Tuesday, November 3, 2020

This Will Be My Last Post In The Google Blogging System


Now that the electioneering is all but over (whatever legal, or non legal, machinations that come to take place, after the poles close), my intention here is to proceed to a new site to air my, I have to admit, unusual form of radicalism. And that site will be Reddit. 

As such, this message is being posted simultaneously with Google Blogs, and Reddit.

Since I have accumulated a significant amount of posts at Google Blogs (with something close to 5 years of input, and nearly 2000 posts, see here, and here), however, I will continue to monitor things there, as well as to utilize the trove as a living archive.

As I do this, I want to be clear about a few things here before I stop posting on Google.

I have stopped in the last few months of the campaign because I wanted to, first of all, give the BLM movement a chance to be heard without one more white voice adding to the din; that cacophony being, of course, the ever escalating information deluge everybody has to contend with, these days, in the process of trying get a consistent message out; especially when so many, well funded efforts, are out there, to work agendas that both try to hinder, and help, at the same time. As well as where few on either side of that divide really know what their talking about in the first place. 

I also wanted to keep quiet because I firmly believe that, if you are going to hold off criticizing one side (because I do feel we need a change in leadership, to get anything important done), you must also stop criticizing the other. 

That being said, however, doesn't change the fact that I can assure you that I have plenty of criticism available, for both sides.

Now, as to the reason I am leaving this site, is to finally admit, publicly, that starting at Google Blogs in the first place, was a huge mistake. 

A hugely painful mistake as it represents years of writing effort. Effort that seems to have been buried by either money grubbing incompetence, or because some of the content was getting too controversial for the Parent company to handle; or the ever present possibility of some combination of both as well, of course.

I can can say that because, not only have the company screwed with their blogging system three times now (First trashing Google+ -- which was connected to Google Blogs --, then cancelling Google+ completely, once the new changes really made things worse; and now screwing with Google Blogs itself. 

This beyond the fact that they did comparatively nothing to help promote the blogging content as a whole, of course; because, at one time, way back when, Google+ was an amazingly diverse, and wonderfully creative, expressive place. And it wouldn't have hurt their image, one little bit at all, to show, if they were truly proud of the role they were playing in the world, that they could take whatever criticism might crop up, precisely because of their regard for that kind of creativity in general.

Perhaps more importantly, though, is the fact that my appeal to the tech community, which I thought were my contemporaries, went largely ignored.

Now whether this was the fault of the messenger, the message, the intended audience, or another example of some combination of "all of the above," matters not nearly as much as the fact that important questions were being asked.

Things like: If you find yourself in a completely new operating environment, relying on an operating system created centuries before, for a completely different, much more primitive environment, how can it not be time for a completely new operating system?

Or like: How can you continue to have a viable Democracy when information cannot be allowed to move freely; precisely because it has become both a commodity, and money itself.

Or Like: Could the economy be booming along a good deal more now, not so much because its so great, but because you have the mutually, negatively reinforcing, combining of, first, money becoming as electrons in circuits, seeking the path of least resistance (which fosters corruption), and secondly, the issue of it's need to continue the ever maddening dash to get closer to the speed of light itself, making every cog, in an old machine, turn ever faster and faster, like a turbine going redline, which, among other things makes pretty much everything crazy. 

And lastly, because of this incessant need to go faster, and faster, do we also have the ever increasing amount, and severity of competition itself. Ever more grueling. Ever more demanding, and occurring in too many dangerous instances; as has been made abundantly clear in what we see now in world economic markets, world resources, and the techno-military industrial realm, where weapon, and useful tool otherwise, in both commercial, and civilian life, become ever more blurred. 

And notice also that this all revolves around the growing econo-environmental crisis that Capitalism, as a cost based form of economy, cannot hope to contend with. Not when you come to realize that the effort its going to take, to properly heal things, will be at least 50 to 100 years in the making. And I can say that because it isn't just going to be about healing the planet, and us. It will also be about getting ever greater numbers of us off planet, and involved in all aspects of making habitat out there, as well as here.

So. Maybe. With an appeal to a broader audience, the analysis of Capitalism I have provided can get more people, at least thinking about asking, the deeper kinds of questions; the ones that will get them to consider that this, more than several hundred year old operating system, has had it's day, and that it is long past time for a replacement; and now even more critically so because we have biological catastrophe to add to already burgeoning geophysical, atmospheric, geopolitical, and social, catastrophe.

And I want to be clear here that I believe that this analysis comes with a quite specific, alternative to Capitalism, that is, actually, being proposed (if you check the "Pages" subsequent to the first, "Posts" page, you will see some "In a nutshell" entries, that attempt to provide an overview of what I am talking about), with descriptions of the specific, aiding technologies that I have developed over the years.  

There is, as well, an additional, separate Blog, that has attempted to describe the philosophical view that provides the underpinning moral, and spiritual, foundation, of not only why I dislike Capitalism so much, but also for what guides the formation of my alternative.

As far as my background is concerned know that I was a Systems Analyst/Developer, in the Puget Sound region for over 25 years (I have a still visible resume on Linked In -- and remember, it's spelled Jeffery Vale, and not Jeffrey). 

You can also get more info on my background from the only two videos I have uploaded to YouTube (see KingTVLotteryClip, and Humanity At a Fork in the Road), as well. And just for grins, and giggles, I've included a link to a post about by last actual, developer's gig. One I did for the company I swore I would never work for, Microsoft; even if it was only as a temp via Nytec. 

And the last thing I was to make clear is this: Everything I do is "Open Source." And by that I mean, beyond the usual, basic "Non profit, means tested, application, I want to assure you that I will not profit, in any way, from the application of any of the technologies, or ideas, that I am advancing here. 

I live on my SSI income now, making due with Medicare for my health care provider. And that is all that I am ever going to take in the way of money any more. Which is only another way of saying a pledge I've already made, years ago; that I would never take money again for work. When I start working again, if I live that long, it will be for a community that has redefined work, and where money doesn't need to apply any longer. 



[Post note: This is the link to the Google search pictured above. J.V.]

Why It's Always Half Past Later Than You Think With Global Climate Change


See Also:

Money As Electrons


The actual number of Americans jailed or imprisoned, about 2.3 million


[Post Note: This edited part of the regular CNN "What Matters" email feed (just after the last Presidential Debate), for 10-23, has a quite pertinent reference to the real degree of severity that we face with climate change. And I can assure you all that, even the "Green New Deal," good start though it might be, is not going to be nearly enough to get done what is going to need getting down to turn things around, because it is far worse than almost everyone in the know has been admitting. J.V.]

CNN ''What Matters'' On Climate Change -- 10-23-2020


How thawing permafrost could fuel climate warming


Arctic researcher warns the 'the ice is dying' after landmark expedition


Unprecedented data confirms that Antarctica’s most dangerous glacier is melting from below


[Post Note: This is the post on my last gig with Microsoft. J.V]

I Was There For This Debacle

[Post Note: And this is the last post in "Capitalism Is Obsolete." J.V.]

There Is No Going Back, There Is Only Going Forward, Whether We Want To Or Not


[Post Note: My two videos on YouTube. J.V.]

KingTVLotterClip

Humanity At a Fork In The Road








Sunday, May 17, 2020

There Is No Going Back, There Is Only Going Forward...

...With A New Understanding Of Just How Deeply In Trouble We Are All In Now.

And to do that we must understand a very important new fact: 

We are all Submariners now, whether we want to be or not.

So what do I mean by being "Submariners?"

When you think about it all you are are really talking about is the basic fact of living, and working, in a pressurized, hazardous environment. All the while being incredibly dependent on a vast array of very tightly integrated systems, to keep the living, operational functionality of the whole, going. Whatever that living, supposedly functional, operation may be.

In the future, most of humanity will be forced to live in exactly that kind of environment; the only difference will be on which side of the the pressure barrier the pressure you are concerned with resides (not forgetting for a moment that "pressure" can also come from our own, supposedly social, environments). That and the fact that, out in space, whether on a habitat station, a moon, or a new planet, the other physical hazards multiply considerably.

More basic to our problems now, however, is the lack of appreciation for just how much our own planet is becoming equally hazardous to us; mostly, of course, because of our own frailties are the true root of all evil; and that because it is only our ability to rise above those frailties that gives us those rare opportunities to do things in greater correspondence to what we try to aspire to.

Now we face the harsh realities of choices made, within a system that might have made sense once, back when things were a great deal more simple, but it was created by rational men who mistakenly thought that people would always act rationally; at least if presented with an operating system, that I am sure they felt quite strongly, was based on rational thought. 

Well... as it turns out, sometimes we can be rational, and a lot of other times we are not (you only need think of our problem with "How Much Is Enough," to have an example of this). We are not especially when one feature, of the "rational system," not only allows for, but actively encourages, self advancement through doing things faster, and more effectively, before some one else does; so much so, in fact, that "doing whatever it takes" to achieve your ends becomes a watch phrase; in all aspects of getting, and then selling, what you have to offer, over what the "competition" has to offer.

That being said, we now have, after decades of too many "entrepreneurs" not even thinking about long term affects, let alone being able to price such concerns into a sales worthy product, even if you had the broader perspective of holistic systems thinking, a truly hazardous living environment as a result. And whether those hazards are radiation oriented, or chemical spill oriented, or bad gases escaping (or not) oriented, or ever more chronic, catastrophic weather conditions; or even new found biological hazards, that either came into being naturally, or came into being from our own, greed fueled, exploitation of biology; even under all of that it hardly matters at all.  

What does matter is that we realize that, for any kind of working life to go on, the organizational methodology utilized must become more like life lived as people colonizing a planet for the first time. And for that, certainly, you need all sorts of new ways of doing mundane things outside of protective living barriers; just like astronauts, or deep diving aquanauts; which means not only rethinking what work is in the first place, but what all sorts of "normal" apparel might look like, that would still look good, be practical in both comfort, and ease of use, as well as easily mass produced. All in a system that moves us away from thinking in terms of abstract "costs," and puts it instead into how we organize effort. In how we equitably arrange for the material needs of everybody's required "inputs," and needed "outputs." 

Which is no more than to say systems integration on both a human needs, and a practical requirements, in a new kind of dynamic balancing act. One where we working people would all participate directly, in not only the owning of, but also the governance, of a newly formed Federation; a Federation of more independent City Sates. 

The bottom line to be clear on here is this. No matter how impossibly difficult you might think negotiating all of this out might be, I can assure you, without any hesitation at all, that the alternative we have racing towards us will be incomparably worse.

The Corporate Right Is Giving Us Two Choices: Go Back to Work, or Starve


Map: Killer heat and humidity is spiking decades sooner than we feared



America’s True Covid Toll Already Exceeds 100,000



'There'll be more death': Trump says it's time to reopen country despite fears of coronavirus rebound


Study: Global warming to place billions in "near-unliveable" heat


See Also:

How Coronavirus Could Make People Move




Midwest manufacturing workers sound alarm over COVID-19 outbreaks




Hurricane season is expected to be worse than normal







Tuesday, March 24, 2020

It's All Related To This Pivotal Time In Human History


I started this post with just the first article from Knowable. Wrote a whole thing just for that, and from the viewpoint of how information has come so far in its history (truth has always, in one form or another, been "The First Casualty of War," after all) of being "weaponized." In lock step, of course, with how our advances in instrumentality; our extensions of all of our faculties as Marshall McLuhan used to say; with the emphasis, of course, on how the electrification of experience retrieval, especially on Capitalism, has been of primary importance.

And then these other two pieces from Vox caught my attention, whereupon it struck me, again, just how amazingly interrelated all of these events are when you look at it, not only through the lens of McLuhan media theories, but also through the lens of whether this is the "Pivot Point" faced by all sentient species, as they start making the leap, from the tribalism, that sure seems logical, as away to mark, the challenge, that maybe most such entities have to encounter, so as to see what can allow them to continue, now that they have eaten from the tree of knowledge; Because once you do that you have a very, very large tiger by the tail, precisely because of the power, even a single person can wield now, simply by the easy access to this new instrumentality; and there's no getting off, even assuming you can make it to its back, to ride with purpose, without major catastrophe.

In all of this, however, are several underlying points concerning keeping information as a commodity, as well as money itself, that you should keep in mind here:

1: It will make keeping Democracy virtually impossible, and for at least the reason of how can you have true liberty, or be a Libertarian at all, if you are not allowed truly informed consent?

2: It plays into the old tribalism fears of hording, that are especially expressed with Capitalism's ever more emphasized, zero sum mentality, in these modern times; as we have seen with the amplification of greed, and the feeling that the few must marginalize as many groups as possible so as to keep dominance, and control, and most especially the economics of scarcity for the many.

3: It has allowed the few to keep you from understanding your inherent power in simply not participating in a game that stopped making economic sense, for working people, the moment robots could do the old definition of work better than humans could; at least within the cold confines of economic value, the awful, old definition encompassed.

4: Now that a biological event has forced all working people to go on a "Strike" by other means, do we see just how much the moneyed few are suddenly a great deal more incentivized to listen to the real problems of working folks. Problems, of course, that, in my opinion, can be laid at the feet of this grossly out of date, and mutated, and toxic, economic operating system, itself.

The bottom line for me is as it has always been. We are at war, whether we realize it or not, and it is an information war. We are also in the midst of a planetary systems revolt. A revolt demanded because too many, delicately balanced, and interrelated, systems have been overburdened, way beyond their carrying capacities, for far too long now.

As such we have to mobilize as a nation, just as was done before, when the excesses of Imperialism, Fascism, and Capitalism, came to a head in an all encompassing, global conflict. And in all of this do we have to realize that there is absolutely no way to continue "Business As Usual."

Even more complicated, though, is the fact that we have to mobilize, and have a managed economy, but not a managed Capitalist one. Not indefinitely at least (as we will need to stay with it for a transition period).
No, it will have to be one where we must understand the need to redefine work. To come up with a definition that allows working people to own, as well as belong, to the communities they work to support, and make happen, as a part of that redefinition.

As I have also said before, it is time now for the tech to start working for working people, and not the other way around. We are not going to be able to heal anything until we grasp that very important, new, reality. And the only way we are going to get there, across the divide that separates this nation ideologically, is with a "Grand Compromise" that gets both sides to give up up something very important so that we can all find a way to tolerate each other, and then find common ground to work the further comprises with which something truly meaningful can get done.

In my opinion, it won't happen, successfully, any other way.

How the Covid-19 recession could become a depression


The most important lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic: Tell the damn truth




[Post Note: This is where the original post began. J.V.]
Information Apocalypse: All About Deepfakes


Would There Be Nearly the Number Of Incentives To Weaponize Information If We Weren't In So Many Dangerous Competitions?

And certainly the question that follows from that would be this:

Would there be nearly so many dangerous competitions if we didn't have an electrified economic operating system; one that not only was never meant to be electrified in the first place, but also one that has taken competition to the same levels of excessive amplification that is accelerating everything off the rails of normalcy? And this, of course, precisely because of its own success in spurring on the competition for cutting edge science. The very thing for very sharp people to wield when desperately trying to undercut the other competitors before they do it to you.

Of course Capitalism spurred us on to do amazing advancements in both general material well being, as well as scientific advancement. We can admit that freely, even as we also admit that a terrible price was paid in the course of achieving this outcome. A price that has come due now, in full, because doing just the minimum payment, as we've been doing, to pretend we're still interested, just isn't going to cut the cord that ties us to the reality of an inevitable outcome:

Burden any complex system beyond it's carrying capacity, for far too long, and you will reap the whirlwind. And aren't we just having bumper crop after bumper crop of those now; in various metaphorical renditions; in every complex system we operate in now, natural and human made.



See Also:
The Danger of Continuing With Dangerous Competitions


Whether You Want To Acknowledge It Or Not, We Are At War



Like I Have Said Before, We Truly Are At A Pivot Point



Within The Absolute Ascendancy of Capitalism











Friday, March 20, 2020

Can You Continue Building, Or Working On At All, Something You Don't Believe In?


Some folks sure seem to think so. Why else, at base, would you work wherever your money, or your ideology (because you'd do whatever thing, clandestine or otherwise. that your ideology required of you), was best served otherwise?

Some people, though, also create things whole cloth, out of whatever fevered fantasies, or delusions, that have hold of them for the moment. And they then work, too often to great excess, the process of trying to make their singular mental construct real; causing great "disruptions" from the obvious conflict with objective reality, however poorly decided upon by the working majority, that such contradictory behavior can usually be counted on to produce.

This is where I need to stop briefly so as to inform you, once again, that the text phrase "Build The Unbelievable" has once again been presented to me as a piece of actual advertising (as a direct email ad). And, coincidentally, that it also comes from the same online retailer that sent me the "Entertain The Madness" phrase of a previous post.

The sales pitch for this new ad was premised on the idea of being able to build the "unbelievable," powerhouse computer of your dreams, with which, of course, to blast through any game, or video composition, or music creation, or streaming process, you might want to be able to brag about; something I have to confess to being into for a while in the past.

In any case, though, this sort of banging of old cliches together, to make some new juxtaposition that draws you in, is as old as McLuhan's book "From Cliche To Archetype" (at the very least), where he described the process of taking old statements, phrases, and words, that once had a particular, significant, cultural meaning placed upon them; whereupon they then came to the inevitable, eventual erosion that both the shine that anything new goes through, along with various forms of satirizing, or criticism, that would turn them into cliches.

But now they can be re purposed, if you have the right, creative expressive ability, to make clever new ways to, in effect, pun them back into grabbing people's attention (McLuhan's favorite example was how the famous book title "The Grapes of Wrath" became the ad phrase "The Wrath of Grapes," way back in the late sixties, for a wine company that, supposedly, really knew how to treat grapes, to avoid such wrath, for the best wine outcomes).

Thinking about this new phrase, however, ought, it seems to me, beg one to frame a better beginning question, at the get go; something that gets us away from whether one can occupy one's self in things not believed in, or not, and ask instead why you would want to in the first place?

That's assuming, of course, that you wanted to live your life involved in something that has real meaning at all; because the only meaningful thing about the game of "Swimming With Sharks," that our hyper competitive, electrically mutated, economic operating system has become, is that it has clearly come to worship only self gratification, and aggrandizement, without limit, as an end goal. And whether that's sustainable or not be damned because we let them keep us working folks on the treadmill to nowhere; debt burdened, marginalized -- one way or another, and thus easily distracted; and at the very least, by having us be pitted against each other; fighting for the meager, trickle down, table scraps, that their insatiable thirst for profits leaves us with.

How could one see it otherwise when not even 100 billion dollar empires, and the ability to manipulate whole nations, are enough for most of the supposed titans of our new "Booming Economy." The people I can assure you are hell bent on doing whatever it takes to build you into someone who actually does believe the unbelievable; so that you will fall in line, to work for it, without causing such a fuss, all of the time; and most especially when their mistakes are paid for in your blood, and bone, suffering, and loss of home.

So, as Congress is likely to give more billions to failing corporations, while at the same time likely to be lucky to get restrictions on the stock by-back shenanigans that enriched CEO's, as well as already rich stock holders; and are also unlikely to even consider some form of "Quantitative Easing" for student load debt, or making Pot legal, and then giving the dispensary industry full banking rights (which would pump a huge new cash flow into the banking system, and get cops out of policing for pot), or even just more realistically increased direct payments to citizens, the only question remaining is what are you going to do about it?

Images for the false coronavirus narrative

images for the fox news version of the coronavirus





Don Lemon says Trump is gaslighting you and rolls the tape


[Post Note: Wanted to be clear that the added, ad text, "Master Your Build," seen at the bottom of the header graphic above, was also just received from the same online retailer that sent me the "Build The Unbelievable" ad text. J.V.]












Wednesday, March 11, 2020

The Danger of Continuing With Dangerous Competitions


I have talked a lot about "Dangerous Competitions" in my Google Blogs ("And Now A Dangerous Competition Becomes Outright War", "Already So Many Dangerous Competitions With Other Nations", "Yes, We Are In Dangerous Competitions With Other Foreign Powers", to just list a few) in the past because I believe it to be a very important way to see how Capitalism has become unacceptable now; precisely because the electrification of it has not only sped it up beyond all human comprehension, it has allowed the unprecedented manipulation of all of our base instincts; so much so as to turn reality itself completely inside out, so that fantasy, and impulse rule more than the rule of law, or so it would seem.

The juxtaposition in the header graphic here is meant to try and illustrate just how complexly interrelated they have all become, with so much of whatever bad happens, affecting everything else we have; inside us and outside us.

This is why a major biological event can exacerbate an already simmering energy situation. Or a new arms race can exacerbate the broken system we now have for not only deciding what is a priority, but which competitor might have the best solution to address that priority, with all of them trying to spread the pork around as much as they can.

The upshot is that jobs might still get created, and the economy might seem to be running strong, but underneath is nothing but rot, bad things happening to innocent people, and a solution that may be making a few people a lot of money, but in actual fact, does nothing to either address the immediate priority (poorly chosen though it might be), or seek to ask the deeper question as to whether we should have been seeking negotiations in the first place, so as to obviate what might already be an out of control race to dominate in a particular aspect of one of these competitions (as in re energizing not only arms control in general, but nuclear arms in particular, before we let a bad contract out on that one too; or create more weapons we don't keep track of, or maintain properly). 

Never lose sight, however, on the bottom line fact that, with this automatically becoming a zero sum game, dominance has to also become the ultimate goal of all the major players. What else would you expect when major economic memes have remained around "Disruption," and "Swimming With Sharks." From which follows, certainly, the inescapable conclusion that you are either going to have be predator, or prey.

This might have been a workable way to do things a few hundred years ago, but is exactly not what is going to work now. Now we must pivot away from the tribalism this stems from, and seek out the re defined economics, and definitions of work, that will demand cooperation, and a dynamic balance, to make that cooperation possible.

The choice is yours dear reader. Yours and the neighbors around you. The only question remaining is whether you will wake up soon enough to realize that our current leaders aren't going to give us this choice. We have to organize; take responsibility for ourselves, and demand a completely new way to go about an equitable deal for all working people.

I'd like to think my alternative is a way to do that. Even if it isn't, though, doesn't change the fact that we will still need one. So if not mine, will you come up with a better one? Because if you did it would be just fine with me. Either way, an alternative is the only thing that is going to save us. And a lot of approaching tipping points are screaming out the fact that we are rapidly running out of time.

Why This Oil Crash Is Different






See Also:
How Working-Class Life Is Killing Americans, in Charts















Thursday, March 5, 2020

Entertain The Madness

We are solicited to action here, apparently, because the madness of "Chaos as Entertainment" wasn't quite ironic enough. Or perhaps simply because not only does one never want to piss "The Madness" off at all anymore, one must work, pro actively, to keep it happy, now that it appears to be in charge.

I hasten to add that the "Entertain The Madness" phrase is an actual piece of advertising text, being used currently by at least one, fairly noteworthy, online retailer of computer, and electronic stuff (a reputable merchant I can assure you, whom I have purchased from myself).

It's supposed to reference "March Madness," of the hoops variety of course, with new, super refined, 4K, and 8K, TV's to watch it on.

As often happens, however, the advertisers who write the copy don't always catch extra shades of meaning (that only a purveyor of metaphors would likely catch). Extra shades juxtaposed so as to demand that deeper questions be asked.

Which is why I, for one, also to have wonder how much sporting madness is going to be able to overcome biological, environmental, and leadership madness, now that life in general is just about as fed up with us as we seem to be with each other. So much so that any large, public gathering, type of event, may suffer great losses before people can be anesthetized again into blissful ignorance. Whereupon I also have to wonder just how long anybody is going to be attending any more campaign rallies. Even Trump Chumps might get the message there, otherwise their "Dear Leader" might actually have to risk getting truly poetic justice sent upon him; talking only hypothetically, of course, as we would never wish that on anyone. Not even that particular "gentleman."

It is interesting, though, just how similar sports madness, and political madness, can both go into amazing extremes; with all of the excess one would expect of something that now revels in over sized rivalry, and divisive competition, making it not only irresistibly attractive, but also a fertile ground for corruption, marginalization, addiction, and now intimidating control (would the athlete abuse scandals, doping and other cheating scandals, have happened otherwise? Would we have the hypocrisy of a Supreme Court Chief Justice admonishing a Senator for pressuring other Justices, when the President himself now feels quite free to intimidate any Federal Court witness, or Juror).

How could it be otherwise, though, when the underlying dynamics at work here, are actually quite revolutionary, and quite by very natural relationships; if for no other reason than "what goes around, comes around." And of course because electrified acceleration of everything naturally makes every recursive process turn faster anyway. Which certainly makes anybody making silly statements like "People don't want a revolution" all the more ridiculous; and that for no other reason than technology is already doing the "revolutionizing" for us. And whether the average working stiff out there fully appreciates the "Swimming With Sharks" competition (where so many of us are made so desperately sharp, to undercut each other) that's now so rampant, or not, it is a mistake the tech titans, and captains of capital, or at least the ones with 50 billion or more in market cap, and cash, are always loathe to make.

This is also why it is such a joke that America hates Socialism. As the Fed rate change clearly indicates, making money much cheaper for those who already have large stashes of it. And certainly, back when "Quantitative Easing" was in play, along with the Ryan tax giveaway, before the Dems took over the House of Representatives. All of it then putting a multi trillion dollar total to the subsidization "Big Money" gets, just as the rest of America is told we can't afford Health Care for all, or a living wage, or good schools for all, etc., etc.

The payoff for the rest of us was supposed to be jobs of course. But that becomes ever more problematic every year, as automation makes the continued, reliable store of value, in human labor, ever more subject to a cheaper alternative. Not to mention the fact that having livelihoods tied to ever more amplified want, fueling ever more amplified consumption, is no longer sustainable at all, to begin with.

The bottom line here is this: Continuing to do "Business As Usual" will seal our doom. Work must be redefined, and a new way to organize community life found, if we are to avoid this doom. `


[Post Note: Every article referenced in the header graphic that tops this post, except for the "Out of Antarctica" article, were taken from one of the two Google image searches listed just below. J.V.]

Images For Government As Reality TV


[Post Note: I, for one, feel compelled to make note of one factor I haven't seen, or heard, much comment on yet. A factor that relates to the meme, more favorably emphasized by the Right, than on the left, where it's supposedly, in a bigger picture view, a good thing that the main threat here is only for a limited set of vulnerable populations; keeping the emphasis there on the aged, and their infirmities, and not so much on the infirmities one gets, for various reasons, as a marginalized population. Bad as that might actually be, there is, inherent in this kind of thinking, an omission of imagination that is astonishing. I say that because one need only take a small moment to consider viable possibilities that ought to concern even healthy, younger demographic groups; and it goes like this:
In a new world, of now two, separate, flu symptom related, virus born illnesses, where the new one is at least ten times more lethal than the already established variety, suppose you are unlucky enough to first catch a new variation of the established flu. And because you're young, and busy, you seldom take the time, let alone have the time to keep reminding yourself, to take whatever flu shots the government tires to provide. So suppose further that that little dance with the virus devil sets you back quite a bit, in order to get over it. Leaving you weakened in other words; generally, as well as specifically to your immune system's response capabilities. And then, unlucky you, you get the new guy on the block version. At which point, dear reader, you are truly rolling the dice as to what is going to happen. And I can only hope you think long, and hard on just how problematic that roll might be. And after that realize you really do need to be involved in how things absolutely have to change J.V.]

Images For Coronavirus In America


Out of Antarctica, churnings of climate change



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