UP:

I call this Nature’s Cathedrals and if I had a better camera and didn’t have essential tremor you would be moved, too.  Sometimes I forget that nature can  take one away from feeling down. I recall going through an entire blog on birds once and feeling tremendously energized.  When I found the recent photo of 3-week old aye aye I was cheered, and then this lovely series of plants just outside my condo and not planted by me pepped me up immeasurably.  I think there’s a pocket inside us that relates to the appreciation of beauty, and it’s something that one rarely acknowledges or is aware of.  Anyhow, I thought this cheerful note might help offset some of the following:

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DOWN

I can’t afford The Week magazine, although it is first class, but as fate would have it, the April  21, 2023 issue appeared on the free table in the public library, and I read about the following column by David Wallace Wells of The New York Times.  Titled The Growing Number of Child Deaths, I learned that in the U.S. life expectancy is rapidly declining not by deaths of despair among the middle-aged or even by Covid but by the deaths of children and teenagers.  Why? “The U.S. is a violent place and getting more violent.  Gun homicides and suicides account for half of the increase in youth mortality….”  Americans are dying younger than in any peer countries.

Nan says:  The emotional insistence by an apparent majority of men who “don’t want to lose their guns”  smacks–and I write this seriously–of castration anxiety.  Has women in the board rooms threatened them so much or is it a feeling of guilt and/or insecurity?  Or somehow are some dregs of earlier childrearing harshness catching up with us?  I shudder to think how the stunted intellectual and emotional development of young children may  continue to influence the last days of our planet.  Let’s face it:  what the heck are they learning about respect, honesty, ethics and their own bodies?  Who was it said “as we sow, so shall we reap?”  The destruction of learning in schools and universities is poison. How dare we trifle with such critical issues?

ANSWER, via Quora:

SNEAKILY, DEVIOUSLY, CLEVERLY

“What companies will send people money when they’re asked nicely?”

You can find the nice companies by clicking…

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NEVER GIVE THIS TO SOMEONE YOU CARE FOR:

…BUT YOU KNOW THAT, RIGHT?:  ANSWER: A ONE-YEAR FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO A MAGAZINE.  I WON’T INSULT YOU BY TELLING YOU WHY.

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Temper tantrum:

If you read my post of  April 7, 2023,   then you know that temper tantrums are spreading in our current culture. (Three members of the Nelsonville Ohio city council resigned in a huff, and when two of them wanted to rescind their hasty action they  were initially given a hard time, but there weren’t enough remaining council members left to make a quorum to accept or not accept their hasty actions).  I was reminded of this during the week when a female N.C state legislator  changed parties (from Democrat to Republican) in a huff after a barrage of criticism from other Democrats. When folks refer to the concept of Adulting these days, what do ya think they mean?

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OMG!

 Can ChatGPT predict stocks? Researchers from the University of Florida have found that the popular chatbot, ChatGPT, can predict whether a stock price will rise or fall based on news headlines. The AI outperformed traditional sentiment analysis methods and could lead to more efficient markets. From <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKKXwvqXJxmGcJKvsJsBlvPgMnSbWDWhqPKPfPKzkBHNsKRCFfkjZndpdJHhvKgxVpZV>

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INCIDENTAL:  I recently ran into my favorite early childhood book, from which I learned much of my vocabulary:  It was Freddy the Detective, with Freddy the Pig as protagonist. I see it advertised on Thriftbooks but for some reason can’t get it completely ordered.  Oh well, I know it was exciting; that should be enough.  Enjoy, if you can and want to and are able.

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As a fisherperson in my childhood there was always that moment when I wondered what was pulling at my line.  I’ve quit fishing due to having currently found out.  Worse even than dishonesty I abhor being manipulated.

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Corporations have grown so nefariously widespread, powerful and dishonest that if the Supreme Court reversed its 2010 decision I fear our whole caboodle would collapse, due to the disservice of our current playing book based on the pretense that corporations are people.   (But what kind of people, I ask you. Not my kind of people!)  If we keep turning our cheek for more we’ll be skeletonized. If you have a peaceful solution please SPEAK UP!

Looking for a pick-me-up, I Googled Bernie Sanders to see what was so bad about him.  I couldn’t find anything I disagreed with.  (Was it Barney Fife who said “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”?  According to Google:

Seems to me that we’re all a pack of lemmings heading off the cliff with eyes open but something in us diminished.

Was this stage of insanity buried within our evolutionary game plan?  When people finally become frantic is a bloodbath inevitable? Shut my mouth–or break my pen–or my keyboard, this isn’t being helpful, I fear.  But no, those who know better say that there’s no game plan, just something called emergence.  I wouldn’t mind emergence so much if it didn’t appear to be from down below (metaphorically speaking), where the fires are kept burning. Since science questions the existence of the Akashic Records, there’ll be no one to ever know.  Some say the cockroaches may survive–whoopee.  Giddyap, Archie!

NO JOKING MATTER, so why do I joke?  (You can’t see my tears.)

‘The Godfather of A.I.’ Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead

For half a century, Geoffrey Hinton nurtured the technology at the heart of chatbots like ChatGPT. Now he worries it will cause serious harm.

Just in case you didn’t visit this Zinger–a brief exerpt: (Click on the blue for the source)

Until last year, he said, Google acted as a “proper steward” for the technology, careful not to release something that might cause harm. But now that Microsoft has augmented its Bing search engine with a chatbot — challenging Google’s core business — Google is racing to deploy the same kind of technology. The tech giants are locked in a competition that might be impossible to stop, Dr. Hinton said.

His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”

He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”  [Duh, ya think?]

Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality.

“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”

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I think I’ve reached the bottom of my barrel.  I’m not singing if you see me coming better step aside, but maybe I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch…

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Henceforth I’m going to try and limit this blog to light trivialities.  Let’s see how long that (I) can last….

I don’t have the answers; just wonder…

How to understand the phenomenon of Bill Gates?  (In 2002, Bill and Melinda Gates received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged.)

Why can’t I find any info on either Wikipedia or Google about ALEC?  Do you remember it?  Or is that another banned book?

Bill Gates is covered on Wikipedia with much of the material fact checked by the the editors of the  Encyclopedia Britannica.  The fact checkers overlooked the  truthfulness of Teraw, website selling fake USA postage stamps, which they sponsor.  I wonder…

Re the anti-abortionists: Why should anyone want to increase the population of the USA, given recent massive layoffs in technology, and with increased dependence on mechanization?   (that is,  AI, etc.)  Surely it’s not for cannon fodder!

Why is this photo no longer available on the Internet (except in an old post of mine) :  [of all opponents in 2016 standing with Umptidump  and all pledging allegiance except Umptidump who seems to be dreaming.  All I could find of it was just his face, not the others pledging allegiance.  Is Word Press scott free? What can we believe any more from any source?  I hope it’s scott free. Please, let it be or at least well behaved.  If you can find it more power to you and let me know where:

Too clever and typical: I wonder about the nefariousness of the most beloved and trusted corporate media: According to the Jimmy Dore Show via Drake Chamberlin, Tucker Carlson wasn’t fired. just put in a position where he is still under contract and prohibited to  communication with the public about his views.  (Which appear to have become less extreme).

Once the wrong and rich media has a stranglehold on us we might as well party elsewhere.  Any suggestions?  I wonder…

As Biden Runs Again, Black Voters’ Frustration Bubbles

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/us/politics/black-voters-biden-2024.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_20230430&instance_id=91422&nl=todaysheadlines&regi_id=92821497&segment_id=131735&user_id=808aa8374858aa0bb61eef25d704e6b0>

There are 6 (six) column-width ads for illegal US postage stamps on this article from the N.Y. Times today, with the URL (if that’s the correct term) for Teraw.  This is the NY Times.

(If I turn up dead before my time, vote Democrat.)

What can you do?  Distance yourself from the garbage; pretend that it doesn’t stink and cut off your air; pick some of it out to take in the house and make a meal of it; package it and offer it under a new name on the internet; if you’re white try the police; or report it on your piddlin’ blog?

Time for only two stinks today:   hint, today’s load comes from Texas via Daily Kos:

• Texas GOP legislators plan to replace certified counselors in schools with “chaplains”
• Texas agency threatens to fire anyone who does not dress “according to their biological gender”

Or you can just throw up.

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(I thought I had already posted this and wrote a follow-up post which happily I can meld into this one.)  It is titled

SELF THERAPY ATTEMPT

This is a continuation of the blog on dealing with all the current garbage being dumped on us.  It’s divided into the GARBAGE followed by a good memory from the past.  I haven’t tried this before:

THE GARBAGE: From Harper’s Magazine May 23: “The latest turn in automation is toward worker management–that is to say, intensifying the regime of surveillance and control in the workplace.  Bathroom breaks can be monitored. Paces walked, calls made, units completed–data  on all these things can be collected, so targets can be set. The idea, as old as the Taylorist factory system, is to increase productivity by squeezing more work out of each individual worker.” (Easy Chair, Hari Kunzru).

A GOOD MEMORY ATTEMPT TO OFFSET THE ABOVE:    Our old black babysitter laughing at Arthur Godfrey and all the little Godfreys on the radio when they sang I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch…back in the late forties….And oh yeah, the Briarhoppers on WBT radio singing Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie, in the early forties….And the soothing sound of one airplane droning  away in the sky during an afternoon nap in the attic.

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THE GARBAGE:  Drake Chamberlin refers  us to The Chris Hedges Report on American Universities  having become appendages of the corporate state. For example, educators are increasingly poorly paid, denied benefits and job security while senior administrators pay themselves obscene salaries. “Rutgers, like most American universities, operates as a corporation…This inversion of values is destroying the nation’s educational system.”

A GOOD MEMORY ATTEMPT TO OFFSET THE ABOVE:  …Wait a moment, I’m wracking my brain…Oh yeah, attending the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, north Tennessee with friends back in 1988 and getting a photo of me with Pete Seeger.  (Due probably to  planned obsolescence my printer quit working; otherwise I would add that photo.)  Now that didn’t turn out to be very therapeutic, but another good memory is getting two A-plusses from Miss Arveson in the ninth grade in Bethesda, Maryland, on one history essay.  And of course finding that wonderful Indian arrowhead just lying under a big tree after a rain in Charlotte, North Carolina.  It seemed like it might have just been dropped, and seemed to connect the ages.

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Well, I do feel a little better now, but I do know that the garbage is still out there and just running away from it doesn’t help the situation, just me, briefly.

Why oh why do many feminists hate Transgender MtFs?

Other than probably an unfair advantage in sports?   To get a hint perhaps, is the complaint of a feminist member of TERF  (Trans-Exclusionary  Radical Feminism)  in a recent Court House steps protest in Athens, Ohio. She said she rejects the belief system that humans are able to change sex. She said she embraces “the truth”.

She accused the false narratives of  those  aimed at dismantling rights and protections fought for and won by courageous women of history. “identifying into an existing oppressed group, then demanding the rights and protections that group has fought centuries to secure, is not a civil or even human right. It’s a gross violation of women’s sex-based rights to feel safe in areas devoted to their privacy and safety.”

So, it’s a turf war?

Another protester called “LGBTQ+” a lie. “The acronym excludes lesbians and gay men.”  [What?]  “The world is rapidly waking up to the hateful, oppressive, and violent nature of the lie that men can be women.”

Another protester said that no one is born in the wrong body, that everyone is either female or male. No one changes sex. “…for crying out loud, it should not have to be said that women don’t have penises.  But it does have to be said because there are countless people who want you to believe the stupid and outrageous lie that some women have penises.”

So…are they MAGA?  They also must not know of those humans in the  “Intersex” category.

I must admit that I used to overrate women. For some reason I thought they were much more empathic and encouraging than men, also that men unfairly turned them into sex objects.

Now women have dropped somewhat in my esteem as a result of the women who “weaponize” their sexuality, if that’s the right word–who flaunt and seem to welcome being seen as a sex object.  Also the women of our country who  seem to want to punish and “castrate” women who are sexually active, by tying them to the “mess”  their enjoyment may produce. (For an excuse they seem to vacillate between potentially killing a foetus who would cure cancer versus replenishing our workforce  (not the expanding technical one).   Also to  spoiled elected women  who make a mockery of democracy, and even our own incorporation of what it means to be a female. I am thinking of a new female university president who said she was “excited” by her new position.  I can’t imagine a man admitting to being excited about anything but sex.

Oh well, it’s 1:40 a.m. and I’ve probably said too much.

Have they come to hate men so much?  There’s something afoot and apparently rampant on the network called Terf