements were from their own hard efforts...but not necessarily that of their teachers...

In adulthood there are a couple more manifestations of this "collectors of people" phenomenon I'd like to discuss.  There are those who are seriously into name-dropping, apparently because they either think they need to insert their encounters with famous people into their conversations in order to be interesting or because they're of the false notion that they're important enough to be famous themselves.  Along with this are those compelled to stop celebrities on the street or in restaurants for selfies or autographs...I remember that one of the things John and Yoko Lennon liked about living in New York was that the locals respected their privacy in spite of their celebrityhood: it took a scumbag from Hawaii one Monday evening in December, 1980 to ruin all that, though.  Another "adult" element of people collection is the notion of networking, implicit in which is the belief that if one develops a tangle of connections around them then some bigshot corporate, academic or government leader will one day be more disposed to hiring them for a big bonanza job...the site LinkedIn is for those "collectors". And of course people collection figures heavily into social media like Facebook and Twitter and the number of friends, followers and likes and viewings...

I know we're all in community with one another and that's a good thing...even though my tendency is to shed people, not collect them.  But the idea that one is so insecure that they need to buttress their own lives with human trophies repels me, and I've seen it firsthand without the need to observe it in a make-believe Harry Potter character...  

Zombies Among Us

I've never been a fan of zombie flicks...neither the movie Night of the Living Dead from 1968 nor the recent Walking Dead television series and its spinoffs.  The genre, which features reanimated, soulless corpses that infect others they encounter until hordes threaten humanity's very existence, never captured my imagination...until just recently, that is, when it occurred to me that in a figurative sense there are zombies among us in this real world.  These are people, "dead from the neck up" as the saying goes, who have voluntarily surrendered their own souls to unquestioningly idolize one mortal, flawed figure...namely Donald Trump...and to believe everything he says and follow his commands without reservation.  You cannot reason with these people any more than the human heroes of those zombie shows could with their counterparts...they are self-brainwashed personality cult followers on the same order as that freakish Heaven's Gate group in the nineties that committed collective suicide over the Hale-Bopp comet and the leftist People's Temple under the murderous Jim Jones in the seventies who forced his own people to commit mass "suicide" in Guyana.  In 2021 those in this version of the phenomenon are sustained and energized by the Internet and TV networks that deliberately seek to inflame their passions on behalf of their "lord master". Since Trump is a national political leader, the comparisons to fascist strongmen with cult followers such as Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler also come to mind.  The upshot is that even when our problematic president is finally out of office, he's still going to be out there and those tens of millions of Americans are going to still be slavishly following him as their idol, lord and source of "truth"...to this I add a major disclaimer that I don't believe that all who voted for Trump are like this...but sadly a large portion are, and keep in mind that on the day after the January 6th insurrection, a public opinion poll revealed that 45% of Republicans supported it.  When Trump finally does disappear from the scene (he is getting along in years, after all), the zombies will find another idol to latch themselves onto...someone who undoubtedly will use our very soon-to-be former president's demeanor and behavior as a template to build their own personality cult.  And these folks are everywhere, like the Matrix: in your workplace, when you're shopping, at your churches, on the roads, among the police and military, among your political representatives, and in your neighborhoods and schools.  Zombies.  Among us.

Great Old TV Episodes: from the Original Star Trek

 DAY OF THE DOVE from Star Trek (1968)

Day of the Dove was one of the final episodes from the original Star Trek series, consigned to be cancelled after being relegated to the "dead zone" scheduled airing time of 10 on Friday nights.  At the time I didn't particularly like this episode, largely because of what I perceived to be the flawed acting as McCoy, Chekov, Scotty...and others...all seem to be speaking out of character, very angry, fearful and vindictive.  Which was the whole point of the episode, actually, as the Enterprise under Captain Kirk finds itself manipulated by an alien life force feeding on negative feelings and conflict into open warfare with survivors of a Klingon vessel.  The entity exacerbates the passions of the crews on both sides, even creating false memories of past atrocities that never happened.  Although back in '68 I wasn't too enamored with the story, today it rings very loud as I look at the way social and mass media are doing essentially the same things as that twirling, insubstantial alien entity on this episode, whipping up folks' anger and outrage against the "other side" behind the scenes while giving time to any conspiracy theory or "alternative facts" that can provide them higher ratings or hits.  I'm sick of Facebook and Twitter for this and finally felt the need to detach myself from them, at least as far as posting links to them to this blog is concerned.  This society of ours is quickly spiraling downward as people bubble themselves off in insulated feedback loops where they only hear and read viewpoints and information that panders to their bubble's narrative...not healthy at all.  If you have Netflix you can see all the old Star Trek episodes...this one's still not exactly one of my favorites, but you need to carefully watch and listen to Chekov, Scotty, and McCoy as they go over the edge and then look around you at what's going down today with people who normally seem rational.  I recommend the documentary film The Social Dilemma, which you can also watch on Netflix...click on the title to read my review from September...