Walkabout Thoughts #49

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts… July 7, 2023, Friday

Weather for the day… overcast with 1 to 3% rain. Starting out before 8 AM slight breeze we’re still in this would be preferred as it’s just a skosh cooler than I’d like at this time but I assume I’ll warm up to it.

Podcast "The Beat with Ari Melber", and the reading of SCOTUS dissent: "BONUS: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Affirmative Action Dissent Read by Actress Alfre Woodard"
Then, from the New York Times “The Daily“ podcast episode, Russia After the Rebellion.
Finally, the Smartless podcast, with Idris Elba.


Had we done better during the pandemic, if we’d had our shit together, especially if Donald Trump hadn’t been POTUS45, we would’ve saved at least half of the people that died. It’s interesting, and should be obvious that we must’ve lost more conservatives, more of those listening to conservative media, more of those who were Trump supporters, and those who became MAGA. I haven’t found any statistics on it, but I don’t see how that’s not reasonable And realistic. The good news about natural selection, and the Darwin Awards, are that stupidity... that is, "selective ignorance", for those who lazily believe in disinformation, who don’t vet out their information, were trying to be the ones through history who die. The Darwin Award for the pandemic has got to go to Donald Trump and his MAGA. But not Putin's Russian disinformation campaign in America for Trump. As that was in its intended purpose, a big a success to evoke chaos, even unto the death of American citizens.

To clear up a few things, in case there’s still fools out there who believe whatever they wanna believe… Masking up appropriately does work and with overwhelming evidence. Vaccines do work. Any downside touted about them is countered by how well they work. With any vaccine, if one or two people, are even directly killed by the vaccine, when you have 10 million surviving because of it, explain to me how that's bad. It's sad, to be sure! But it's not bad. If we do things as conservative Republicans, like worry only about the current moment, only about profit, and make a point about not worrying about individual's dying. They worry about the corporation, they don’t worry about the community. They worry about profits. So they are have gone against vaccines and masks, and such things.

Someone said, “We’re too worried about the fire alarm and not the fire."

It’s not so much that too many conservatives, especially those in power today, are unabashedly forcing into being, issues and formats that are massively built upon revisionist history and selective ignorance, but that they’re utter lack of shame is ever more so more frequently in occurrence and on exhibition.

On the daily podcast about Russia after the Insurrection… I don’t think Putin is a coward. Not like America’s own despot Donald Trump who is. But I do think in his own way Putin is terrified, not like his predecessor he took over Russia for in December, 1999, in order to protect him. Yeltsin and his family that is, for his crimes against Russia. What is so sad is the connection between Trump and Nixon. Putin took on similar crimes like Yeltsin committed and has given us an over 20 year master class in how to skew democracy to a dictator’s rule, and rob the coffers of that once great nation. A greatness he seeks to achieve again in all the wrong ways, which have led him to invade other countries, earning him the reward of being indicted by the World Court as a war criminal.

This is interesting. I’m walking along and I walked by a garbage can. There’s light trash scattered around and I see these little disks about an inch across, thin cardboard, with a hole in the center. When I was in the Air Force in late 70s, my wife worked at an arts and crafts warehouse. She got me a deal on the Dremel drill set. These disks look very much like the little sanding disks you screw onto a Dremel with a hole in the center for the screw. So I just assumed these must be what these were. Someone tossed some out from a project they were working on. About a block later I see more. My first thought is the wind blew them from down the street. I mention this because it’s a good allegory for politics and the conservative inability to update their facts. Were I MAGA, for instance, and the disks were a liberal factoid or incidence, when I was faced with something incongruous, I would not have updated but selectively chosen to remain ignorant, cherry picking the information I have available to me and continuing to believe what I initially believed. Not wanting to disturb my preferred belief. In this case, I was confused and curious. And curious is the key element there. I searched my mind and continued to take in information from things I saw on the street and I came to the conclusion. these are separators within fireworks. But as we’ve seen with the Republican Party anymore, even when they're face with true facts and reality, they continue to believe their original belief. Because that assuages their simplified notion of reality which supports their irritation of their liberal opponents. And so when I run into those things myself and find something that shows toxic conservatives in a bad light, I always try to update that, to be correct over pleasuring my feelings, because they are after all, human beings first, as are we all. Something many seem to forget, especially from the conservative side about the non-conservative side. Or all too often the theistic side, against all others.

Switched the podcast over since the other one's done, to "SmartLess" with Idris Elba. The guy's done a lot! He is, and I didn’t know this, undefeated in kickboxing. As I am undefeated against an Olympic trap shotgun contender. Which is to say, we both beat somebody one time and in one bout.

Idris says he was in a small part of Ridley Scott’s "American Gangster" film. I’m sure I saw that, but I may have to watch it again.

Finishing up my 5 miles for the day, just starting my last half mile back home. I did not feel very well for the first couple of miles. But I feel way better now. Kind of beat, a bit sweaty, but perfect weather, though it’s starting to get a little muggy and it’s going to get warmer.

I’m on my second day of taking 180 mg aspirin because of my left forearm hurting in one spot. I’ve been getting this with long Covid because of blood clotting and aftger a day or two of aspirin it clears it up. I was watching something the other day where they were talking about how strength training is so important, so I decided to start doing some deadlifts of light weights and then advance overtime. It occurred to me today that maybe I strained my left forearm doing that and it’s not blood clotting at all. Definitely has more of that ache to it than the specific blockage in a vein.


Cheers! Sláinte!