Push Back

At long last the antibodies seem to be kicking in here in America at least. The rest of Western Civ still appears to have their collective heads shoved up their asses.

Item one:

The Great Satan himself, Elon Musk has purchased Twitter and promptly fired most of the top executives and half the staff. Given what I've heard about the working conditions at Twitter, Brother Elon was being rather kind. The place sounded more like an adult day care center rather than a place where serious adults came together to get real work done. I don't use Twitter, have never seen the need for such a thing. (If whatever "thought" you have can be expressed in 120 characters or less, it is probably better you keep it to yourself. But I'm just some no-nothing old fart....) Bottom line, what Elon does with Twitter will have exactly zero impact on my day-to-day life. If he actually does as promised I may reconsider, but so far, other than some long-overdue house cleaning, I am not much impressed. When all the people that have been banned from the platform have been reinstated, then maybe.

Meanwhile, all you ex-employees of Twitter, repeat after me: "Would you like to super-size that?"

In other news that should have been obvious decades ago, Greenpeace has finally admitted that recycling as currently practiced is a complete sham. Depending on who you believe, anywhere from 75% to 90% of the stuff you put in those blue bins is either tossed into a landfill or, even worse, burned. Factor in all the wasted fuel for separate collection, trucking it across the continent, loading it onto a container ship and sending it to China or Indonesia, and you have a world-class ecological disaster.

 I know I've explained this before, but that cutsie little triangle stamped on every plastic bottle actually means more that just "recycle". The three sides of the triangle represent the three "R"'s of ecology: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The order is important; job one is to cut back on all the crap you buy. Right to Repair figures in here as well. Instead of throwing it out and buying new, fix the old. Which brings us to Reuse: don't just toss it. Think about what other use you (or your neighbor or church, etc.) can put it to. Then as a last resort, recycle. Which was supposed to be done locally, but why do that when we can ship it all to the other side of the world.

The whole world is holding its collective breath waiting to see who will win control of Congress. Heh. Us Yanks really are a self-important bunch of twits, eh? Does anyone really believe that replacing our current crop of corporate jack-holes with a different set of corporate jack-holes will really make any difference? I like to think I follow politics rather closely, but I would be hard-pressed to think of a single thing that the Congress of these united States has done since the 1970's that was first and foremost a benefit to the 60% of the population that is not part of the PMC's (professional managerial class), the elites or the corporations. Given that, why would I give even a half-shit about who "wins" yesterday's election?

Speaking of who wins, why don't we know who has won? Why is it that the more technology we apply to a problem, the slower the process becomes?  A half-century ago, hand-marked ballots, counted by hand in public (still considered the gold standard by international election observers) were tallied up in less than twenty-four hours. Now some places are talking weeks. What gives? Tom Luongo says the delay is supposed to give them time to keep recounting the votes until they get the correct answer. I think he means that as a joke, but given the events of 2020....

On a personal note, we are back home in Florida for the winter. I know people do this snowbird thing for decades, but it is truly a giant pain in my ass. Just as a start, I have too many medical issues to be traveling the length of the continental US every six months. Twice a year, it's like I'm a new patient at every doctor. Then add in all the patient assistance for this med, that med, the other med that get all screwed up every time we do this. I just can't see us doing it for much longer. (Family, you have been warned....)

One aggravation is that not being here in the summer means that the plant life takes over:

It took us pretty much a full day to find our house.

We didn't even get settled in yet and we are already hunkering down for Tropical Storm Nicole. By the time it gets here, the worst will be over. Some wind (30-40mph) lots of rain, maybe a little thunder and lightening. But overall, no biggie. A cousin of mine is pretty much right in the bullseye where this thing is making landfall. This is her first named storm, so she called us to ask what we were doing to prepare for the hurricane. I said, "What hurricane?" She replied, "Oh you are such a Floridian!" I wasn't trying to be glib or make a joke. We just weren't paying attention with all the unpacking and setting stuff up.

Debbie might be getting a very part-time job at the Moose Lodge. We could certainly use a little extra cash. We've been spending money like drunken sailors trying to set up and maintain two households. We could really use a bit extra. It will also give us an excuse to be at the Lodge more often. Since I quit, we really haven't been there much. That's mostly because of me; the Lodge was where I worked. I didn't want to be one of "those people" who come skulking around where they used to work, so it has been easy to stay away. It didn't help that I left on... well... less than good terms. We'll just leave it at that.

Once again, I waited too long to do this and have way more that should be in a blog post. If you've made it this far, go get yourself a cookie.