This first batch is quickie suggestions on how to improve life at home, online, and on the road. I know you’re looking for more stuff like that, right?
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Refer to J D Vance as “Trump’s running mutt.”
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I suggest that all organic food and drink cartons carry only one motto:
“No Stupid Claims”
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I get most of my online news from the Guardian and the Daily Beast, which both do amazing in-depth coverage. But even with them there’s still an endless upchucking of articles about things happening with or to celebrities and politicians about whom I have no possible interest.
My suggestion: Collapse all this pseudo-news into one corner of a page and dedicate it to “Minor celebrities and politicians who are: accused, charged, convicted, diseased, maimed, or dead,” with a two-sentence summary of each incident.
OK, “dead” could get by with one sentence. Or just a date.
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Assume that the coming spate of absurd and violent AI movies will not terrify the young and stupid, but become accepted like violent animated cartoons. I mean, who the hell mistakes Wile E. Coyote for part of daily reality [except metaphorically]?
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A sign that I suggest for any very narrow road bridge: “Too Narrow and Too Narrow and Too Narrow…”
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For online info on skin problems, I suggest: “It’s a Site for Psoriasis”
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Concerning the angst some feel over the plea deal offered to 9/11 plotters to plead guilty to keep them from the death penalty: I suggest, instead giving them life in prison with the mandate to keep them alive for as long as possible by whatever means. That would be a far worse sentence than quick death.
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And now some personal screedings:
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Recent headline:
“Birthrates are plummeting worldwide. Can governments turn the tide?”
I sure as hell hope not. The current eight billion people aren’t enough?
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The sad decline of Marc Andreessen:
In the mid ’90s, Andreessen began a private expansion of the first real web browser, Mosaic, which was developed at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
He initially called his version Mosaic, also, but the finished product became Netscape, a giant leap in navigating the web.
During the build-up, Andreessen posted regularly on one of the newsgroups that were the major sources of info in those days; I downloaded each beta version of Netscape as he released it.
I went online around 1:30 am one morning, about 20 minutes after he posted Netscape 1.0, the first “full” release. I downloaded it immediately, so may have been one of the first dozen or so in the world to grab it. It worked like nothing that had existed to that point for finding websites.
Nowadays, Andreessen is a venture capitalist, one of the most frightening labels in this age of monetary strangulation. He and several other other ultra-rich dingleberries are buying up huge acreage in California to try to establish a high-tech city for 400,000 inhabitants that would take a massive swath of farmland out of production and overrun what little would remain of the enfolding county. The majority of the locals are in no way pleased and are fighting it tooth and nail.
Oh, Andreessen has also become cozy with Elon Musk. I know I once defended EM for his ornery humor and goofiness, but ya know, he ain’t funny no more.
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Linda and I support a bunch of causes, a couple political, most charitable i in one way or another. We give each of them about $50 annually, according to a time schedule I’ve set up.
In return, we now receive unending streams of junk mail from not only every one of them [except for the two where I found how to opt out on their website], but from every other known or semi-known organization that covers a similar money-hungry territory.
If you support any animal rights outfit, the ASPCA will hit you up, even though you’ve never had any contact with them. If you support an environmental group, expect an appeal within weeks from the Disadvantaged House Flies of Uzbekistan.
The other day, we received 8 pieces of mail in our Dushore PO box. 7 went directly into the conveniently placed PO paper-trash receptacle.
This generation of trash is annoying enough, but it’s a small point. What really gets me is that a sizable percentage of what I contribute to an outfit I otherwise believe in goes to mailing me crap I don’t want that asks for yet more money. And why he hell are they sharing their mailing list, with my name and address on it, without my consent?
The worst effect is, rather than getting more out of me by hounding me with guilt and garbage, they’re beginning to convince me that I should spent less on my support of anyone or anything.
Maybe, instead, I should just bundle up my used paper from home and drop it in the PO trash box.
They recycle!