Walkabout Thoughts #37

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…

Weather for the day… nice. This blog today is from my walks over the past two weeks, about four or five walks (don't ask)..
 

A movie titled something like the Occam‘s Razor Resistance Movement

The 1995 Internet Decency Act said that social media platform, not a publisher. But as soon as, the very second they started using algorithms to feed posts, they became a publisher. HOW is that so hard to figure out? How?

Marlene Dietrich said it doesn’t take much brains to be anti-Nazi. My, wouldn’t it be nice to get about a quarter of our Americans to understand that?

Listening to Pod Save the World latest episode and they’re talking about the anti-gay laws in Uganda. And the George Bush program he set up to fight aids in Africa. They’re asking you don’t want to stop it but how do you deal with having a program like that in a country that is essentially looking to murder People? LGBTQ+? I have a suggestion and it’s ugly. Only help gay people. That means other people could get the help but they’d have to register as gay or non-hetero. And while that can be done in secret, it would do something towards altering the mindset of the citizens. And potentially offers them information. Or, since this is kind of a war… alternatively, you could help anyone, but they have to speak out against the anti-gay laws. At least just to get the medicine and help for HIV aids. Point is, somethings gotta be done. We have to stop this backsliding into medieval times by conservatives and faux religious people. I mean organized religion or any religion that is anti-human needs to be worked against. Anyway, some religions or some portions of some are, some cults of religions are.

I know I’ve said this before, but I still find it odd how many people walk along the wrong side of the street and don’t seem to understand the concept of facing traffic in order to see it coming at you.

For anyone wondering why I got so lazy about doing these blogs, my walkabout thoughts series... I’ve been busy as I said with ThrilzTV. But we’re going through a massive change, which took effect June 1, 2023. Though, that’s not all of why I’ve been slow on these blogs. I’ve been having a long Covid flareup for a few weeks. It’s not been as bad as it’s been in the past but I’ve been pretty uncomfortable with less energy and even worse, less motivation. Not to mention all my life I’ve had trouble with winter time. Was it so bad when I was younger and strong with too much energy? As I’ve gotten older winter's gotten more difficult and weather changes have always been a problem. Like my brother's migraines whenever the weather changes. He says it's the barometric pressure. I’ve historically had sinus headaches since childhood. How do I like living in Washington State? I do wish we had the same weather all year around with the occasional rain at 2 AM for an hour and the occasional clouds in daytime (living in Arizona years ago the solid blue sky got to me after a while). But the full cloud cover every day also gets old quick.
Plus after months of massive work on the streaming channel in trying to re-orient it, to get in line with this new orientation and put behind us any loss of the old one, for whatever reasons. It all comes down to success in the end.

I had a Z 28 Camaro. The first year they were made in 1967, before they were given that moniker. It was known as a RS/SS, rally sport/super sport with a 350 engine. Convertible. Loved that car. It was in late spring 1973 when I got that, right after graduating at seventeen. Replacing my boat of a car, a '67 Impala with a standard trans "three on the tree", 283 engine with spongy suspension. But it would contain myself, and all my friends to go out and party. We'd go to the backwoods of the Ft. Lewis army training base's firing range and party. Last time there we got stoned, then chased out of there by Chinook chopper, which scared the living hell out of us, and we never went back. Ever been chased by a giant dual prop Chinook helicopter just above the tree tops? Terrifying as a seventeen year old in high school ditching school for a day, in a Chevy Impala. 

 

Anyway, a fully electric SUV just drove by. What a paradigm shift in the cultural changes between my old Camaro and nowadays. My current little Honda Fit 2011... energetic little thing. But I would like an electric vehicle.

To AI. What should my response be to this tweet that I disagree with:

"What classified information or documents could Trump have given to the Saudis to have gotten his son-in-law $2 billion?"

GOP ideology: cut government to the bone. Intent: don’t let government get out of control. Function: putting things in the government, education, mental health, care, health care, to the point of dysfunctional. So which is better? Having a little fat for government to allow for a little bit more than it should be? Or cut, cut, cut allowing stupidity, ignorance, and death winning more than losing because of it? This is the same thing I’ve seen in corporations and important civic departments like policing. When you cut them to the bone, they don’t have all of the personnel and hardware they need. They don’t have all of the time to have some downtime during their job so that in this case, the police have only so many minutes to deal with anything because they have to move onto the next. Therefore, citizens don’t get serviced well or even properly. But please feel left in a position of looking bad time after time after time all because it evokes fear and police shootings that are unnecessary, and so on and so forth. When there’s enough “downtime“ in jobs, I’m not talking about sloughing off, or utterly wasting time. But human beings do need time to catch up, to decompress, sometimes throughout the day, not just do it at night on your own time, or it causing you drug or alcohol abuse, or other abuse in other ways at home. When the grass roots succeed, everybody has to change... succeeds. When the top only succeed, it does not trickle down. So Republican's orientation and conservatism in general anymore, is no longer functional or even viable, but has become toxic and leads now to insurrection. So? What’s next?

While all politicians act on the political stage, Republicans have turned into only actors on that stage. They’re not acting to get substantive work done. They’re acting to be in a play for self-aggrandizement.

Yes, God probably sent Mike Pence on his path in life. One thing is though I don’t think it’s the God he thinks it is. Same goes for the entire Republican party especially MAGA and as far as Trump, well... that’s a godless man if I’ve ever seen one and if you can’t see that, you’re pretty akin to him then, yourself.

In any situation, you want to build into and retain as many options as possible, so that when you get down to one option, it’s potentially a better than otherwise would’ve been. With the rise of autocracy around the world and the shrinking of democracy, even within democracies, which America is going through right now, with the Republican Party contingent of Trump's MAGA... Retain your options. Thus, be informed with the best factual information you can acquire. while many, especially low information, frightened conservatives… and I say low information, because the lower your information, the more the fear, the more people feed this information to conflate, and then find that in that fear, ever the more low information you’ve become… So rather than guns, information. I’m not saying guns are bad to have. I’m saying that fetishisizing them and becoming too focused on the MAGA solution to anything is dangerous. 

 If you don’t have a US passport get one. If you can, acquire a second passport from another country, certainly a good country to go to, get that too. Look into your ancestors, look into your parents and grandparents. Know a second country or a second country through which you can get to a third country (know your egress and ingress), either way, both ways, getting out of this country, if that ever becomes a necessity, know it. I don’t think it will be in my time, but then, I’m getting older.
Be aware, be somewhere between left wing “woke“ and right wing “awakened“. Know that "woke" is better than "awakened" which is akin to fascism. But also know if you have to lean towards one or the other in this case at this time, go to the left. I don’t say that because I'm "left". I say that because I’m an informed university trained researcher who bases life more in Aristotle than in divisive American politics.

When did my political/civics/world problems, education begin? I was in high school with a teacher who that last year of high school in 1972/73 taught me civics and world problems. She had been on an American delegation, who in the past had met with Chang Kai shek overseas in maybe in Taiwan. She was very aware of things. During Watergate, in early 1973 we studied what was going on in Congress and government. I graduated at 17 and moved out into my own apartment, and got a job. At 20 I entered the USAF. While in basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base, there was a bunch of guys goose-stepping around the base.

When I asked what the hell that was about, I was told half of those guys are from Iran, and half of them are from Iraq. I asked why? I was told because we sold them both the same weapons system. So they’re here to be trained. I said, what’s that about? I was told they were at war with each other. I said wait a minute. These guys are at war with each other and we sold them both a weapons system? So they can kill each other? Answer: yes. I said well capitalistically speaking that’s a toxicly brilliant deal. But morally and ethically that’s really fucked up. My T.I. just nodded agreement. 

After I graduated BMTS (basic military training squadron) I was canceled out of being in law-enforcement because of my flat feet, which should not have allowed me to get into the service. But at the AFEES station in Seattle when I was inducted, I was standing before a doctor alone in a room with my socks and underpants on. I was the only one with socks on. I asked if I should remove them. The doctor's head was down seated at a desk. He was writing in a folder and continued as he said, do you want to get in the Air Force? I said, yes. He said, then don’t take those socks off. When I told the foot doctor a month later, a Colonel, while I was in the hospital in basic training, for an appointment because I was having problems with my feet bleeding and my TI saw it... it made him angry. 

He said, well son, you’re going home. I was out? I got what we had all wanted since we were first screamed at that first night at midnight when we had arrived at the Air Base. After being there 72 hours we were put in a classroom and told that up to that point we could’ve walked off the base free and clear at any time. About 95% of my 50 man flight of airmen, actually we weren’t even considered airman yet. Not until we graduated. We had all wanted to leave. In that "72 hour briefing" we were told from that moment on, now that we know if we walk off the base or leave, it’s a federal crime. 

So in that doctor appointment, when he told me I was free and clear, I could go home, I felt a tiny bit of elation. And then I thought about all I’d been through. We were three+ weeks into a six week basic military course. And then I started to get angry. I said no! The Colonel looked at me. No? No, I said again. I said, look, you let me in (meaning the Air Force, the docs at AFEES). And now you wanna kick me out? You cut off all my hair.? 

I had gotten a haircut before I came in because I heard it was bad to show up in basic training with long hair. And the guys who still had long hair, that first day when our heads were shaved, came out from those old guys who were "barbers", alleged barbers, some of their heads were bleeding. I saw some of the barbers smacking in the guys in the head with their electric razors like they were going so fast (they were) that they "accidentally" hit the scalp too hard, but bleeding? I was glad I gotten at least somewhat of a haircut. 

That time in 1975, September 9th being the date I went in, having a shaved head was not something I wanted to go home with. So I said, it’s bad enough I can’t be in Law Enforcement, but I can’t even be in the Air Force? Understand, this is after my being a flight commander in a Civil Air Patrol squadron and in junior high doing search and rescue and my training cadets how to march and about discipline. Suddenly I realized I’m yelling at a Colonel and I am nothing. A "Slick Sleeve", no stripes on my sleeve. Slick. I looked at the Colonel, and he broke into a grin. It was obvious, he liked me. He said, OK then, tell you what. You go pick a new job that you can do with those feet and I’ll sign off on it. Now it was my turn to grin. He sent me back to my squadron where on that day we were going through the obstacle course. Well, the other guys were anyway. 

I arrived at the obstacle course, just as everybody was finishing. I saw the first guys from my squadron coming towards me. I was told along with a couple of other guys to point them to the way out. What I thought was interesting? Everyone was completely exhausted, some more than others. Some were completely wet, some covered in mud. When they saw me looking pristine and rested, only one or two of them smiled at me acknowledging I had gotten out of it. I didn’t need it though. I was probably the best guy in the squadron in an obstacle course. The year before I had tested for Tacoma Police Department. I did really poorly on the written test because I had no idea you were supposed to study for it. Buy a book. I got number 350 out of 600 candidates for an interview. Having just passed a Washington state minority law recently, all six candidates who filled those empty slots were minorities. So wasn’t going to get in either way being white. That doesn't bother me. Them's the breaks. 

But on the day of the TPD obstacle course at the Tacoma Fire Department's obstacle course site, I aced it. I had the fastest time of men or women. Men were about 10 seconds faster than women. I was about 15 seconds faster than the next fastest of the men. So it wasn’t a loss to USAF that I didn’t go on an obstacle course that day. And by that time I was in better shape than I had been.

When we all got back to the squadron, I told my TI, our technical instructor, our flight's sergeant, what the Colonel had said. The next day I was at the career counseling center across base. They directed me deep inside the one story building to a cubbyhole, open like all the cubicles were, with six chairs three facing three. A rather cute female basic trainee sat across from me, and with a chair between them, on her left was a male trainee. I tried talking to her. She just looked at me and looked away. I said something to the guy and he just nodded and said, yeah they’re not supposed to talk to us. I nodded. But ended up talking to her and got her to talk back. Reticently. 

I had to go back there a couple times that week. In the end, I selected Flight Simulator Technician, monitoring pilots in a flight simulator. What a job that would’ve been. I had to choose a back up. I didn’t see anything I liked. But I’d been skydiving, so I chose parachute rigger. I quickly lost out on the first job and so I got the second. I found out later riggers have one of the safest jobs in the Air Force. One way to put it is, the Air Force lives for its pilots who are gods. A pilot's primary mode of airlift and land is his plane. His only other and secondary option is his emergency chute. 

When anyone ever uses your chute in an emergency, if you packed it, they bring you a bottle of whiskey. The quality and quantity of which is dependent on how much they regard their own lives. I heard stories of downed pilots bringing a case of whiskey to a rigger. They tend to keep us in on base located in the back, in a protected area, even when a base is on the front lines. On the other hand, I worked with a lot of guys back in the late 70s who had been in Vietnam. 

Myself, I signed up during the Vietnam era in delayed enlistment. I had signed up in February of 1975. The war ended on April 30, 1975. I signed up Vietnam era during the war, so I got full Vietnam veteran benefits. After I got out of the service, I noticed some year later they had re-designated me as, "Post Vietnam era". I'd  had to wait until that September for a slot to open for basic training. The draft ended the year I graduated high school, 1973.

Anyway, I'd heard many stories from the Vietnam vets I worked. One was about a parachute shop in Vietnam that had so many holes in the ceiling from shrapnel that it was a misery when it rained and hard to pack chutes with all the water dripping. I also heard how sometimes they would grab somebody out of the parachute shop, as they did from any shop, give them an M 16 stick them in a foxhole outside the perimeter watching the tree line all night. This one time they took a guy from the parachute shop. He was so scared that he fired into the trees for no reason, until they brought him back never sent him out again.
 

Hey, we’re getting back to the original thought…

After I graduated BMT, because of my career code change from law-enforcement to parachute rigger, they had to cut my new orders for Rantoul, Illinois, to Chanute AFB. Anyway, it took a month. I went from basic training barracks into what they call, "casual". I was moved from the more modern giant concrete structures of 1000 man dorms, surrounded by older WWII, long house, single-story wooden dorms, to the old, two-story wooden dorms. These were located in an area between the Airman’s club, just passed the police station. There were two areas of the two-story casual dorms where people were all waiting for orders. 

One section with males was across the road from another section with all females. Your life consisted of getting up in the morning to line up and stand on the parade field where people from all over the base would come and pick people they needed for odd jobs that day. If there weren’t enough jobs, bravo! You were free for the day! That, was Casual. I had some interesting jobs. One was at OCS, Officer Training School where officers would train officers to be officers. That was at first a terrifying day. But it turned out OK, and my boss, a captain that day, was a nice guy. I wished I could go back but never did. My job that day was in a library to stack books that were on a table, by category. I couldn't believe it. They actually took the time to get a slick sleeve to do that. I got done within the hour and had the rest of the day off, I just had to wait for a ride back later in the day. It was funny as I had to salute every one I saw because they were all officers, basically. But then I realized as I walked through their center grassy area they didn't want to salute either and would turn their heads. So I effectively could walk around saluting no one.

When I didn’t have to work for the day (most days really), I could just walk around the base, go to the bowling alley or get a burger, wait for the Airman's Club to open. I could sit outside in the San Antonio sun and have a beer, and again wait until evening to go the Airman's Club, get wasted, come back, pass out into one of the double high bunk beds. So, I tended to do that. 

My first day in casual I went to the Airman's Club and came back about 12:30AM. I passed out hard in my bunk, then hour and a half later some guy woke me up. Hey you’re up. I’m up for what? Dorm guard duty, pal, you're name is on the list. You got it until 6 AM. I said, fuck you I'm going back to sleep. Sorry that’s on you man. Look, I woke you. I’m going to bed. I laid there for a few minutes grumbling, then got up, realized how drunk I still was, stumbled to the metal front double doors you could fight a battle behind, and checked that it was locked shut. Solid doors with a rectangular wire reinforced glass. I stood there for about 20 minutes, wavering, leaning against the wall with my cap on (dorm guard duty).

Finally, I remembered the Colonel foot doctor had given me a waiver. So that for the rest of basic training, I didn’t have to "walk, march, run, stand, or jump." That brought on a lot of laughs from people who read it. They still made me march. But that got me out of a few things, not that much really. Basically what it did was give me weight behind not wanting to do that could really cause me pain. I almost never used it. But it came in handy a few times. This might be one of those.

I had already done all the PT basic training running courses we had to do by then. I don't have runner's lungs. I've always wanted to be a runner but my lungs refuse. Maybe from having bronchitis so often as a kid. Maybe as some are built for running sprints, some marathons. According to my actual DNA report, I'm built for springing. 

Anyway, I went fuck this, found a chair and sat down. Wearing a cap just simulates you're carrying a gun, as when you wear a gun you also wear a cap/hat. Even inside you have your cap on. While otherwise you don’t wear your cap inside. Within about two minutes I passed out. I woke up suddenly to somebody banging on the door window, staring in the window at me, shining a flashlight in my face as I was sitting there. I looked up. Damn! 

I had flashbacks to when I was 18. I went to a party one of the guys at my insurance company threw. I bought a case of high percent beer (most beer was 3.2% back then). I invited friends who never showed up which pissed me off. So I decided to drink the whole case myself...and needless to say, I failed. When it was time to go home, I got in my car, and started it up. Being cold out I was luxuriating in the joy of its  warmth. I woke up to banging on my car window and a flashlight shining down at me. Which turned out to be two cops who were called by somebody in an apartment because my car was running for over half an hour. 

I said, no I'd only been here a few minutes. The cop then told me the story of someone calling it in and them driving over and there I was, passed out. I looked down and could see that my gas gauge had indeed gone down. But hey were nice about it and stuck me in a taxi and sent me home. Back in the barracks, after coming back to reality, he continued to bang on the door and was now yelling and swearing at me. So I got up and opened the door. He said he could smell the alcohol and continued to yell at me. I thought... I’m going to jail. He said, Airman you’re going to jail!

About that time somebody came down upstairs, in their boxer shorts. Turned out it was the dorm chief, who he was above this clown who seemed to be just a pompous asshole nobody liked who was fully of himself as he worked in the admin office. He thought he was something. They argued about it all, until I realized the dorm chief could even see he had no recourse. I was in serious trouble. I explained that no one had told me I was on dorm guard duty that night and I had gone to the airman’s club, and had came back gone to bed. If I'd just known, been told about it, I wouldn't have had drinks.

Then somebody woke me up and told me I had dorm guard duty. I told him I was drunk but he said, too bad. I knew I was still in hot water. Then I said, Well... I have a waiver. The dorm chief looked at me. Happy for recourse because I think he really wanted to help me (and couldn't stand the guy who had been yelling, AND he had woken him up), as he knew I didn’t really do anything wrong, other than having done something wrong. He said, Let me see it. I always kept it in my fatigue shirt pocket. I pulled it out and handed it to him. He read it aloud, walking, standing, running, marching waiver? So you got flat feet? He took that concept and ran with it, handing me back the waive. He looked at the other guy and chewed him out big time. He said I had a waive so sitting wasn't an issue. Being drunk was a mistaken in no one telling me I would have dorm guard duty and he should just fucking go to bed. So the guy begrudgingly went to bed. No more problems, right? He looked at me. All right. You can sit but no more passing out. Got it? I nodded. No more problems (there would not be, either). He smiled, then headed back up to bed.

That was the last time I heard about it. I got duty off at 6 AM so I didn't have to hit the parade field that day. I crashed my bunk for a while. I think the call for daily work selection was 5:30AM anyway. I walked over around lunchtime to get a burger which across from the bowling alley. I sat there at a picnic table, eating my burger, drinking a beer when a guy walked up to me. He was wearing fatigues, but not from my country. He had an accent. He asked if I mind if he sat down. No, free country. He gave me an odd look, kind of smiled, nodded and sat down.

He told me a story that, along with what my TI had told me about the Iranians and the Iraqis on base, which woke me up to some world issues I had no concept about until then. It seems he was Iraqi. He talked about how his guys didn’t want to be on base with Iranians. And vice versa as they basically hated one another. Sunnis vs Shi'a may have something to do with it. He told me about his life. How they weren’t allowed to kill one another on base. He said occasionally there’s a stabbing, but it’s never fatal, because that’s against the rules. Against the rules, he said. He said he saw a guy the other day. An Iranian. I know who he is. he said, I once watched him kill my uncle and cousins right in front of me. I could do nothing about it. I know I’m on this base, in America. and there he is. And I’m not allowed to act for my family? Even though I know what he did? He told me some other stories. I’d been walking around the base seeing these guys, who never walked alone, were always in groups of two, or more, typically three or four. Now I knew there were two groups on the base who wanted to kill each other, and were barely restrained from it. Violence could erupt at any moment. He said if that happened it was really stupid as they'd come down on them very hard. But still, it happened from time to time.

All this because we sold weapon systems to both sides of a war and them brought them both onto the same base because it was the only base they could get trained on whatever it was their country had bought from us.
America
Capitalism.
The military industrial machine. It was, bizarre. Surreal.

After a while, he got up and said it was nice talking to me. I had been interested and compassionate. I showed some humanity and was understanding just being...I don’t know, a decent human being? He was walking around alone? I watched him walk away. I finished up and dumped my trash. I stood there, wondering what the hell to do. I was bored. Day after day of casual was a killer. I thought I’d go to the bowling alley and see what there might be to do in there. I had been on a league once, I think, between fourth and fifth grade. 

My mom told me once that with my ADHD she learned when I was really young that she had to keep me busy every day to wear me out or I wouldn’t sleep. So I always doing something after school. Always taking some kind of lessons, or activities. Once I was old enough to get on my bike and ride around and leave the house all day until evening, I wore myself out on my own. There were no worries about me being kidnapped. Someone asked her that once and she just said, Kidnap HIM? Hell no. No one would. And if they did? She looked up and thought about it. I’ll give them two hours. probably before dinner time anyway, before they bring him back. Maybe offer me money to take him. Everyone laughed.
I wasn’t sure if it was funny. But I also knew if someone had tried to kidnap me and she saw it, she'd "cut a bitch." You didn't mess with my mom's kids. Obviously someone who was old school, old country and born in Brooklyn.

So I got up and walked to the steps leading up to the front door to the base bowling alley. There were maybe 12 concrete steps. As I put my foot on the bottom step, I noticed four guys talking and coming out of the bowling alley. They got to the top of the stairs, and stopped dead, I looked up and they were all looking... at first I thought at me...then realized they were all staring past me. Uneasily, I looked behind me. at three other guys. They all looked the same, from a similar region in another part of the world, But I quickly registered their uniforms were similar, but definitely not of the same countries. 

I was standing within a moment that could suddenly explode. I was standing amidst a war of two countries. The tension was surrounding me. I realized I was alone. I smiled at the guys up above me, nodded, said, excuse me, and I moved around them, off to the side and past them to the door to the bowling alley. Now in having egress from such an ugly situation, with open entry to some protection, I turned and looked at them all. I stood there, watching what might happen next. 

Eventually, the tension broke and they all begrudgingly skirted around each other, slowly, as if warriors on the battlefield avoid avoiding combat. I ducked inside. I went deeper into the bowling alley and nonchalantly observed the three who just came in behind me. I could see they were talking about what had happened and guessed about their comments of bravado or disappointment in having to follow an unfair rule. The danger was over. Though I kept an eye on the door in case those guys returned. Finally, I decided to just leave. I never let myself get caught between them again like that. Lunch that day was a curious if not one hell of an educational experience. One seldom get a history lesson and then such a practical application as example directly after.

Moving on...Turkish journalist Ece Temelkurn offers us advice about autocrats and people like Trump: "Be careful to laugh too much about it, or who you laugh around. Take him seriously." That was kind of chilling.

So America’s only been in democracy for like 50 years when we gave Black people to vote? And now Republicans have been trying to take it away through Gerrymandering, stacking the courts and voter suppression, disinformation, supporting autocrats, quashing democracy, or trying it murder it, outright. To make America great again you gotta kill off Trump and MAGA and all their other bullshit. It’s interesting just how that whole group keeps calling themselves things they’re not and then blaming others for being things they actually are.

My grandmother, my mom’s mom, used to keep a daily diary. The end of every year she said she burned it and started a new fresh one. I asked when I was younger, How could you do that? Because that’s history and something I’d love to read someday, to know your actual thoughts, and our history, long after you’re gone. She almost irritably responded saying, No. That’s just for me. As I write my thoughts out I get to know what I think.

I mention this because I think probably the most valuable thing we could do for ourselves is to keep a decent daily journal, because it makes you take the time each day, at the end of day (or the next morning), to take time for yourself. It makes you reflect on yourself, your life, your orientation, your path. When I was in psychology at Western Washington University, with Dr. Reese, he said to take your class notes but don’t transcribe everything, which is useless. Do take notes, but listen to the lecture, absorb it. 

Write the highlights, things to use as mnemonics so you are evoked to remember later when you read them. Same as with highlighting in a book. I’ve seen people who highlight just about every line in on every page. I did that in the beginning, found I was highlighting most of each paragraph and whittled that down to just a sentence or word. You really only need to mark up very little. It took practice until finally, I would just put an ink pen line next to a paragraph on a page and maybe a mark in the top corner of the page to make it easier to find. 

Anyway… take class notes. Then the very next chance you get after class, preferably, or between classes or at lunch time, scan those notes. When you get home at night before you start studying, scan those notes. Scan them the next morning. Scan them in a week. Then go over all of them in more detail at the end of each month. And all of that at the end of each school year. In that way you can retain upwards of 80% of what you learned. If you don’t do any of that, and you just take notes, which most of us do unless we’re writing a paper or studying for a test, then you can you can lose most of what you learned.

So I would suggest keeping a daily diary or a daily journal, then read it at the end of the year before you start writing in your new one. Then, for God sake, don’t burn it! Hide it away in a safe and secure place where it won't get burned if the house burns down. Leave a detailed account for your kids or your ancestors or for posterity. I cringe every time knowledge is killed. Yes, you can cause problems, it could embarrass you, it could tarnish your reputation. But if that’s what you’re worried about in life, now you know how we got to be so fucked up. Pride. Murdering history.

Oh, and when you write a journal? I’ve looked through some of my notes from the past and there’s like, I saw a movie today. How the fuck is that helpful to you, or anybody? Write things you might want to remember. Like, I saw the movie Dune today. But then put in things of interest in a more general sense of a  more philosophical sensibility. Write to make it useful not just yourself but the future. To any and all others. You don’t have to be educated to do this, you don't have to be a writer, you just have to be a human being. Anybody can write down what they did during the day and anybody can write with a thought about life.

OK, moving on...We don’t want Russians to rally around Putin or his war criminal status. I do wonder if we shouldn’t pick two or three Russians who could replace him and do something in support of them. Potentially, without anybody’s knowledge. This information about Putin‘s abuses of them set up in a way that would be credible to Russian citizens. Helping them. As Putin, as with Trump, are horrible leaders for their countries.

The Russians or Ukrainians, those intelligence and special forces who are attacking over the borders of Russia, are doing their best to hit only leadership and tactical munitions storage, but need to consider another possibility. For the Russian in being 20 years on in Putin’s autocracy, they should have more to select from than just supporting Putin. Find what is causing daily life difficulties for Russians. What Russian institutions are causing citizens difficulties? Banks? Bill collectors? Attack of those locations, too. Find the sensitive Russian pressure points that are aligned against the Russian people and alleviate those things enhancing the lives of Russian citizens. It's something to think about. Yes?

Cheers! Sláinte!