Frieda’s Wandering Thoughts
I sometimes subscribe to Hulu for streaming content. I’m actually currently a subscriber but I put my account on hold because they’re offering anything that anyone in my household wants to watch.
They sent me a notice that they’re ‘updating our Subscriber Agreement’. Three things were specifically called out. Here is the second point, copied and pasted for your consideration.
• We are clarifying that, as we continue to increase the breadth and depth of the content we make available to you, circumstances may require that certain titles and types of content include ads, even in our ‘no ads’ or ‘ad free’ subscription tiers.
Is that not straight out of 1984? We are offering you ‘no adds’ and ‘ad free’ subscriptions but they’ll have ads.
I can imagine something similar happening at restaurants: ‘We are clarifying that as we continue to offer vegan meals, circumstances may require that certain dishes include meat and animal products.’
‘Certain circumstances’. Guess it’s the god of money forcing them to do this. “We couldn’t help ourselves.” Executives wring their hands. “It was the money. The money made us do it.”
What bullshit. I might need to change my account from ‘hold’ to ‘cancel’.
Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
In the latest edition of FAFO, Texas has an outbreak of measles on its hands.
As before, all cases are in unvaccinated people or people with unknown vaccination status. Of the 48 cases, 42 are in children, including 13 between the ages of 0 and 4. Thirteen people (27 percent) have been hospitalized.
Texas measles outbreak is the state’s largest in 30 years
By the way, I stand for the Gulf of Mexico. And AP. The bully in the White House, aka PINO Trusk, will force everyone to report the news as they wanted, or they won’t allow it.
On Thursday, for the third day in a row, the White House prevented Associated Press reporters from attending official events, a spokesperson for the news organization confirmed to The Washington Post. An AP reporter was blocked from attending two afternoon events in the Oval Office, including a swearing-in ceremony for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By way of an explanation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Wednesday, “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day 1 that if we feel that there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable.” She added, “And it is a fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America, and I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that.”
It is not a fact, except in Truskworld. But Leavitt was right about lies being pushed by outlets in the room, but it’s the White House and her behind those lies.
Just as so many of us expected from PINO Trusk.
Floofpower
Floofpower (floofinition) Philosophy among animals that uniting despite species, breed, or personal animosity can lead to greater rewards for all animals.
In Use: “With the new year, many people found themselves confronting floofpower as the household furtizens stood up and negotiated for more treats, walks, better food, or improved sleeping conditions and playtime.”
Frieda’s Theme Music
The weather warmed, delivered rain, and the massed, pile snow is dwindling.
Good mornin’, afternoon, or evening, wherever you are. Today is Frieda, February 14, 2025. Valentine’s Day, so here’s to that if you’re into that commercialized celebration. 37 F air holds us in its palms. White clouds overlay the valley, piles of graying white towels fresh the laundry, waiting to be folded. No breaks are permitted for blue sky, no cracks for sunshine. Rain has fallen and probably will again within a few hours. Our air will warm to the low forties, upper thirties, ‘they’ tell us.
PINO Trusk established a new commission. MAHA: Make America Healthy Again. They’ll be working under the ideas that that vaccines which so effectively curtained the effects of a number of diseases didn’t work. Trump, who gorges on McDonald’s food, wants MAHA to look at food and water, this by an administration which is on a run to gut the EPA and the clean air and water standards. Irony laughed so hard when it heard this news, it peed its pants and farted.
MAHA will stand alongside PINO Trusk’s other initiatives, MADA: Make America Dumb Again; MASA: Make America Sexist Again; MAWA: Make America White Again; MARA: Make America Racist Again; and MAPA: Make Americans Poor Again. The rinions — right-wing minions — will eat it up.
In honor of what our nation is enduring under PINO Trusk’s lawless guidance, The Neurons have dragged out an old Black Sabbath offering. After dusting off the 1972 song, they have “Changes” orbiting my morning mental music stream. It’s an odd BS composition, as it’s slow and reflective, with no guitars and drums. “What?” You exclaim. “And this is Black Sabbath, you say? The group who gave us “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”, “War Pigs”, “Paranoid”, “Iron Man” and “Snow Blind”?” Indeedio, it is.
Coffee ambushed me in the kitchen. Next thing I knew, had a cup in my hand, breathing in its heady fumes, testing it on my tongue with tentative sips. Hope your day goes through some changes for the better. Let’s rock. Cheers
Mom & Dad
I often think about Mom & Dad at my age of 68 and what they were doing.
Mom, with a couple divorces behind her, was a late bloomer in some ways. She’d given birth to seven children. Five lived. Forfeiting graduating high school to leave her small town of Turin, Iowa and find employment and begin her own life, she eventually acquired her GED. That was long after I’d left home and begun my life. After gaining her GED, she went to college and became an LPN and RN. A twenty-year in that followed; she retired at my current age, devoting herself to being a grandmother.
Dad and Mom had divorced decades before. Dad was in the military, the U.S. Air Force. After retiring at 20 years, when he was thirty-nine years old, he worked in the grocery business as a produce manager and then bought his own restaurant. When he was around 48, twenty years younger than I am now, he moved west to Texas. He worked in different retail businesses while becoming a real estate agent. He always like running stores, though. Eventually, he was running the largest truck stop west of the Mississippi. Along the way, he met another woman; she became his third wife. They’ll be married 33 years on Valentine’s Day of 2025. Meanwhile, he kept managing that truck stop. Every time he told them he was thinking about retiring, they’d offer him more pay, bonuses, and vacation. He did eventually give it up when he was 80. So at my current age, he was fully in the thick of running it.
They’re a surprising couple. From lower class working roots, they married many times. Each had productive careers. Between the two of them, each was parent to seven children but they also buried three children. Five of us siblings shared them as parents. I left Mom’s home when I was 14 to live with Dad and then left his house at 17, joining the military as Dad had done, so much of what I saw of their lives was through a long distance lens. Mom and Dad remain alive. Mom is 89 and Dad is 92. Both endure health issues but because of the era when they worked and the effort they put in, they have excellent health benefits.
Of course, the flip side of it all is, what will I be like at their ages?
Thurzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts
Many of us who oppose Trump, whether he’s running for office, in office, or just breathing, have consistently pointed out that he uses others. Yet people voted for him by remarking that he speaks for them. And we replied, “Then you’re racist. Sexist. Anti-knowledge. Anti-history. Anti-fact. Anti-science.”
PINO Trusk is proving us right. His supporters and the low-information voters may never realize it. Okay, one to three percent might. (Isn’t that two percent? Yes, and that’s based on some marketing knowledge I acquired years ago.) But what’s that about action speaking louder than words?
‘Equity,’ ‘trauma’, ‘women’, and ‘female’ are among the words that could bring research grants under scrutiny in the US. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is reviewing thousands of ongoing grants to ensure compliance with executive orders issued by former President Donald Trump during his first week in office. These orders mandate the recognition of only two genders, scale back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and have led to the creation of a list of words whose use may trigger a review of funding, according to internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
Can it be more clearly stated that you’re sexist if you don’t allow the word ‘women’ to be written? Over half of the population of the United States are women. A vibrant and critical part of how we arrived here as a species and civilizaton, and women can’t be mentioned in National Science Foundation reports in the new Trusk administration.
How fucking backward is that? I thought Trusk, the GOTP, and Project 2025 wanted to drive us back into the 1800s. Wrong; they’re going further than that. Women as a word has been in use since the 12th century. That’s how far back the Trusk administration and the rignions — right-wing minions — are trying to take us.
“He speaks for us, he’s one of us.” And that’s why Alabama went big for Trump in 2024.
They’re probably pretty happy about their pretty situation now.
Here’s how much NIH cuts could cost UA, Tuscaloosa
President Trump’s tariffs: Why Alabama’s thriving car industry will see biggest impact
Trump’s job reduction order could hit most at this major Huntsville employer
Trump executive order leads to $100 energy bill hike for hundreds in Alabama
Alabama Arise: Federal funding cuts could undermine healthcare, education, vital services
Yep, less than a month in, and it’s all going great for Alabama!
Thurzda’s Theme Music
A stiff wind was rockin’ us last night in Ashlandia. As night came on shift, I watched our outside temperature drop to 34 F and then rise to 37 F. Rain fell and the temperature kept sneaking up outside as the wind barked at the moving branchs and howled at the sky. It’s not 41 F. ‘They’ have notified us that 51 F is possible as a high. The wind has skipped into a more mellow mood, sunshine has found a place in the sky, and all seems momentarily well on this day, Thurzda, Feb. 13, 2025.
Snow remains out there in force but its presence is shrinking. Bushes and trees continue their recovery. Fallen branches and trees around the city are being collected, cut up, moved away. If a bit more snow can melt off the piles lining the roads, we’re almost be back to normal.
Many are commenting on the bizarro Oval Office presentation by PINO Trusk. The elected half sat in a chair doing nothing and little vacuous. The other paced and made claims about finding and eliminating fraud. He made wild claims but stayed with the GOTP M.O. of offering no evidence or facts to back the claims. Looked like a Banana Republic Production to me. Paul Krugman did a nice take down of it in a post titled, Elon Musk Is Faking It.
Bet you saw the news that the GOTP wants to raise the debt ceiling for PINO Trusk. One reason given for the need for more debt is that ICE is running low on funds. Wow, who would’ve predicted that, right? Well, just ’bout anybody with the wits to realize the enormous costs involved with Trusk’s deportation plans. As seen on TV, the GOTP and their Project 2025 planners are purty damn witless, in addition to being lawless.
The Neurons jumped back to 1974 to find a tune to honor PINO Trusk. With all of his claims, he’s done nothing provable in quest of slaying fraud, as he claims; he’s only made us more vulnerable as a nation, broke laws and undermined justice, broke promises made to his MAGAts (see inflation and the cost of eggs), and sowed disorder and chaos on a national scale.
Stevie Wonder was found to have provided a song for the times. He called it, “You Haven’t Done Nothin'”.
We are amazed but not amused
By all the things you say that you’ll do
Though much concerned but not involved
With decisions that are made by you
But we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!
It’s not too cool to be ridiculed
But you brought this upon yourself
The world is tired of pacifiers
We want the truth and nothing else
And we are sick and tired of hearing your song
Telling how you are gonna change right from wrong
‘Cause if you really want to hear our views
“You haven’t done nothing”!
h/t to AZLyrics.com
I chugged some coffee earlier and I’m pretty well ready to go. Hope you have the plum-est of days imaginable, or some reasonable facsimile thereof. Let’s go get it. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 