Wow BBC

You should really work on your tone.  Check out the middle bottom title here.

Journalistic suicide

How to stop spreading fake news? Ceasing to read BBC would be a good start....

Nirvana

Empty Message

Back 2 Neal

I've been bouncing around a lot lately. Fasting, not fasting. Stress eating. Yelling at the kids. Flying off the handle. It's so not me. I need to get back to my usual zen self.

Food has been poisoning me. I need to just keep it simple. Eat what I need. Stop stress eating when the kids get on my nerves.

I used to be one of the most patient people. No more. I'm not sure why, either. Everything seems to be going our way. Katy is making more than an SES. I'm making a ton of money for doing basically....nothing. Not quite nothing. But very little indeed. Certainly less than I've ever done. So many toxic work experiences over the past 11 years have taken their toll. It's time to let them go and move forward.

Part of the problem now acute anxiety over the kids future and the state of the world. And the fear of feeding them into the same system that I went through. The idiot education machine. Run by idiots. Taught by idiots. Surrounded by idiots. Yeah....that one. Is it wrong for me to want something a bit better for my kids? But what would be better. Home schooling? That wouldn't be the most healthy option, particularly if I'm the teacher. My world view isn't the best to rub off on young minds. Attitudes are contagious...mine might kll you.

Private school with all the other privileged youths? Perhaps the quality of education would be better, but I wouldn't want them interacting with fucked up preps.

<sigh>

Also it's pretty fucking obvious that this world is flying apart at an alarmingly accelerating rate. Climate change is accelerating. We were inundated with rain yet again, in mid-December. Do the climate deniers never go outside? Are their yards not turning into swamps while the West burns? I really don't get it. It's right out your fucking window, moron!

And don't even get me started on the political situation. Suffice it to say that all governments, like all bloated bureaucracies, are totally incapable of responding to any threat. "Power of One" was added to Netflix, on a side note, and I watched my favorite scene with the prisoner's concert. After that scene, it cuts back to the main character's school, and the teacher says "Any system that spends resources attacking that which least threatens it will not survive a generation." Holy shit, how prescient. That's where we are. Ignoring the truly existential threats and focusing on things that don't matter two dingoes kidneys.

Honestly it's a lot like the situation I faced in high school. Exactly, actually. I was overweight and started training to survive nuclear war. I lost 50 lbs in a month by watching my diet and starting to run. Well, running isn't an option anymore. I've learned after 25 years of running that it's useless, and there's a lot of better things you can do. But here I am, facing existential threats, but this time to my children. So, like then, I guess I have the option of just giving up or fighting my way the fuck out.

I chose fight. Doing nothing isn't an option. Filtering what I do to what I like seems the most logical course. I like lifting. Hitting things. A healthy dose of physical labor now and then. There's ample opportunity for all of those. Fuck endless and pointless cardio. Fast when you want. When you eat, eat things you like and eat what your body needs. Change your stress response from eating to fasting.

There is no system, no master plan. The universe....is indifferent. I should be too. Through all the fight in my youth I came to a zen-like detachment from the world. I discovered that humanity was ultimately worthless and that nothing I could do would change this fact. I also learned that, logically, humanity is destined to destroy ourselves. For the longest time I wrestled with this undeniable fact. In the end, all I was able to control was the level of my emotional attachment to it and the effect that depressing reality has on me. For a decade it inoculated me against pretty much anything. The total annihilation of mankind being an inevitable foregone conclusion, everything else seems a moot point. I am always startled at what people get hung up on, particularly at work. I mean people argue and get worked up over the dumbest fucking shit. Jesus.

People at work still mention that they are surprised how things never affect me. It's because work means nothing to me. Accomplishment, recognition, promotion, awards....I have no need for these things. Nor should you.

What matters to me is my family. My friends. Their future. I know in the end I am just as helpless in shaping those as I discovered earlier in life. I guess I need to learn to let go a bit and let things play out. And just do my best to guide them through the tempest, both literal and metaphorical, that they are facing.

The reminder to go lift just popped up on my screen. A couple of last thoughts before I go do the 3-rep max all muscle groups shred....a key part of letting go of how fucked up the world is getting would be detachment from the digital globe. Step 1: Stop reading news....spoiler alert - it's all bad. Step 2: Ditch the smartphone, it's too easy to lose yourself texting, checking email, weather, news, whatever. None of it is shit you need to know. You have a life to live. Get off the fucking phone and do it. Step 3: Say a big "Fuck you" to cooking, cleaning, doing housework, etc. and spend more time playing with the kids.

How troublesome.

Road to Recovery

I had a vasectomy on Tuesday. It's Thursday. Most of Tuesday was spent icing my balls. Wednesday, I went to work in the morning, got some beer at lunch, and then went home. Today I'm at work and it's OK, but the sutures are still sticking out and getting hung on any gauze I put on them. So now I'm down to underwear and we'll see how that goes.

Since I'm recovering, I guess it's time to revisit everything else. Evaluate what works for me and what doesn't. I've really been digging the lifting. Having some down time has let me slow down and think a bit more.

Last week we got our first plug-in hybrid, the Honda Clarity. After driving it, I got in the van and thought: "What kind of monster drives an internal combustion engine?" ICE is dead. A dinosaur that runs on dinosaurs. Today I got lunch at Mom's Organic Market, and topped off the battery for free while I ate. Yup, this is the way to go. Wholesome food and free energy. No gas. Shit, why didn't I do this a long time ago?

I've also been thinking about Elon Musk's Boring company project. All the nerds at work love it. At the unveiling, Elon said that "we work in 3-D buildings" surrounded by 2-D infrastructure, so it's no wonder there's traffic when everyone piles out of the buildings and into the streets at the same time. Duh Elon. But instead of pouring all those resources into a matrix of underground tunnels, we fundamentally change the way we operate? I'll tell you why....it's free. The same reason fasting isn't taken seriously in this country. It's effective and it's free. Free and logical solutions are verboten. Only solutions that generate money for overlords like Musk are the ones considered and promoted endlessly on TV.

Wow....that tunnel promo really rubbed me the wrong way. We should instead revamp the idiotic way our society operates to provide a practically endless infrastructure project to his company. He's pitching the same tired shit to keep society wasteful, but he wants you doing it in a Tesla rather than a Ford. This isn't the way to overhaul our infrastructure. We should instead leverage technology and flexible work schedules to reduce traffic.

Stagger shifts for all workers.....and maximize telework? Dare I say, make it state law or local ordnance in high traffic areas that all professionals be provided the opportunity for full time telework? No professional job needs an office. All you need is an internet connection, a computer, and a desk. This would save companies all all of the office overhead and waste maintaining climate control. Plus it would save all the wasted time and energy commuting. While you're at it, ban work travel except in extreme conditions. There's no reason to fly across the country or continents to have a face to face meeting. Try Skype, fuckheads!

Why aren't we doing this? Well, as I mentioned above, these changes are logical. Strike one. They would reduce mindless consumption. Strike two. Many of them are free. Strike fucking three.

Money. Corporations want you burning as much of that gas as possible, so you have to keep paying. They want you all in the same place at the same time. They want control. They want everything. Your time, your work, your kids, your life. They're all in bed together, inventing ways to fuck you out of everything you have. Even the planet. And it's working. Frugality will never be in vogue. But saving the planet may be once things get so bad they can turn a profit doing it. That's where all your kids money is gonna go. Buying air filters, masks, and habitability systems to keep them alive on this wasted rock.

<sigh>

I think we should all read a couple of books again. Ones that were probably introduced to us a long time ago, when we were kids and we couldn't appreciate them. That was definitely by design. One, you probably wouldn't read it again. And two, you were inoculated against wanting to read them because you were forced to. "Walden" and "Self-Reliance." One focuses on the bare minimum needs. The second, on your responsibility to take care of yourself.

They want you to think you're all alone. You're not. We're all isolated together. More and more of us are starting to wise up to the lies. Waking up to the truth. On the radio last night, "Jazz and Justice," a talk host was railing against capitalism, saying that our elections are important not because of what they offer us, but what they don't.....an alternative to capitalism. Fucking A.

Face it, the government isn't going to help. It won't be allowed to by its handlers. Corporations aren't going to help beyond a level that is tax recoverable. I hate to break this to you, but it's all on you. On us. The only way this ship can be righted is if a whole lot of people stand up, brush themselves off, and do the right thing. Ignoring cost. Ignoring trends. Ignoring ads and societal pressure and all the other bullshit that's been put in our way.

Join......or die.

Late bloomer

bravo US.....bravo.  The last horse finally crosses the finishing line.  Should we all go have cookies now that lynching is officially a federal crime?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46634184

this place, man.....wow

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/

Again.  I would be surprised.  But this is America after all :(

bits of truth leak out

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176369/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_seeing_our_wars_for_the_first_time/#more

Shattered Skies

It's pretty clear now that the world is headed straight down the toilet. No real surprise there. Humanity can't grapple with the major issues facing it. In the past, technological or agricultural innovation may have saved the day, but I don't see that happening this time around. For one, we are getting less intelligent. Evolution is playing the darker side of its hand and rewarding those who reproduce more. Our education systems, designed to produce factory workers and not free thinkers, is working all too well. All of our innovators are flocking to design the next big useless app, while our society decays into a molten mess of cell phone addiction and advertising. In three generations we have lost our ability to be good stewards of the earth, forgetting how to grow our own food, forgetting self-reliance, wasting so much that it is truly mind-boggling. The current system is so wildly unsustainable that its reign-bearers were forced to create whole media industries to misinform the public and turn them into little more than cattle.

People are starting to wake up to this, but there's not much they can do about it. They're too invested in the system to wish for its end. With the fall of every empire comes an excruciating reckoning, a dark age, that lasts a very long time. People talk about corrections, well, this "correction" will be quite devastating and its intensity will only intensify the longer it takes to occur. If we wait long enough, humanity may not even survive.

That's why I wholly endorse Trump 2020. No other single factor is going to speed the complete collapse of global capitalism than another Trump administration. At the very least, the number of people waking up to reality is higher when he is around.

I'm not saying, in any way, that I like Trump. I detest the man. I think he is the pure embodiment of the worst qualities of man. Furthermore, it's obvious that his "populist" message is a fraud. He never has and never will care about the little guy. He's using this as a podium to line his pockets, and he'll probably move to China once all is said and done. They'll open their arms to him, because he is basically their best advocate.

I suppose that's the hypocrisy in it all. I know the system needs to fall, but honestly I've been spoiled by the system. If it holds out, I could retire at 50 and be done! But I think we all need to start asking ourselves what the true cost of our comfort is. Certainly it's destroying the rest of the world, and has been for a very long time. It's also destroying our children's future. Seriously, what is going to be left for them? Will there even be an economy once the Earth is stripped bare of its resources?

There's not going to be much left for my kids. Much less their kids. It's probably time to teach them the things that we have all forgotten, like growing your own food. Hunting. Living off the land. Better yet, it's time we all started doing these things and stop spending all of our time earning money that won't be worth anything after the impending collapse.

How much electricity do you really need? And I mean need in the sense of survival? Very little. Perhaps enough to run one fridge and a hot plate. You don't need lighting. You don't need a cell phone, a TV, washing machine, dryer, hot water heater, etc....etc.....etc. What you really need is to take back control of your life instead of outsourcing it.

You could build a small home with everything you need for $15-$20k. Some land in West Virginia, <$10k per acre. You only need a couple of acres to grow everything you need on a vegetarian diet. Grow as much of your own food as you can, like our grandparents did. Consider it your own victory garden. Buy or hunt the meat you want. Better yet, raise some goats or trade veggie harvest for meat. Would it be an easy life? Hell no. But you would be free from a lot of unnecessary garbage that is killing both you and the planet.

My meager early retirement would more than cover it. As would part time work. Wish I could get to it now. The best I can do right now is go as off-grid as possible and use as few resources as possible. Insulate the house. Install solar panels. Electric car. At least for another 10 years until I'm early retirement eligible. I wonder if there'll be a world left to retire in by then......

the truth ain't pretty, friend....

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

I think their estimates are low.

The truth is out there

UFOs over Ireland, east coast, west coast, scientists saying that extra-solar system objects are alien probes.  

All these stories made me go back and watch the Anasazi X-files trilogy of episodes.  In the blessing way episode, there is a great intro replicated in this graphic.