Walkabout Thoughts #47

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 2, 2023, Sunday

Weather for the day…NICE! 56 degrees starting out, high 60s by end of walk

Podcast for the day: “Matice Founder Jessica Whited on Harnessing Regenerative Species for Medical Breakthroughs - Ep. 198"

In the podcast they're talking about biological regeneration. If you lose an arm, can you regrow it? Because some creatures can. Apparently a fetus can regenerate without scar tissue up to a certain point and then it stops. Why? I would assume it has something to do with a trade off for something else as to why that stopped working. Salamanders can regenerate, and studies are being done on that particular species by the person in this podcast.

We may have lost the capability for regeneration due to tumor suppression, but that’s just conjecture. But can we stimulate that somehow?

When I graduated from Western Washington University with a degree in psychology, a concentration in phenomenology, one of the main things I recognized about America at the time was in our priorities being out of whack. Considering that today they’re far more out of whack than ever, how do we define that? If I ask anyone, considering humanity and in reality, how do America’s priorities add up?

As I’ve been healing from long Covid over these past three years (I believe I healed from it and it ended at least once or twice already, this last time being the worst iteration of it), and having it this time now over a year, it seems to be healing in a two steps forward one step back pattern. Or in various modulations of a sine wave in coming and going. Couple of months ago it felt like I was over it. And then at raised its ugly head a little bit yet again. One of the things I noticed in my research was how sugar would irritate the vagus nerve, which is part of the issue of problems I’m having, mostly now exhibiting in issues of blood pressure. Which oddly enough, I can typically counter using an antihistamine like Benadryl. I also read something that mentioned how you can get a craving for sugar. Which has happened. Lovely. So you can get a sugar craving, but sugar exacerbates the condition. This truly is in so many ways a nasty insidious disease. Considering other things it does like merging cells and spawning "pillars" within or on veins and vesicles (It's in my book, "Suffering Long Covid".

After a year of having to be very careful about what I eat on a strict diet, my weight had gone down like 15 pounds to where I was feeling pretty good. But now it’s back up to where it had been, for years because how how hard this past winter was to get through. At 6'1" and 225 pounds, I’d much more prefer to be about or just under 200 pounds. I had been down as low as 213 pounds some months back. And then these sugar cravings started, which I didn’t recognize because of a feeling that I could enlarge my diet. Thinking I was getting over long covid, it was a treat to eat more varied foods. After so long being miserable and being able again to get back to a more normal diet was a joy. But I may have gotten carried away. So I’ve cut back. And I’ve been trying to supplement sweets with fruits. I know you have to be careful when you include fruits in the diet, as they are generally full of fructose, which is still a sugar. But if you continue to replace not as good things with better things, it's gonna be a process but in the end, very useful and healthier.

I’ve been finding AI very useful this past year. Chat OpenAI and Bing (where you need to use MS Edge browser). It cannot write as well as I can, but it can produce really good content that I can then massage into readable format. As at one time I was a senior technical writer, one of the things I did professionally was research, writing and massaging content to fit various requested subject matter and formats. For years, I found Wikipedia immensely useful. Not as a subject matter expert source, but as a reference...with sources. So, when I use Wikipedia, it reminds me of things I ad forgotten and it offers things I didn’t know about, hopefully referencing the source(s) which I then use to vet my information before utilizing it to send out to the public. AI is similar. Until they get this “hallucinations“ issue under control and eliminated, where it will say things that have no bearing on reality simply because it doesn’t know what else to say. It will have to remain a reference for now. But the thing I find I’ve been using it for a lot lately, is for things I might query a search engine on. There’s times where I ask "what does this phrase sentence or word mean?" And it will give me the information I’m looking for. Whereas the search engine may offer me a definition, initially, and then many links to things that most are totally irrelevant to what I'm seeking. AI though tends to give me exactly what I want to know. It’s like querying an encyclopedia, only it seems to be more understandable and it’s results are more relevant. And more frequently.

I was just talking to my son about this. He said that Chat OpenAI can now analyze photos you send it. And I said, "Great. It won’t be long before it’ll analyze videos." I’m really looking forward to sending it a video of length, or a text file or link, to have it analyzed it in various ways. I would love to be able to send it one of my films or one of my novels or non-fiction books and have it analyze them in different ways. I would lost to see the result of that. I look forward to one day pointing it to all of my films, or all of my writings and have them analyzed. At this time, I can only send it several pages. Which in a book like my “Death of heaven” book has so many different parts of the book that analyzing one part tells you nothing about another or the book overall. To analyze it overall would be very interesting.

One of the things I would like to see regarding my writings is what we’ve seen done before where someone will read all of an author's writings, and produce a paper or a book sharing “the central theme, or core of an author's writings… “ because, I would find it interesting to see what my writings boiled down to. Or, as someone pointed out years ago, I have written more than once in my fiction about young children in horrific situations. The story I wrote for my first fiction writing class at University was, “Andrew“ about a five year old who experienced a horrific event. Years later, that short story that had grown into a novella, grew into my book “Death in heaven“. That novella at the end of my very first published work, “Anthology of Evil“ (first in the series) is a story about a young boy whose parents were geniuses and had raised him as an intellectual experiment. In a more recent story of mine, a sci-fi tale on another planet, “Jaonny’s Apple Tree”, seems to imply some perhaps emotional evolution on my part, in that again it’s about a young (this time a slightly older) child, with highly talented and intelligent parents whose child (and by the way, neither story being my childhood experience... although my mother was admittedly very clever), became empowered and makes some questionable choices. At the end of the story, you really have to rethink and question if this child, "Jaonny", is evil, or perhaps, justice incarnate?

Podcast is over, I switched to "AI trends: a Latent Space crossover"

Speaking of which, for those who have a fear of AI, do instead have a fear of Donald Trump and his anti-democracy, autocratic toxically capitalistic endeavors. That’s really something to fear. Because it’s happening, it's BEEN happening now for years, decades before he so ludicrously became POTUS45. Realized fears about AI are indeed on the horizon but we still have a chance to be proactive. Something we didn’t take advantage of with the bulbous ignorant one (Trump).

The podcast is talking about Prediction Guard, a company who offers more than something like Chat OpenAI.

As I mentioned above, about sugar… wchich has to do with blood, sugar levels, and insulin. Years ago I started looking at things from an insulin point of view. If I drink, and some alcoholics may not feel hunger, some of us will get hungry... we well may all have gotten "the munchies" at 2 AM after drinking at a bar all night. Or crave sweets. Whenever I have even a glass of wine, or something, it kicks my sweet tooth within an hour or two. It seems to now with long covid, affect my vagus nerve. I found months ago that I could once again eat sweets or have at least one glass of alcohol and so I knew my lung Covid was healing. Recently I’ve had the experience that only two glasses of wine will make things uncomfortable for me at bedtime. I thought I would try to introduce alcohol on a regular basis and see how that affects things. Will  it lengthen this duration of long Covid? Will it help me acclimate and heal faster? The thing about long Covid is… what is normally common sense, may no longer have a bearing. Obviously there’s common sense involved in long Covid, but we’re only now learning a bit of how it works in this new paradigm of viral activity against humanity and biological organisms. Not knowing in the beginning that it was affecting the vagus nerve, really made the thing seem a bit crazy, back when long Covid first hit (me certainly in February) of 2020.

At 67 now, I’m still learning to be proactive about things in life, though I've always been proactive on many things. ADHD I found forced that on me. America is over 200 years old and we still haven’t learned to be proactive. We tend to be too reactive. Waiting till bad happens, then reacting. When we need to prognosticate and set up an environment to alleviate or avoid. Problem in that are conservatives who always go overboard when fear or concerns are involved (Probably why we're not proactive as it "triggers" conservatives into their weird forms of insanity). Our laws, our prison system, etc., could be so much better if we were fundamentally proactive. The more conservative one is, apparently the more being pro activity is anathema to your paradigm of ideology. Thus Republicans have been the longest hold out on climate change issues. And now I’m supporting what conservatives will label "authoritarian", at least in part, because their own toxic capitalism ("corporate thought") makes it ever more invisible to them. It's a mad world, surely, for some.

By the way, I learned years ago before Covid hit, that if I was going to have any alcohol, it should be as early in the day as possible. No not for breakfast (though as Sheryl Crow sang, "I like a good beer buzz early in the mornin'..."). But if I was going to have a drink? Lunch is better than dinner. There was a time in life, when I could drink, go out for a night, come home drunk, crash and wake up the next day little hung over, but pretty much feeling great, as long as I didn’t overdo and especially if I drank enough water the night before, before and during drinking. Long Covid magnifies things. So if there’s anything about your system, you know or don’t know about, it could end up exhibiting itself worse under lung Covid. Which is why when I first caught it the last time, maybe the third time since February 2020 (back in May 2022), anything I ate seemed to give me an allergic reaction of sorts. Initially, my pulse would go nuts. A week later my blood pressure issues started. I've never had heart issues. Quite the contrary and my DNA indicates I am above average on absorbing oxygen and muscles able to continue more quickly than normal but I'm more of a sprinter than a marathon runner (I'm more anaerobic than aerobic, basically more oriented toward weight lifting than running). This is detailed in my book, “Suffering Long Covid“. The first week on this last infection, within that first two weeks I had paramedics at my house twice, at 2AM. The first visit led to an emergency room stay of four hours. I dropped my diet down to nothing that first day, but hard boiled eggs that first day and then six hours later had another egg when I didn’t experience a reaction. If I had too much salt or sugar...life was hell.

What is “stable diffusion“? Is it this?

I am so sick of jingles for drugs in ads on TV.

See the podcast episode from the books to production. On this Practical AI podcast: "AI trends: a Latent Space crossover" and "From notebooks to Netflix scale with Metaflow".

My phone just got an "AirTag" notification. WTF? It says, "AirTag found moving in with you." Good to know, and something to track down if it happens to you.

I used to think…well? I believed. And people have told me this, that at least in certain specific areas, I'm kind of "genius". I've been in many situations where people were taken aback from me and exhibited amazement at something I did or said. My advising professor at university did say I was in the top 10% of the top 10% of psych students in universities across America, for what it's worth. I questioned him about that, disbelieving him (he is very smart, Prof. Rod Rees, is). He thought about it and then said he stands by his contention. He was also referring to my girlfriend whom I lived with through our college years and she was very smart. But we were smart in different ways so that we made an incredible team. I've written about that (substantiating it) elsewhere. Rod did not say we were "geniuses", just that we stood out. The term as typically used on social situations of "Genius" is a pop term just meaning remarkably smarter than others.

 I grew up thinking I was stupid (step-dad used to tell me that but I later realized he just didn't know what I was talking about most of the time. I had a friend in high school tell me that, saying he and our friends liked me, but didn't know what I was talking about half the time, so I started to "dumb down" my talking and got along way better with everyone, which helped me socially, but not academically). I used to think, "that can’t just be me", but that maybe everyone has something discovered. or not yet, that they are indeed genius about. But I no longer ow believe that. The whole Donald Trump phenomenon has aided that disbelief of mine in humanity. What I will say is that many, maybe even most people, are or can be genius in some way or another. But many will also die without ever finding it. A true genius to me is a jack of all trades and genius about anything, able to synthesize data and information form one thing to any other. Otherwise, one is merely genius in a single field or area. Many more of those than a "true genius", which may indeed be a myth.

Moving on... since this whole transition became more prominent, and since my own and youngest child came out as trans male, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around this. First off, do not embarrass oneself with others, do not act in the extreme, just be humane. If I understand this correctly, one would say a trans male was born female. And I just thought of this myself… that doesn’t really seem accurate, does it. Well, those who are toxically binary, that is lacking ethics and compassion and morality, sometimes through religion and being anti-trans and/or anti-LGBTQ+, I think a more accurate way of putting it would be that if they’re trans by definition, then a "trans male" was one simply not born female, so born "non-female" not, "born female and transitioned to male". Well, many wish to use external biological references to define another person, who themself disagrees with that. But one really need look into things such as the DNA, which you cannot easily see and we may not be able yet to define it. So rather than history showing us how ignorant and stupid we are… far better to err on the side of caution and human decency. Trans males using a female bathroom are not perverts seeking titillation. You're thinking of anti-Trans types. Any incidents of CIS gendered males who are actual perverts utilizing this excuse in practice is minuscule to the point of not being bothered with it. It’s just another form of bigotry to throw a tiff over such things and to be so emotionally week and frightened, triggered, in order to deny evolving along with the rest of humanity on such a thing. Yes it’s uncomfortable, but it surely is for trans people. Some of them are being murdered just for being who they are, or who they’re trying to be. because when they try to be themselves, they feel more sane and the quality of their life. which America guarantees in the US Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence directly, should be supported and not scurried away from like frightened little, religious fools. Myself I prefer not to suffer fools, but we now have an entire political party (conservatives of course) where a quarter of America are proud to be in their Party of Fools, their political "ship of fools" where they can satiate and saute in their own stupid soup of bigotry and ignorance.

I’m finishing up my last half mile of my 5 miles today and I feel great. It was pretty easy today. As I detailed in my previous walk, two days ago, in that blog, at around mile four it was very difficult, but I pushed through it. I believe I’ve plateaued now and 5 miles, if I keep it up, will help with my long Covid a great deal as it had before winter hit. I kept telling myself that if I could just stay in shape over the winter, then winter will go much easier on me. The trouble is something always happens in late fall/early winter. It knocks me down and makes it very difficult to exercise during the winter time, meaning I really need to either be a "snowbird" or live someplace with an annual fairly even climate.

I find myself looking forward to going home and kicking back, hydrating and putting those ice packs made for the knees, on my knees. to reduce swelling from this walk. I am noticing, that now I almost don’t need it. But I think it help with something. I don’t need it for the pain now (progress). I might need it for helping  the muscles to heal/grow properly after these walks. Something to think about that we often don't and also is relevant in our balance of mental and emotional (IQ/EQ) processes.

What I really need to do is get the last five blogs or so updated and online. I have one about my screenplay and true crime biopic “The Teenager Bodyguard“ [I got it updated and it's online as of the 4th of July 2023]. It’s set for July 4th, 6 AM and "a happy Fourth of July. Independence Day publish!" I apologize for these delays, but to just read through these blogs from top to bottom takes me a long time. I wish I could just hire someone to do that. It’s just basic editing to clean up the "speech to text" transcription. Maybe add some links to make it easier for people to "see" what I’m talking about at times or for reference purposes.

I still haven’t published my blogs at this walk, over the weekend past. last week, with the Russian coup. How do you say Putin is still a war criminal and still invaded Ukraine illegally. And both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump deserve the full "Ceausescu" with all due prejudice for their ongoing crimes against humanity and democracy.

To make that comment clear, Wikipedia on Ceausescu:

Execution

The Ceaușescus were executed at 4:00 p.m. local time^[30] at a military base outside Bucharest on 25 December 1989.^[10] The execution was carried out by a firing squad consisting of paratroop regiment soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cirlan, while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered.^[31] Before the execution, Nicolae Ceaușescu declared, "We could have been shot without having this masquerade!"^[18] The Ceaușescus' hands were tied by four soldiers before the execution.^[32] Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote that, before the sentences were carried out, Elena Ceaușescu screamed, "You sons of bitches!" as she was led outside and lined up against the wall, while Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale".^[33]

The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in position against a wall. The execution happened too quickly for the television crew assigned to the trial and death sentence to videotape it in full; only the last round of shots was filmed. In 2014, retired Captain Boeru told a reporter for The Guardian newspaper that he believes that the shots he fired from his rifle were solely responsible for the deaths of both of the Ceaușescus, because, of the three soldiers in the firing squad, he was the only one who remembered to switch his Kalashnikov rifle to fire fully automatic, and at least one member of the group hesitated to shoot for several seconds.^[34] In 1990, a member of the National Salvation Front reported that 120 bullets were found in the couple's bodies.^[31]

In 1989, Prime Minister Petre Roman told French television that the execution was carried out quickly due to rumors that loyalists would attempt to rescue the couple.^[30]

End Wikipedia article.

On the concept of translating Wikipedia, into every language… Apparently that’s not workable. Because some countries don’t want a Wikipedia, because that’s not how their language works for them. While some other country's cultures are very verbal and/or illiterate, it wouldn’t do them any good. I don’t know if I agree with that. That was a comment from the podcast. You can do a verbal search online and you can receive a Wikipedia page, potentially in your language, and even have it read aloud to you so you don’t have to read it. We have translators on our phones now, as if we were "Star Trek" back in the 60s. Well they weren’t in the 60s on the show, but you see what I mean. Also, there is the concept… that was rude… I just hit my home block intersection and somebody in a truck facing me, stopped at the stop sign and just stared at me. and they had their blinker on. so I didn’t know what to do. I tried to hurry across the road as well as I could at this point, after 5 miles, and as I get up alongside their truck, they takeoff heading straight down the street, not turning. WTF? Anyway… Another way to look at having something like Wikipedia in your language, while a country may not want it, what does that mean? Who doesn't want it? The country? The citizens? The government? The educated? One of the classes, upper, lower, middle? If you have something like Wikipedia, in your language, wouldn't over time, it enhance your culture and raise your standard of living, your quality of life? These are things you can't know... without trying.

Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #46

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 30, 2023 Friday


Regarding affirmative action in the SCOTUS, shot me down this week, here’s the deal about that…one University where there were 9% Blacks have been cut down to 4%, in a country that has 13% Blacks who are living and paying taxes in America. Whenever we have a situation where there’s too few voters and taxpayers ethnocentrically in a group, in a workforce, an educational system, in the military, or prisons, workers, or inmates, and the percentage is way out of whack? That’s when it needs to be addressed. And that’s what we’ve been saying. In the case of Blacks, way too many are inmates. Way too few are in institutions of education. I could get what conservative members of SCOTUS are saying, if they see affirmative action laws as unconstitutional, even if I may disagree with them. But when you look at a group and see the disparity and the injustice that should be corrected, how do you do that? Are you proactive or do you react to that, that you’re just fine with it? And so we have had affirmative action laws, hoping to correct that. But not correct it 100%. Which AGAIN evokes the question… "What the fuck are whites complaining about?" Is it that they were that week and ineffective themselves, but today they have to beg forevermore for cushions to their existence? That while Blacks and Minorities should “pull them selves up by the boot straps“ because that’s those American's quote? But they don’t wanna do that for themselves? Because when They have to do it, it’s somehow reverse racism? I grew up, middle, maybe upper lower class, and through hard work and multiple jobs my stepfather worked us into lower middle and at some point (after I moved out) middle-middle class, although they were always in debt. There was no question when they died that they'd leave any money for their kids. 

I graduated high school at 17, immediately got a job and moved the hell out. I was going nowhere in life. And so I joined the Air Force at 20. I'd given it a few years to try to do better but just saw no prospects. Between that belief and a curious nature, and ability to absorb information easily in some ways, with difficulty in others because of ADHD, I struggled all my life to get out of debt myself. In positioning myself, luckily I found some opportunities, and never turned down opportunities out of fear. Plenty of times I was fearful of taking on a newer and harder position. But I kept my mother's dad in mind, our grandfather who always excepted challenges when half the time he didn’t know what he was doing, until he started doing it, or teaching it, but kept that to himself. He forced himself to succeed, and with that model in mind, I got through life bouncing around with plenty of knocks and bruises. Eventually with a small retirement, that should’ve been much larger. But at least I had one, at least I have something.

Some colleges, after hearing about SCOTUS knocking down affirmative action laws, say they will continue trying to do what’s right, regardless. Until OUR federal judiciary and SCOTUS, toxically and conservatively stacked and weighted with conservatives, at some point finally says it’s unconstitutional, remember always what they did with abortion. They won a little and they took a lot. They just wanted to pass it back to the states they said, and then they tried to pass federal laws against it to take it away from the states and nationalize an illegal ban. These are not trustworthy people. It’s not my orientation but their actions that prove this time and time again. Conservatism leans into religion, and so you can trust religion being pro-deity and anti-human in passing more absolutist laws.

How is Black SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas not what other Blacks used to refer to as a “Uncle Tom“? An apologist for white privilege. So I asked the AI:

"The term "Uncle Tom" originated from Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel titled "Uncle Tom's Cabin," which was published in 1852. The novel depicted the life of a slave named Tom, who was portrayed as a submissive and loyal servant to his white master. Over time, the term "Uncle Tom" has evolved into a derogatory term used to criticize African Americans who are perceived as being overly subservient to white people or betraying the interests of their own community.

"The term "Uncle Tom" is often used as an insult to demean African Americans who are seen as acquiescing to racism or supporting policies or actions that are detrimental to their own racial or ethnic group. It suggests a lack of racial consciousness or a willingness to conform to white societal expectations at the expense of one's own identity and community.

"It's important to note that the term is considered derogatory and offensive, as it perpetuates harmful stereotypes and oversimplifies complex issues related to race and identity. It is generally discouraged to use such terms, as they can contribute to negative racial tensions and misunderstandings."

OK, so maybe calling Justice Thomas, "Uncle Tom" is offensive. Then explain what the fuck he is doing?

However I have little respect for anyone who thinks like Thomas. "I put in the sweat labor to get to where I got to, everyone else had better appreciate that and do the same!" Not realizing that equating what he went through was the same for others, regardless how he grew up. To NOT stand up for your own, for those like you (regardless of race), so also giving due consideration for any of the poor, immigrants or, Native Americans who we took these lands FROM, or many Mexicans who were in a similar situation, though perhaps not quite so murderously abusive). 

With such considerations, I must here offer this from, "The Beat with Ari Melber", podcast on a special episode:
"BONUS: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Affirmative Action Dissent Read by Actress Alfre Woodard". "Award-winning actress Alfre Woodard reads Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s entire 29-page dissent to the affirmative action ruling." Why? Because of SCOTUS poor standing of late in their excessively conservative extremist rulings. The Republican Party and its supporters have gone off the deep end, grabbing things they've long wanted, regardless the consequences. Because it's easier to take and apologize later and retain some, than do what is right and receive little of what you want. No matter who unethical, immoral or toxic it is to the nation overall.

Is it time to rid the world of internal combustion engine leaf blowers and grass trimmers, yet? For that of battery powered ones? I read this thing decades ago, while it apparently doesn’t have scientific legitimacy, it does makes sense. That is that as civilization evolves, it becomes more advanced to the point that it becomes quieter. Maybe darker? Thus earth once shouted massive amounts of signals off planet and our cities and machines are noisy. But as we get more electric cars and such, we become quieter as we make advances. It also makes sense we would utilize lighting more adeptly so we'd direct smaller amounts of lights (at night) with more efficiency in various ways. But you get it concept.

How do we know that the Bible or the Quran aren't some of the largest “telephone game“ examples in the history of humanity? That being in writing things down after telling them by word of mouth for a long time, and then by translating them so that through time and history, we've been altering them? And we’ve seen how that subvert and/or Re-orients from the original message.

So, according to SCOTUS... racial Gerrymandering exists, but that’s where it ends? WTF?

One wonders if we sent back in time, well-educated individuals, from both sides of the ticket today, to when the US Constitution was being written, how would that alter it? Because I suspect they would tighten it up and better address certain issues that the Right is now trying to make superfluous. What I'm saying is, if we went back in time to tell the Founding Fathers what the hell we're doing with their US Constitution, they'd make some re-writes. And now how today's nutcase Right wingnuts would.

I like Pablo Pascal, the actor. He signed on to the writer's strike. I liked him in "The Mandalorian". I liked him in, "The Last of Us". I heard him in an interview recently where he said he had a lot to be thankful for in having been in "Narcos" on Netflix. So I watched that this past week. It was him and his blond haired, white partner with Pablo being a Spanish speaker in Colombia where they were DEA agents. I understand he didn’t think he would be in the show very long but he lasted two seasons and then they gave him the third season, losing his partner. Interesting they never mentioned what happened to that guy. But when I saw the third season, it was obvious to my why he did so well after that. It wasn’t so much the first two seasons, but they got him to the third and final season. I really liked it. Then they came out with "Narcos Mexico". Which I just started though he’s not in it. I remember when sinsemilla cannabis hit the streets in the late 70s as the seedless version of weed. In the 70s we were so sick of having to clean out the seeds, as Cheech and Chong had so famously said, "No stems no seeds that you can see, Acapulco gold is fine... ass weed!" But I didn’t know about how that all came into being. At first we thought it was brilliant. The weed was cleaned up. Everyone had a shoe box lid or something just slid under their couch usually with their weed in it and some stems and seeds off the the side. Maybe an expired credit card or something for the sifting. Holding the lid at an angle, using the card to drag the weed up and catch it repeatedly to allow the seeds to run to the bottom. Anyway, you got what you paid for with sinsemilla, not a bunch of bulk and seed nonsense you didn’t use. When one day we we’re sitting around getting stoned and  I looked at my friends, and I said, "Hey, this is seedless." They smiled, just puffing away and said, "Yeah, I know, cool...right?" "Yeah cool… but now we can’t grow our own." And everybody looked at each other surprised and went, "Oh shit that’s right." Until someone said, "Yeah, but we're not growing it anyway, right?" "Yeah, but now we can't, even if we wanted to." And suddenly, everyone wanted to. But it was brilliant marketing in that they didn’t have to ship the stems and seeds, which kept us from growing our own, but also made the packs smaller and they could profit more and ship more. The kilo is more dense, which was an all-around win-win for everybody. Except for anyone who wanted to grow their own. At that point, we started to try and find some seeds and no one had any. And if they did, they were valuable. When they had been everywhere at one point. It was a marketing awakening, in the illegal weed market. So Narcos Mexico. Pretty entertaining. An interesting show though so far I’m only a few episodes into it

But speaking of that, I watched the latest episode of "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds" last night. It was a court trial, which usually I like, but not in a sci-fi show so much. But by the end of it, I liked it a lot. Actually, that was last weeks episode. And it was good by the end. Last night's episode was a time travel episode where they went back in time on earth. And again you might be like, "Hey, this isn’t space cowpoke fun romping around the universe stuff!" But by the end they tied it together, and you had to sort of smile and go, "Nice job."

The last episode of "Silo" hit for the season on an Apple+. Really like that show and it had a good cliffhanger season ending that left me with my mouth open, going, "Oh shit, hadn't seen that coming!"

Another one on that streamer is "The Crowded Room". Having a degree in psychology and always being interested in pathologies kind of like shows like that.

Another on Paramount plus is Joe about it Bureau of land management ranger. Like the character so much I haven’t read novels that it’s just a fun and at times difficult show to watch. He takes a lot of brutality in his job but keeps on pushing. And his family’s interesting his lawyer, wife, and two girls.

I also watched Mayans because I was a Sons of Anarchy fan. But there’s something missing from this series that "Sons" had. Maybe it’s 'cause I’m a white boy and not Mexican, Latino, Latinx or whatever, but I’m kind of looking forward to the end of the series. Hey, I still watch it. Though it's not meant to be some kind of sequel to "Sons", and well, it's not. Something isn't clicking for me with it.

Alaska Daily (now cancelled), how about a New York world famous journalist transplant to a tiny newspaper that’s on the edge, in Alaska. The first and only review I read of it when it premiered was not good and they shot the showdown. Screw them. I liked it. I'm sad it's cancelled (I just found out in looking for a link for this). But I think there’s elements for the show the reviewer entirely missed. We need more shows like this. Losing our small newspapers has been crippling America. Native Americans, First Nations...they're getting more attention, but still not enough. A Free Press is a necessary part of our democracy. Our toxic capitalism has worked hard to conglomerate, kill off smaller papers and allowed to monopolize, hampering a Free Press ever more so. Autocrats are doing it around the world. Our democracy and our haters of democracy on the right, especially autocrats like Trump and his MAGA infection, are using the boundaries of democracy to cripple our Free Press. 24 hour new cycles haven’t helped because then they have to always report something new even if it's nothing or worse, which is anathema to what should be loss leader news reporting. Short news cycles and shorter short term memories, news for profit rather as a loss leader for a company, or a network has been signing news death warrant now for years.

How in the hell can we have a fair and balance SCOTUS if it’s too heavily unbalanced one way or the other and why aren’t there laws to assure that NEVER happen? Obviously so that it CAN happen. And that’s got to change. I’m not asking for liberals to have a hand up. I’m asking for the entire country to have a fair and even hand up. Mitch McConnell and the GOP conservatively stacking our federal courts, as well as OUR SCOTUS, in illiberally disallowing Merrick Garland a seat on that court… If that’s not anti-American, what the hell is? Well, more "corporate thought" at work.

For those complaining that the Trump economy was better than Biden so far… First off Biden isn’t done and has he said what they have done and it is helping, it is working and it will continue to get better, such as reasonable projections all say. Let’s point out the disaster Obama took over and now he has a history of a better economy, so far better than Biden or Trump. But Biden still has time in his office before you can judge him. Especially if he gets a second term...if America has any self-esteem left whatsoever. Biden will, as opposed to say Trump getting a second term, which takes the consideration of any self-esteem whatsoever for America off the table if that happens, as he will have gone full on autocrat, giving him purchase to completely destroy our economy and our democracy. If you can’t see that, that’s a degree of ignorance so vast one don’t even know how to address it. Trump doesn't WANT to destroy our economy, just our democracy, but if he profits only by destroying our economy? It's toast.

A new Navigator poll shows that 75% of Americans are against tax cuts for the rich including Republicans. So WTF America? I remember saying when I got out of my university years in 1984 that priorities in America are fucked up. Well, thanks to conservatives they’re fucked up to a fantastical degree far beyond anything I had considered back then. And I have some pretty good "out there" fiction. Just check out, "In Memory, Yet Crystal Clear" (ebook free through July 2023). When I would have said all this now is just bad science fiction or really really poor speculative fiction writing and by a lazy writer.

This isn’t a difficult intellectual puzzle. We have to take money from somebody to run this government. I know my brother says we can run without taxes. I said explain to me how that works  but he couldn’t. But then he’s a conservative who supported Trump, so… But the point is, do we take those taxes more from people who don’t have the money or from those who do have so much money, they don’t know what to do with it? How is that an intellectual conundrum? I mean it's just common sense. The people with more pay more but also at a higher ratio. First of all nobody should have above a certain amount of money. No individual should have as much money as a country. No corporation should have more money than the largest country. Multinational corporations are dangerous. Just watch Rollerball. The original better one with James Caan. The problem as with so many other things in our society today is due to toxicity...in our conservatism and economy, leaning into autocracy, of those with autocratic desires, where common sense has been devalued, diluted and weaponized, all this against ourselves.

Inflation is down 11 months in a row, gas and groceries are down… But Biden they say is a doddering, old fool? And Trump isn’t? At the least, at very least Biden isn’t a criminal like Trump. Even if you believe Biden is, or that there actually is a "Biden crime family", which is stupid, which is fucking stupid, when you can see there is obviously is a Trump crime family, which is not mere denigration or ad hominems, which is why Trump keeps getting indicted ("criminal")… We just need to stop this juvenile fakery and get down to work.

Oh, another streamer show “From”, I like that one a lot because it’s really messed up.

I really like Kaley Cuoco, the actor from, "The Big Bang", who was in "The Flight Attendant". Another screwed up, show that I liked a lot. It was in fun and part is my older sister was a senior flight attendant all of her life. It was fun to tease her about, "Hey, did that happened to you?" No.

Oh, just saw the first few episodes of this season 3 of, "The Witcher" (last season for Henry Cavill as Geralt, replaced in upcoming seasons 4/5 by Liam Hemsworth). They just dropped on Netflix season three. Nice to see it back. I heard it’s the same actor as in "Superman and Lois" and for some reason I like that and watch it too (Emmanuelle Chriqui surely having nothing to do with it). But remind me of the Clark Kent, superman thing, where are the actors don’t look anything alike in each role. (I know, I know, see below further down).

This week I also watched Lamborghini with Frank Grillo as the elder character of the title name, and Gabriel Byrne, whom I have always liked his work. Since I first saw Ridley Scott's first film "The Duelists" with Harvey Keitel, opposing Keith Carradine through their lives, and the Napoleonic wars. Great underrated film.

Oh, and by the way, "Bidenomics" has given us the lowest unemployment rate for Blacks and Hispanics. So Hispanics really need to review this rush to the Republican Party who really doesn’t give a shit about anybody except their own leaders, donors and superPACs, lobbyists.

I se Hyperwrite as of recently and a company called Reword just pinged me with some spam. It looks interesting. But I need to make sure it’s hooked up to this blog. I don’t think it is. If I could make this stream of consciousness blog look a little more... well written without spending a lot of time on it, because I’ve got other things to do, I think we all agree... that would be awesome.

Sometimes I put things in these notes during walkabouts that are just for me to see so that when I get home and read them, I delete them from the blog and go do them. But sometimes I leave them in... like the one just above.

As I’ve spoken about in the previous two blogs, when exercising you can hit a point where you want to quit. Today that was at about mile 4 and a quarter. Usually I don’t start sweating till like the last mile or so. It’s hot today so it was by the end of the 2nd mile. But around mile 4 I started feeling I was overdoing it. So I stopped in a shady place. I looked down into a gully, or gulch, or whatever you wanna call it, that runs off downhill to the next main street below. I realized, I’ll have been in this house about five years now and in the first week, years ago, I would’ve already gone down into this thing out of curiosity. Just to search around to see what was there. I've always been like that. Going up in the mountains by myself to go hiking alone. Exploring local, wooded areas people tend to not go into. But with this time and age, it’s just not worth my effort. Or I just don’t have the motivation anymore, or my body isn’t so in shape (thanks so much Long Covid) so as to not give a thought about overdoing it in time or effort. Yeah getting old is not for the old, but it sure as hell isn’t for the young.

Damn talking about ADHD… I just posted on Twitter and social media today about it, because my son, who also has it, sent me a 20 minute comedy clip of a guy talking about his wife having ADHD. It’s pretty funny and more so if you have it. He’s exaggerating, but it’s pretty entertaining. And the reason I say this now is because above, I was gonna say something about getting to mile four, and wanting to quit today. And the reason for mentioning that, which I got distracted from… was that I had stopped to cool off And then saw something on my phone from someone who DM'd me about being a product ambassador or something. Which distracted me so I started walking again and then realized I feel fine now. So I’m now starting mile five and again I feel fine. My point is, was... that when you hit that point where you think you can’t do anymore, rest, then take your time to slowly move forward, get back up to speed and you may well find that you’re just fine.

I agree with the Biden administration consideration on if all Biden makes is a single term. They should get two. They have a strong story to tell that needs to be told to counter the bullshit from the right. This ain’t your grandfathers voodoo economics of trickle down nonsense by toxically capitalistic right wing nut cases who led us to first to the Tea Party, and then Donald Trump's MAGA and an insurrection. How you can see him being "worth his salt" is beyond all rational thought.

At what point do we make Nazism, neo or otherwise, illegal in this country? It will hopefully eventually die off, this core of the MAGA Trump personality cult, our current autocratic infection which needs to be curbed and made somewhat, somehow, illegal? Yes, yes 1st Amendment, yes, Freedom of Speech, and so on, but when it’s weaponized against our US Constitution itself, maybe it's time to act.

Want an easy element to indicate to you who not to vote for? Someone who is thin skinned like Ron DeSantis, like Donald Trump. Those are not leaders. Those are not men who can run a country. Run it into the ground, yes, sure... to be sure. But, let's not do that.


Cheers! Sláinte!

Walkabout Thoughts #45

My thoughts, Stream of consciousness, rough and ready, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts…June 28, 2023 Wednesday


Just thinking about Donald Trump‘s bone spurs. They got him out of Vietnam. I had forgotten what a surgeon said when I was in 10th grade and he had to operate on the left nonexistent arch of my foot that was growing the other direction, outward. He said I had the flattest feet he’d ever seen on an operating table. When I joined the Air Force, at the AFEES induction station where they do your physical, they wouldn’t let me take my socks off: “if you wanna get in the Air Force, leave them on.“ When I got to basic training that night going forward, I had problems with my feet. They sent me to the base foot doctor who gave me a waiver to help me get through basic training. Partly because he saw how I was and knew that I would continue to hurt myself. I would make it through anyway, but he wanted to make it easier on me. The first day I was in basic training when they issued us our clothes they gave me utility fatigues... that were a size too big and... combat boots a size too small. When the foot doctor found that out he was furious. Yes phone spurs are painful. But you have to weigh that against your degree of patriotism. something Donald Trump has none of. Unless... it’s profitable.

An adjunct to that story about basic training is that I went in "guaranteed job" for Law Enforcement ("LE"). But they kick me out from that AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code) because of all the walking one does, um... sitting in a squad car all day? I hadn’t put in for "SP", Security Police where they DO stand around and walk all day. So I chose an alternate job of Flight Simulator Technician to train pilots. But at the last moment that got taken and I ended up with my alternative selection: Parachute Rigger ("rigger", "panty packer", etc.). A job where you walk up and down a 40 foot table over a concrete floor and pack chutes on all day. And as I was at a SAC base, Strategic Air Command, I also had to pack B-52 drag chutes that weigh 228 pounds, where part of that process is packing it into the big bag that goes in the tail of the B-52. To do THAT, you have to hold onto a bar above your head and jump up and down on the 200lbs of nylon (which gave you the worst fucking shocks!), repeatedly until you could close the bag. Interestingly, I've noticed in recent years they always show TWO airmen packing those (three in one video) where I had to do those alone. I did daily packed between 4 and 13-14 a day, for years. First you dragged them in from outside the shop door where they were dropped after being brought in from the flightline, sometimes having scooped up 100lbs or so of snow, or were very heavy in being soaked in the rain. If wet you dragged them through the shop around corners into the tower where you hung them up to dry. When dry they were very fluffy and the static charge was painful. But that job had the physical body codes for lower body, that allowed me to do that job, when I had gotten knocked out of Law Enforcement. The only thing I really was annoyed by about that job was they wouldn't let us jump our own packed chutes. When I asked why, they said they "lost too many riggers." I eventually became parachute shop supervisor and taught the Survival School instructors how to pack and certified them. We also packed, aside from the 28' parabolic emergency personnel chutes, the B-52 48' ribbon nylon declaration (drag) chutes, and the "PJ's", ParaRescue guy's 32' chutes which they jumped almost daily and needed to be bigger to compensate for their additional gear.

Today is (not) my lil big sister's birthday (I found out after saying happy birthday that I was on the right day, a month too soon!). I think about all we’ve been through since I was born in 1955 and the three years she lived before that, that at this point in life we’re pretty much the two that we’ve known more than anyone else at that length of time (our parents are long gone now). Our mom left my sister's dad in Montana and then I was born with my dad. At three we moved to Spain after he had been there a couple of months getting used to a job Grandpa got him, our mom‘s dad, who traveled the world for work. They then split up and we moved to the main branch of our family in Philadelphia, for a while. Mom remarried, had a kid and moved us back to Tacoma where I had been born. When I was four years old, she said she was going to marry some guy, my sister and I not knowing she was pregnant at the time. I told her, in front of him, to please not marry him because I didn't like him. I never had a problem speaking my mind. I said it and realized he was in the room with us. But I figured, Well, too late and made it even more clear. NO. That being clear and open about my feelings when I saw something wrong happening, got me beat up repeatedly by other boys through grade school. It wasn’t until one of them in fourth grade (I kept getting picked on by bigger kids) at yet another new school, that a kid picked on me for my lunch money. Kids seemed either to have to be way bigger than me, or in a group of boys. The next day, the second time he tried to take my lunch money I basically told him to go to hell and called his bluff. And that was the end of that. 

Anyway, my sister spent her life traveling the world as a flight attendant, and then a senior flight attendant until she retired when Covid hit. Just after that, flight attendants started getting attacked by passengers. Because of a vocal minority who had been too silent too long and were being enabled by an abusive Donald Trump as POTUS45. You do NOT enable criminals, you do NOT enable the worst of humanity... and you do NOT give someone like Donald Trump, a sociopathic narcissist, the most powerful office in the world. Even though I was younger brother, I had an older brother’s penchant for protecting my older sister. She had to live through this bullshit that we’re still going through, but I'm glad she retired when she had. I'm just sorry she had to see this nonsense we're all living through. I'm sorry any of us have to see it.

And I apologize for America to the world for this. We can do better.

Jon Lovett on "Bidenomics": "On one side, we’re building train tracks, on the other side... they’re chasing Adam Schiff with a blow torch, and they’re going to keep chasing him until they catch him!"

That was kind of in reference to Biden‘s economic package, which has Ford building two new battery factories, with American workers, and forcing Ford to supply child care services. I’m sorry, but that’s America. Don’t know what the fuck Republicans have been doing, not their job, surely. They seem to think their job is ONLY to keep their job. They’ve taken the concept of "your elected, so do the job you were elected to do", into...do anything you have to to keep your job, at any or all costs to anyone else, just not you guys...don’t ever show patriotism or courage or put your job on the line for Americans. But be sure to put others jobs on the line and put others lives on the line, and then when you have the time, enable an insurrection.

Elections are a choice, as I think Dan just said on "Pod save America". You either get cheaper healthcare or ... tax cuts for the rich. One or the other, which do you want? Democrat or Republican?

Rumors of some MAGA types yelling, "Bring me Mickey!" because they want to beat up the Mickey Mouse mascot, some actor in a Mickey suit. It would be hilarious to have that actor in a suit with a bunch of other characters come out with hatchets and swords and run toward such idiots. Yelling at Disney characters, Disney cartoon characters? Ron DeSantis and his morons are throwing shade at Disney cartoon characters? They’re fighting cartoons now? What?

And yes, there’s been some on the left attacking Disney characters in movies before. But it's not been the same thing, not at all. Sometimes it's for good reason. But I would argue canceling them isn’t the way to go anymore... that’s been done. Now you just have to voice your opinion and let things take due course. "Instant change" is unreasonable and unreliable. It always has been. It's desired, sure. But moving government TOO fast? Almost always brings on unnecessary repercussions (if one first thinks, researches, then makes decisions) and often we see damages from unseen areas.

So apparently, Reuters put out an article about how pissed off Putin was with the Wagner leader.

A semi Fascist women’s group, "kneecapped" the DeSantis campaign for his making the worst choice of his campaign, in scheduling an event opposite theirs with Trump, which was sold out. I’m amazed with what a loser this guy is. And how badly he’s doing against Trump.

SuperPAC supporting RFK Jr are the same people who supported Marjorie Taylor Greene, and some other losers like her.

Word of the day: MAGA Grifter. RFK Jr and his supporters, see also, Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, US Congress MAGA types. See also Republican governors of Florida and Texas, et al.

Remember that anytime you hear that government officials suggest privatizing government services, 100% of the time you need to only lightly dig into that to find how it’s defective and why and why they’re saying that. Because almost always it’s a bad idea. There are some things that can be privatized, but they’re actually very few.

Republicans: Throw the baby out with the bathwater!
Democrats: Uh, let’s take the baby to the doctor?
Republicans: Wait! The babies dead! Let’s take it to the doctor so we could blame him for the baby dying!
Democrats: WTF?

The day that Ted Cruz was fleeing Texas for Cancun because of a natural disaster going on, 148 people died in that. US Representative Colin Allred is going to be running against him soon and hopefully will win. During that disaster HE was busy making phone calls to see that FEMA and others were on the ball. This Rep., on January 6th during the insurrection, who has a background justifying it (as a NFL linebacker ) saw his fellow members of the House of Representatives look to him for support and protection from the Trump inspired MAGA bedlam. Ted Cruz and others who fired up that crowd to do what they did, was terrifying to every single member of the House, including those who formulated and enable that Donald Trump insurrection. As Allred points out on the podcast SCOTUS, they are our least accountable branch of government, and that has to be fixed. This from the guy who represented Justice Clarence Thomas’s wealthy friend, Harlan Crow, for four years, as attorneys tend to do for clients.

Democrats: Human, dysfunctional, reality based, humane, hears the majority, listens to minority.
Republicans: Human/criminal, which is a formula, they're human but divided by criminality, they listen to their vocal minority BASE, seriously into corporate thought, to win at all costs, screw any others.

Regarding Donald Trump‘s claim of things he said were, “locker room talk“… I used to work out the same gym and weight room that the University of Washington's Huskies football team worked out in. I used to work out in gyms on the Air Force bases when I was in USAF. I hadn’t heard the kind of talk that Trump's talking about, not since high school in the early 70s when I was a kid. Not even then. Representative Allred, who was an NFL linebacker said the same thing, that in the locker rooms he’s been in, he didn’t hear talk like Trump was claiming. And he’s not somebody one of the toxic masculinity social media stars/criminal types can call a “beta male", by any sense of the term. And I suspect that’s the issue here, as Trump's still locked into his high school boy emotional mentality that was locked into place from the 1960s or 70s. Toxic masculinity is not locker room talk, certainly not today.

On working out… I first started doing serious workouts in fifth grade in Okinawan Isshinryu Karate in Tacoma, Washington under Steve Armstrong Sensei. It was 1965. I also fought tournaments around the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never been a bodybuilder, I just want to be in good shape. Career in IT screwed that up to being sedentary so much. I continued working out though, but it’s harder to keep the weight off as you get older. One thing I’ve noticed and I've talked about this in the past, people who want to get in shape, or lose weight, to start working out after time, off I feel horrible at first. Some will quit. Happens every time. Those who keep working out, who just push through it do well. One thing I've noticed is if I haven’t worked out in a while and start working out again, after two or three days I start feeling kind of ill almost, like I'm getting a cold. Depending on how in shape you are, maybe just overall soreness but not a great feeling. If you push beyond that and just keep doing it anyway, until you get to a certain level of muscle tone and conditioning, it’s a whole different experience. It takes that sense of delayed gratification in life that has served me well. I’ve known so many people who can’t do that and commiserate about how unlucky they’ve been or how tough their life has been. I’ve had a hard life too, although I’ve been lucky in someways. But you have to try to make your own luck by doing the background work, doing the sweat labor, putting in the effort and placing in yourself and position yourself, where you have a greater chance and position for luck to even take over. As my prof said once in college screenwriting, a screenplay well written left on a closet shelf will never become a movie. That statement includes that a lot of labor and effort were applied to learning the screenplay format, or whatever format, or whatever industry you’re in, and that it's all accomplished in order to produce quality, then to suffer the "slings arrows" of editors in critical reviews and still keep going. And that is the same in any career or industry.

Here’s something I would like to see AI do… Let’s take this blog as an example. I’m gonna go through read it once, to make sure it makes sense, even if it’s not in perfect format, even if it’s still in a stream of consciousness, and in a kind of scattered thoughts format. Because that brings into it, an art of it’s own. My ADHD scattered thoughts and education, and what little wisdom I have, jumping around to different things, all gives you a brief survey of something and some things, that when taken correctly and utilized properly can take you further than if I had just written anything on all this in proper format. I had a professor at Western Washington University, who could be harsh, but had "a brain the size of the planet", Professor Mills, who could be harsh, but funny, and I swear, and I even wrote this in a letter to the administration at that school, in support of him, that I could learn as much in two weeks from that professor as any could from most other professors in a whole quarter, three months of the school year. So sometimes when you’re reading things that seem like nonsense, there’s something deeper going on, or its doing something in your brain chemistry that’s can be very profitable. We find this with our poets and artists. And that’s why I thought these "walkabout thoughts" might be useful. Not to all, but to some. But if you’re reading it as an authoritative essay on something, then you’re on the wrong track. Getting back to what I wanted an AI to do... I use voice to text as I walk my walk about helping with my long Covid issues, I will go home after and dump this onto my blog and save it. When I have the time and energy, I will read from top to bottom and make it at least readable and understandable. Because sometimes I’ll hit phrases or sentences and even I don’t know what the hell I was talking about. At which point I’ll either figure it out and rewrite it, or delete it and move on. This isn’t something I wanna waste lots of time on. But THEN, I've love to run it through an AI. so that when I make a comment like I did above as in, “slings and arrows“, that’s obviously a Shakespeare reference, I would like AI to take maybe the first three letters of "slings" and not make it look like it’s hypertext or clickable, but only when you place your cursor over it. Then click on that first letter, and it’ll take you to a webpage referencing the Shakespeare reference. Then the second letter will go to a page that examines the context of why I used that phrase and more relevant to the context of the paragraph in my blog, and then on the third letter, something toward an even more exacingt example, perhaps of precisely what I’m referring to. And that I think, would be very useful to humankind.

Ha! This is funny and relevant… I went into the comment above about exercise and working out and pushing through, because of what I was gonna say, and didn’t… On my 3rd mile today...actually before I got to my 3rd mile, I was not feeling great. I almost wondered if I should quit. Maybe do a 4th mile and then quit? Breaking my current 5 mile every other day schedule track. I’m on kind of a run now and I think I’ve done four or five in a row. I don’t want to backslide. But by the time I got to the end of the 4th mile today I was feeling better. Now I’m on the last half mile that will make up my 5 miles for the day and I’m kind of beat and sweaty and it's getting hotter.Which is why I started early today when it will get up to 78 or 80, but I can be proud of the fact that I did it today. I can be proud of the fact I didn’t break my running, walking streak… And I will not only feel better later and tomorrow, but I feel way better right now than I did on that 3rd mile. And that's such a good allegory for life. "Push on through to the other side" as Jim liked to say. See, that’s where AI would have referenced other links to Jim Morrison and The Doors.

Considering Marjorie Taylor, Greene, and Lauren Boebert's clash, and apparently the ridiculous upcoming fight with Twitter's Elon Musk, and Facebook‘s/META's Mark Zuckerberg… If you hear someone you voted for, or are going to vote for, want to resolve things through a physical confrontation with another person in their party, or any party, do not vote for them, and get others not to vote for them. We CAN brute force decent people back into being our leaders again.

Also, apparently, Elon Musk’s mother said, "They weren’t gonna fight. They shouldn’t fight", and reportedly he replied back to her, "Mom, please stop, I’m fighting him."

Cheers! Sláinte!