School House Rock – 2024 Edition Redux
I originally posted this”meme” on July 5th. Afterwards I remembered a song that might just go with our current political situation. See video below.
Theme song for politics in the USA circa the MAGA era.
School House Rock – 2024 Edition
You might need to be of a certain age to appreciate this. See video below image for a refresher.
From back in the day… when Saturday morning cartoons were still a thing and there was a little education thrown in.
My Anti-Trump Shirt
Below you will find my anti-Trump shirt. If you look closely you will observe that the motif is mostly sharks. I have been thinking about hand drawing some batteries onto my pool shirt to make it a double parody of Trump’s wonderful political rally speech in Las Vegas.
Just in case you do not get the reference, watch this video of the “highly articulate” felon going on about how he would rather be eaten by a shark or electrocuted.
Heaven forbid we should be talking about issues in this election cycle. What has our country come to that any sane person would think this man should be president one time, let alone a second time. My beloved country would cease to exist as anything I would acknowledge as my country.
John Oliver on a Trump 2nd Term… Be scared, very scared
John Oliver on a Trump 2nd Term… Be scared, very scared.
If you have 30 minutes it is well worth your time. There are groups gearing up to enable Trump’s anti-democratic, racist, classist agenda to be more effective on a second go-around. No matter how hard I try, I cannot come up with a single positive reason why anyone would support Donald Trump. I really wonder when they stopped teaching Civics, American History and critical thinking in the schools. Although I do not think critical thinking has ever been high on the American educational agenda.
Disheartening is the only word I can come up with…
Don’t wear them short socks…
I was in Columbia, Illinois at the first convenience store you encounter when you cross the Mississippi River into Illinois. I stop there as it is cheaper to buy a soft drink for my round of golf there instead of at the golf course.
As I was standing in line a fellow came up behind me toting a 12 pack of Busch Light and talking on his cell phone a little loud, which is what caused me to notice him, although there was nothing unusual these days in this.
As I stood in line I heard him say, “I don’t wear those short socks.”
“Well,” I thought, “that is a bit of a strange conversation.”
Then he went on, “They don’t hide my ankle holster.”
My new best friend…not.
The rest of the conversation was about preferred grips on pistols.
In Missouri it is a free-for-all on concealed carried, and you do not even need a permit. Illinois takes a totally different approach. So either he was a Missouri resident and/or an Illinois scofflaw.
My personal opinion is that this country has a terminal illness when it comes to guns. Hunting is one thing, but I have a hard time imagining why anyone would need a pistol, and especially why they would need to carry one concealed.
Internet Littering
My Daddy’s folks are from Kentucky. My Mama’s folks are from Oklahoma. Our childhoods were passed overseas or on the east coast, always around a Navy or Marine base. My father was first in the Navy, and then he went to work for Kaman Aerospace. I mention this as a frequent summer trip was back to Kentucky and/or Oklahoma. This was in the 50s and 60s. Initially there were no Interstates. Even later when the Interstates were under construction it was still a hodge-podge of Interstates and two lane roads. These were long, slow trips, not uncommonly in bumper to bumper traffic on two lane roads not always in the best repair. Heaven forbid if there was an accident. It would back things up for hours. Air conditioning in a car, surely you jest.
Vivid Childhood Memory
A vivid memory that implanted on my very young Continue reading “Internet Littering”
Missouri GOP Looking to Criminalize State Teachers
The following article appeared in the local alternative newspaper RiverFront Times: Missouri Bill Makes Teachers Sex Offenders If They Accept Trans Kids’ Pronouns
1st Objection
Personally, I am not a big fan of this whole pronoun phenomenon, BUT as it says in the Book of David 1:1
“Within the bounds of the Golden Rule, people being who they are, and loving who they love are not immoral acts.”
I once worked with a fellow named Walter. He was very insistent on being called Walter and not the diminutive of Walt. I understand as I prefer the formal David to any of the diminutives of that name, but most of the time I just let it slide. I am just generally glad someone has acknowledged my existence by calling me by name.
I see selecting a personal pronoun, more of less, in this same category. And yeah, I realize there is a serious qualitative difference, but isn’t it the GOP that spouts all these libertarian ideals… like getting rid of helmet laws and allowing folks to carry firearms wherever they want.
The kicker for me is from the article:
“We showed that the more contexts or settings where they were able to use their preferred name, the stronger their mental health was,” the author of the study, Stephen T. Russell, University of Texas at Austin professor and chair of human development and family science, said.
Transgender youth already face a heightened risk of suicidal ideation. Another recent study, this one by the Trevor Project, showed that in 2022 nearly half (45 percent) of LGBTQ youth surveyed seriously contemplated suicide. One in five attempted it.
Sadly the article went on to say:
Missouri remains at the forefront of anti-trans legislation efforts and is one of the most prolific in the nation for bills targeting trans youth.
2nd Objection
My wife, Señora, was a special education teacher, retiring after more than 30 years in the profession. It had changed from a job she dearly loved to one she had a very hard time with. The last three or four years she taught, at the beginning of the school year she cried for a couple weeks from having to go back. It is, without a doubt, a very hard profession, one that does not pay particularly well when you consider the level of education and expertise required. I could write several blog articles on why the profession has become so difficult, but the burnout rate speaks for itself. If you are interested here is an article on the subject: K-12 Workers Have Highest Burnout Rate in U.S.
And now the Missouri GOP wants to criminalize teachers for doing their jobs and supporting students that who in all likelihood are already having a very hard time adjusting. I just cannot get my head around the fact that there are individuals out there that want to force teachers to register as sex offenders for saying he or she when this person’s rigid beliefs insists it should have been she or he.
Some things are more than a little wrong.
A Little Lagniappe
Interestingly enough the British newspaper, The Guardian, picked up this story: Missouri: home to child marriage, corporal punishment and sick ‘child welfare’ ideas
Sometimes I do not know if I am more embarrassed by living in Missouri or being from Oklahoma.
YouTube Curation
YouTube uses an algorithm to feed the user videos that they might like. Of course the goal is to keep you on YouTube as long as possible to feed you the most advertisements possible. I started to call this algorithm, curation, but the definition of curated is: “carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented.“ While this may be what YouTube is doing on one level, it is more than a little nefarious on another.
As long time readers will know (ad nauseam) that I am studying Spanish. As part of this journey I subscribe to various YouTube channels for learning Spanish and others in Spanish for their entertainment value. So now the YouTube curation algorithm feeds me videos in English and Spanish.
A while back, for reasons unclear to me – perhaps it figured out that I am old and male, it fed me a video from an urologist. The video captured my attention as the presenter was a very attractive young female who turned out to be a M.D. in the field. Being a man of a certain age, urological topics have a bit of an interest for me. Then you add in the mujer linda, and I just had to click. Bad move on my part. Now YouTube is feeding me tons of videos dealing with urological topics. However, what really floored me was that it was also feeding me urological videos from urologists in Spanish speaking countries… in Spanish.
Everyone is concerned with Big Brother being the government, for my money, Big Brother is here and he is the personification of these huge technology companies coming after your wallet and your mind.
And yes I know it is possible to erase your YouTube history and start fresh. Or for that matter simply turn off their algorithm. But then how would I find videos of a pretty young urologist preaching to me about urological measures I should be following?
And so it goes in La Casa de Viejos.
Ring Cameras – Redux
About a year ago I posted a blog article: 1984 – Ring Camera
In this article I revisited a novel that has had a reoccurring presence in my life, George Orwell’s 1984. In the novel cameras and microphones are everywhere, neighbors spy on neighbors, family spy on family, spouses spy on spouses. In my post I tied these ubiquitous cameras of 1984 to the explosion of cameras in our society, specific door bell cameras such as Amazon’s Ring camera. My general thesis was that we were bringing 1984 on to ourselves by installing these cameras, ourselves, everywhere.
I recently came across a review of these type of cameras from Wired: Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras.
I will leave it you dear reader to read the article and evaluate their arguments. But their bottom line can be summarized with their closing paragraph:
“If you’re looking for a home security camera, whether it’s a video doorbell or an outdoor camera, we would like to remind you that there are many, many alternatives. Ring cameras are cheap and ubiquitous, but contributing to a just society is also a factor in keeping your family safe.”
Perhaps I should not worry about such things, but recent events make me frequently think we are not far from sliding down the proverbial slippery slope into a totalitarian society. Little things do add up.
And so it should not go.