He's only 25 once.
Men, boys - especially the boys - read this email, which I found in my spam folder this afternoon.
It's important to read it thoroughly.
But first, read this:
Even if you've been poking around on naughty websites, and especially if you feel guilty about it, remember this: These creeps have nothing on you. They blast these messages out to every email address with a pulse and hope some poor vulnerable soul reads it, listens to the guilt already stirring within and gives in to their demands for money. That's all they want, is money. Don't give it to them. They can't do a thing to you; they have not been recording your actions. They just want to play the guilt and fear you feel for money.
If you feel bad about what you've done, that's fine. Guilt is your soul's way of prompting you to quit your behavior. Concentrate on changing your behavior rather than listening to that pathetic, greedy voice that got lucky in finding a guilty soul with their shitty email. Don't give them money; that's all they care about.
Don't believe me? Talk with someone you trust. If you're religious, talk to your religious adviser. Talk with your spouse, your parents, a trusted teacher or anyone else you know will tell you the truth. Get help from people who know you and love you and care about you. Don't listen to the empty threats of some Internet jerk who's only trolling around for money.
People have killed themselves out of guilt and fear after they got a message like this. If you're having such thoughts, call the Suicide and Crisis Hotline at 988 now. They're there 24 hours a day.
I'm a religious person and believe sincerely that the worth of souls is great in the eyes of God.
Things my dogs bark at:
1. Squirrels
2. Birds
3. Leaves
4. The absence of squirrels
5. The great dane next door who will one of these days burst through the fence rather than leap to cling to the top of it to bark back
6. Squirrels
7. Random oxygen molecules
8. Cosmic rays
9. Me, if they forget I've left the room
10. Anyone else, if they forget they've left the room
11. The great dane next door even though they don't like the fact it can leap up and perch on the fence to bark back at them
12. Squirrels
13. Each other
14. Nothing in particular
15. Those stupid squirrels
16. Those STUPID squirrels
I need a vacation. And not just a vacation vacation.
I need a wizard to leave a queer mark on my bright green door declaring to all who read it: "Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward."
That kind of vacation.
Here's what I've hidden in the past few days:
A Sailor's Wife -- general ragebait.
Conservative Byte by WJ -- conservative crapola.
Russian Foreign Ministry -- propaganda.
Althea Riley -- conservative crapola.
Your Nation -- general asshattery.
Brietbart -- black belt asshattery.
Again, less time spent on social media lately.
Still, my Kindle Fire is the device that shows me the most crap I end up hiding. My desktop experience is getting better by degrees. My Samsung phone still remains the best.
1. I will hide pages first, people I have encountered only online second, and people I have met in meat space only on rare occasions. The first two won't care that I've hidden their stuff. But meat space people are meat space people.
2. I will be ecumenical. I may hide crap from one political party more than another, but crap from both sides will be hidden.
3. Legitimate news sites will not be hidden, even if I don't agree with their politics.
So more than a year ago I bought a coil of ethernet cable for some random projects around the house, the biggest being stringing some wire from our solar power controller on the north side of the house to where our router is on the south side of the house.
I was rearranging some things in the study today and decided today was the day.
And man do I suck at snaking wire.
I had hoped to use some speaker wire that was in the ceiling already to pull the new cable through, but that wire was really stuck. So I went to the old standby, poking holes in the walls so I could fish the cable through.
I did succeed in getting the wire mostly snaked -- I have to finish by getting it from the pantry into the crawlspace under the bathroom and then out the side of the house toward the power controller. Then I have to actually get the solar power company to come and connect the cabling, since I'm not allowed to poke the innards of the device.
More than a decade ago, as part of a furnace installation in our basement, I ran some ethernet cable through the ceiling in the study so I could have a wired connection between my printer and the computer.
A few years ago things stopped working, shortly after I hung some pictures, so I thought I'd skewered the cable with a nail.
Tonight I decided it was time to pull that cable and in the process snake a new one through the wall. But it also gave me an opportunity to test the nifty cable tester I got for Christmas.
I plugged things in and the tester told me the cable was good.
Not believing the lying tester, I turned off the wifi on my computer, plugged the cable into it and into the network switch I'm installing, and the cable worked just fine.
So there's less cable snaking I have to do as I build the network. Pretty cool.
And wow, the camera on my phone is terrible.
Here's what's been hidden in the last few days:
The Animal Rescue by GreaterGood -- that stupid "paddling reintroduced to schools" thing. Obviously trying to drive traffic or get likes or hit the algorithm or whatever.
NTP Television -- Lying, plain and simple.
Donald J. Trump -- Lying. Also, I have no idea if that's the real Trump, associated with Trump's team or whatnot. Nevertheless, hidden.
Notice News -- Leftist crapola.
NTD Australia -- I don't need pro-goon propaganda from a country full of kangaroos.
Countdown to Christmas -- I'll be honest, I'm much more interested in how good weather will be coming, not how soon next Christmas will be here.
Congressman Mary Miller -- Not my congressman.
This might make it look like I'm slowing down in hiding stuff. Not necessarily; just spending less time on social media.
1. I will hide pages first, people I have encountered only online second, and people I have met in meat space only on rare occasions. The first two won't care that I've hidden their stuff. But meat space people are meat space people.
2. I will be ecumenical. I may hide crap from one political party more than another, but crap from both sides will be hidden.
3. Legitimate news sites will not be hidden, even if I don't agree with their politics.
On the heels of this, another bombshell. As of July 31, teleworking at the IEC will be no more.
I've always known full-time telework was a privilege, not a guarantee. But when Trump called for federal workers to get back to the office earlier this year, I figured our time was numbered, though we work for a contractor, not the feds themselves.
Last week, the company announced that hybrid teleworking situations would end this summer, meaning those who worked sometimes at home and sometimes in the office were to return to the office. Those who were on full-time telework wouldn't be affected by the policy.
But in a staff meeting today we were told full-time telework would end. I understand it's because those who were on the hybrid telework situation felt targeted and that it was "unfair" for their opportunity to end while others would be able to continue.
It came down to a group of adults complaining that if they couldn't have it, nobody should have it.
And again, I get it -- work from home was never a long-term guarantee. But still, why mess up something for someone else just because your situation has changed? That seems pretty juvenile to me.
No matter. At least where I'm assigned I won't have to go back out to the site, but will work in town. And it means I'll get my second desk back in the study. It kind of removes part of the need for the home network I was putting together, and I may still do that, particularly since I've already bought the tools and other materials I need to put it together.
So, over at the US Department of Energy Facebook page, they're bragging up a bunch of contracts they've cancelled to save money.
They don't list them.
They link to a Fox Business article that's so generic in its approach to the topic, brings up the bugaboos of "millions" in Politico subscriptions and the devil that is DEI, but again lacks that certain detail that would be the list of cancelled contracts that the entire article might as well be a Burma Shave advertisement.
And they have someone named "Clara Johnson" on the page, pretending to be a Department of Energy employee there to answer questions, and the main photo on her profile:
1. Has a logo that's completely alien to the Department of Energy.
2. Spells the word "energy" as "emergy."
None of this is professional. None of this engenders any faith in what the Department is saying.
This is your government at work.
Preliminary assessment: Hiding these pages might be working, because I'm seeing less of it. It won't seem like less when I list those I've hidden since the last report, but this is over two days now, not a matter of fifteen minutes:
Surendra Garhual -- AI video passed off as real.
Awesome Videos -- Showed one of those stupid order of function math problems. I don't do those.
Life Facts -- Optical illusion of Herr Musk.
Stay Calm and End Socialism -- Bigotry.
Jennie and Nick's Reels -- Painful lack of self-awareness.
My Patriot Post -- Snowflake levels of blizzard proportions.
President Trump is My Wingman -- Clickbait.
Congressman Warren Davidson -- Not my representative (Ohio).
David Wolfe -- Leftist conspiracy theories/innuendo.
The National Newspaper -- I want a subjugated Scotland. Pro-Putin propaganda.
Allegra OTC -- Advertisement.
Fixodent -- I have all my teeth/not Martha Raye, Denture Wearer.
Joni Ernst -- Who even are you?
NTP News -- Facts presented without context/innuendo.
Nate McMurray -- Name calling, pandering.
Real News Now -- Fake news now.
Diabese Advances by CenterGood -- Spam post on a school district reinstating paddling as punishment. What does this have to do with diabeetus?
Hashem Al Ghaili -- Gross exaggeration.
DC Swamp -- Unmitigated right-wing stupidity.
Here are my rules:
1. I will hide pages first, people I have encountered only online second, and people I have met in meat space only on rare occasions. The first two won't care that I've hidden their stuff. But meat space people are meat space people.
2. I will be ecumenical. I may hide crap from one political party more than another, but crap from both sides will be hidden.
3. Legitimate news sites will not be hidden, even if I don't agree with their politics.
Now that it's had time to dry a bit, I can see that it has continued to level. I'm pretty excited to get it to this point. And it looks a lot better than the blue binder I had on the floor beforehand.
Next is actually work on the walls. I'm not going to do the floor until it warms up just a little bit more, and more of the snow melts. Maybe not this weekend, but the weekend after. We'll see.
I remember reading Clay Shirky's "Here Comes Everybody" when the Internet was a relatively new thing, and enjoying the optimism. Since then, as I've watched the general decline of social media, I've often wondered how he'd update that book. Maybe he would have come up with "Outrage Machine." Maybe not. But I think a follow-up needs to be made that's better than this one.
Tobias Rose-Stockwell does an admirable job explaining to the layman what's occurred with social media to lead to the mess we've seen today. His solutions, however, are pedestrian and a bit disappointing if you ask me. On an individual basis, if applied, they could work fine. On a collective basis, it just leaves the public square even more open to the shouters, liars, and droolers. I'm all for individual action, but I think we're to that point that some kind of collective action is needed to claw the public space back from the crazies and the profiteers.
Absent in this book is any discussion with the social media titans about what they could do to help fix the problem. He appears to say the genie is out of the bottle and shrugs his shoulders at those in power doing anything to fix things. That's a serious flaw that permeates the book. What he suggests social media users do is fine -- although his solutions also have their flaws -- but dumping it all in the lap of social media users seems cowardly.
Fortunately, I have other guidelines I'm putting in place to help fix my social media interactions. This book is a small part of it, yes, but it's not much more than general advice without a call to action on the part of social media companies. Industrial polluters get CERCLA and RCRA, while social media polluters apparently get a "Get out of Jail Free" card from this author at least.
I tried summing up his solutions here, and I've added a few comments of my own:
Rose-Stockwell writes: "There are a handful of things we can do as humans to detoxify our relationship with online outrage, and our interactions with it online. Each of these are specific solutions that can help us reclaim portions of emotional agency that we have lost in recent years. Remember that this isn’t just for us: by reducing our participation in the broken system of outrage profiteering and manipulation, we are actually helping reduce the overall levels of toxicity that exist in the world today – the stuff that our friends, family, and neighbors all feel."
His solutions, summed up:
1. Limit your time on social media.
A. Delete apps
B. Aggressively unfollow and block specific accounts that share the kind of content that make you regret time spent on social media. (This one assumes that the social media companies comply with your requests. I have my doubts they’re doing that anymore. It’s like playing whack-a-mole. Get rid of one and two more pop up in its place. I have to hunt to find stuff from my friends in my feed anymore; what’s there is clutter in the form of ads, sponsored posts, stuff I have to aggressively block, and more ads.)
a. I’m going to throw in a condition: unfollow and block groups first, people you know only in online spaces second, and people you know online and in meat space dead last, if at all. Severing a relationship with a group won’t affect the group at all. Severing a relationship with an online-only acquaintance likely won’t amount to much ire, if they notice at all. Blocking people you know in meat space affects meat space, and that’s bad news in my book.
C. This is one I’m adding on my own as is something I’ve noticed in real life. Consider which device you use gives you the best social media experience, and use that device as your exclusive social media access point. I have three devices I use to regularly access social media: A desktop computer, a Kindle Fire, and a smartphone (if the brand makes a difference, it’s a Samsung). The Kindle Fire offers me, for some reason, the worst social media experience, burying my friends’ content and offering up a lot of fluff that I either scroll by or aggressively delete. The desktop computer is better than the Kindle, but by far I have a more positive experience on my smartphone. I don’t know what the difference is, as I don’t have setting set any different device to device.
2. Go on a news diet
A. Recognize we have an “optimal dosage” for news that should not be exceeded.
B. Rely more on straight news from straight news sources, rather than opinion pieces. (I’ll add: Ensure those news sources are in the business of producing straight news, rather than relying on meme sites, random folks on social media passing on “news” or pretending to be news outlets themselves.)
3. Disagree better, not less.
A. Take disagreements into offline conversations.
B. Don’t insult beliefs.
C. Don’t assume other peoples’ motives.
D. Get curious about their beliefs. Find out if they’re operating from care, fairness, loyalty, sanctity, authority, or liberty.
E. Find common values and compare apples to apples. If, for example, they’re operating from a point of view of care, demonstrate how you also are operating from that same point of view.
4. Lead with love.
5. Recognize you’re running your own algorithm in your head, and it may be as flawed as the ones being run on social media.
So this is why it's important to cram your head full of information, and to record it when new information crosses with old information.
I'm currently reading "The Outrage Machine" by Tobias Rose-Stockwell. It's been enlightening. He promises solutions to curbing or understanding or eliminating the outrage we feel on social media (I'm not exactly sure what'll happen, as I'm still doing the reading).
"Our agency is being manipulated and scaled back, app by app, notification by notification. The recognition of this collective interference, and our part in it, is something akin to a mass existential crisis. This kind of manipulation challenges our basic understanding of human choice. It shows how these predictive systems are just one step away from being systems of control "
~Tobias Rose-Stockwell, "The Outrage Machine"
What he said reminded me of something from Elder David A. Bednar's "Things as They Really Are 2.0" speech, which he gave back in November.
"The ease of use, perceived accuracy, and rapid response time that characterize artificial intelligence can create a potentially beguiling, addictive, and suffocating influence on the exercise of our moral agency. Because AI is cloaked in the credibility and promises of scientific progress, we might naively be seduced into surrendering our precious moral agency to a technology that can only think telestial. By so doing, we may gradually be transformed from agents who can act into objects that are only acted upon."
~Elder David A. Bednar, "Things as They Really Are 2.0"
Tie what you know with what you're learning. That helps you develop a bigger picture of things.
My goal is to have the floor leveler applied by noon tomorrow. If that goes well, next weekend I'll take down the drywall on the south wall, put in the ethernet cabling I want to and insulate it so I don't hear pooping sounds in the study.
Things are a bit tiresome for part of the family . . .
Kinda odd, this.
I got looking at Google Maps today, trying to locate a small town in Montana where me might be selling a vehicle.
As I started out, I noticed an odd coloration forming a backwards letter C around my hometown:
The colors looked a little faded. I had my suspicions on what it was, so I zoomed in:
Yeah, it's snow. Snow. Here we are trying to get out of winter, and Google Maps is going to show us snow now. Looks like they updated maps this month, and stuck us with snow.
But at least this is still there:
Thining naughty thoughts.
Alternatively, I hope Philadelphia fans bring lots of snowballs and batteries.
As a nation, we need a pause.
We need to watch "Groundhog Day," and see in Phil Connors a man who finds his place in time again when he ceases to treat others as objects, but as real people whose lives matter, even if it's hard to see how, or even if they're different than he.
Stephen Tobolowsky: "I don't think we really want BIll to get the girl. I think we detest Bill and his smugness at the beginning. I think one of the miracles of the movie is that during the course of the movie we want boy to get girl."
Andie MacDowell: "I think that you can tell Bill's character was really suffering. That even though, I mean, he was explosive and mean and cynical and all those things, you felt sorry for him, because you knew he couldn't be happy like that. And you see this other person that's peaceful and generous and kind and so you're thinking why can't this person who is suffering so much find peace and hook up with this other peaceful person and be happy. So I think it's just a generous nature of human beings to see someone who's obviously in pain and suffering and even though they're a total jerk to wish for them to not be like that."
We ought to remember what we stand for, and realize that sometimes our actions are result of hypocrisy. We can be wrong when others are right, and when that happens we ought not do double down on our wrongness, but recognize that we can learn from others and become better human beings in the process.
Today I got the hole in the bathroom floor patched. I think it turned out well.
I did, however, discover one of the new valves has a very slow leak in it. I thought it was gaslighting me, because I went in, saw a wet spot, got distracted, then looked at the spot again and it was dry. Later I happened to glance over and saw a drop fall from the valve.
The plumbers are coming back Monday to fix it.
I got a little sass in the family group chat about my work, though:
1. A tub that drains and will hold water when wanted.
2. Valves for the sink and toilet that do not leak when turned off.
3. The aforementioned toilet hole, ready to receive the toilet.
They also secured the feed line for the toilet so it doesn't rattle in the wall.
There is still work for me to do to get the room back in use. First task is to cement up the hole:
We saved a little money not having the plumbers do it, and like Klinger I can say "I know concrete, it's not that hard!"
They did have to do a lot more digging that I thought, but they encountered a DIY plumbing job that was mostly fittings so they had to cut a lot out in order to get things put back together.
The door to the master bathroom has been sticking off and on for years, most recently when temperatures jumped from the single digits to melting overnight.
I changed the hinges Monday night, thinking that would fix the problem, as I have been able to fix it in the past by tightening screws and tinkering with the hinges, but changing the hinges made it worse.
I got my level on the frame and found out the top is really slanty. So tonight I sanded the door a bit on top and got it back in its hole. It's no longer a rectangle, but it closes.
So yesterday I removed the toilet in the basement bathroom so I could finish removing the last of the linoleum prior to tiling the bathroom floor.
Should have known there would be complications:
It's disappointing, but not altogether a surprise. The toilet has been a bit wobbly, and I chalked that up to the floor not being level in the general toilet area. There is indeed a hump in the concrete here, but that's only part of the problem. Not having a strong bit of apparatus to fasten the toilet to is also a big deal. So I'll be calling the plumbers tomorrow to get on their schedule.
I have decided since I've got them here I'm also going to have them replace the sink and toilet valves, two of which leak even though they're shut off completely -- that's why there's a pan in this picture. I'll also have them look at the tub to see if they can free the weight meant to open and close the trap. I'm hoping all of this doesn't break the bank.
It does mean no toidy in the basement, at least one we can use in a normal toidy way.
Once these issues are fixed, I can keep going with the remodel. It'll be nice to have it done. It's been a long time coming.
