

Science fiction, fantasy, mystery and what-not
I always like headlines like this:
I thought, wow, they’re including the Broncos when they say ‘all’? Man, that is deep.
I expect to see headlines soon like ‘All of the planets (including Earth) in order according to their distance from the sun.’
‘All four seasons (including winter) ranked by temperature.’
Or, how about, ‘All five oceans (including the Pacific) in square miles.’
Going back to the NFL headline, I wonder, why call out the Broncos out of 32 teams? Strange, no?
Stranger still how much I spend thinking about things like this.
Subtle but unexpected health changes recently launched me on a path of exploration and understanding.
First was my teeth.
I began experiencing mild gum pain despite regular brushing, flossing, and using my water pick. That pain disappeared on its own. Concurrently, I discovered my teeth alignment better than before because my small overbite had vanished.
More embarrassingly, I developed nocturnal incontinence, just enough seepage for me to wonder.
Changed gums, teeth alignment, and incontinence seemed unrelated. But the body is a system. Restricting my sodium intake, exercising more, following a better diet ended with weight loss and less bloating. I began bloating years ago without fully understanding what was going on.
Adding up all these changes, I wondered if these disparate changes were related to my reduced bloating. I went on net searches, refining and gathering information, confirming, yes, these were all stacked and related events.
As I read, I gathered that several practices influenced my incontinence. I take Flomax for a benign enlarged prostate, which helps me urinate. I also raise my legs and massage them to combat edema and lymphedema – fluid retention – each evening. I also hydrate just before going to bed.
Research showed that if I changed the order of doing things, I could probably end the incontinence.
I made those changes, and yes, the incontinence was gone.
The body is a fascinating, dynamic system. Thanks to the net, it’s getting easier to understand.
And manage.
Middle age
Young age
Old age
A childhood time
Post modernism
Pre-industrial
Eras we define
Space age
Information age
Net age
Here we come
Knowledge at our fingertips
Truth is on the run
Thinking
Wishing
Wondering what will be
How will history
Change this age
Of truth
Of change
Of greed?
Sitting on the cusp
Of something
Trying to make sense
How long can this go on
With so many
On the fence?
If you ask me what it means
Uncertainty arises
I think I know what I see
I’m not sure
I like it
The Trump Regime announced its foreign policy during this past week, quietly dumping it .
Anyone who has been paying attention notices that Trump is pretty okay with Russia and is eager to abandon established international protections and orders. The Trump Corollary pretty well spells that out.
Several things are made much clearer for me now.
Can anyone say Iron Curtain? Through the ‘Trump Corollary’ and the Trump Regime’s already well-established practices, this administration is creating the Trump Wall. They, with ‘they’ defined as the primarily white fascist Christians of Trump’s base and the oligarchs courting Trump’s favor, believe that this policy will make the United States stronger and more successful by isolating it and using its military power to bully others. It completely discounts twentieth and twenty-first economic, cultural, political, and military history. It also belies the truth about how the United States advanced through education, opportunity, and international military, diplomatic, and economic cooperation. But remember that those successes and advances were often done when Democrats were in charge. This Trump Corollary is a reactionary throwback to a far different time, one well before computers and the vast technological communications systems that now exist.
The Trump Regime is on that, though. By developing relationships through business, profits, and grift with the techno brothers, they’re establishing the framework for shutting down and manipulating the social media information flow. AI will only enhance the Trump Regime’s ability to manipulate facts and the truth…just as foretold in 1984.
Bottom line, the Trump Corollary is a death knell for true freedom, democracy, and equality in the United States. Unless you have the money or power to procure them.
Good luck, people. Good luck.
The innertubes muse about the state of Trump and the United States.









Stuff from around the web.
Ha, ha, remember when Kristi Noem said this? My goodness, those Trumpers really lack memories, conscience, and principles, don’t they?

More of the same, Stephen Miller edition…


Trump’s actions are not popular. Is the country heading in the wrong direction? You bet! Will that stop him? No, because he’s locked into an alternate reality.

Priorities, priorities, priorities.


I don’t understand. Why would ICE agents go to a restaurant in a war zone?



Once again, from Trump’s alternate reality…


TL/DR: AI is fucking up. And that’s fucking us up.
One of my childhood passions were cars. From that grew an intense interest in auto racing. It wasn’t something that I shed as an adult. Passions aren’t easily surrendered. Yeah, as an adult, auto racing, with its environmental impacts, ridiculously increasing costs, and inherent dangers, lacked substantial commonalities with the human condition and the challenges Earth and humanity face. I excused myself for decades with the subterfuge that we don’t want a vanilla existence. Year after year I followed sports car and Formula 1 racing. For a while, I also hunted NASCAR, IMSA, and IndyCar news. But sports car and Formula 1 was it for me. As I aged, the passion became muted and dulled. Part of that was that the sport just wasn’t as competitive. Aspects of its relevance to real existence also troubled me, though, and that grew.
One of the Internet’s commercial strengths is that it notices what you look at, and then baits you with more of the same. The net noticed I checked out LeMans this year. It came up with reminders about Ford’s victories at LeMans in the 1960s via the Ford GT. That effort was highlighted not long ago in a movie called Ford v Ferrari.
A story about Ford’s 1967 LeMans victory grabbed my eye. Driving a red Ford GT Mark IV, American drivers Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt took LeMans in record form. I built a model of the car within a year. It sat on my dresser among my other models until I moved out of Mom’s house four years later. Eagerly, I read the story. Then I wondered: how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?
I put it to AI; how many drivers have won both the 24 Hours of LeMans and the Indy 500?
AI responded, slightly paraphrasing, Lewis Hamilton won it in 2011 and Max Verstappen has won it four times recently.
WTF?
I know that Lewis Hamilton has never raced at Indy or LeMans. Nor has Max V. Both are Formula 1 champions.
The entire AI answer was fantastically fucking wrong. Now, if I didn’t know the sport, I may have been fooled by the answer. Which pushes the wonderment in me, how many people consult the Internet for truthful and factual information and are being fed wrong answers? How many lack the resources or awareness to challenge the veracity of what they’re being fed?
For shits and grins, I asked AI again. This time, one source said, “…while only Foyt has won both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500.” Another told me, “Only one driver has won both the Indianapolis 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans: Graham Hill.”
So, both answers are wrong, because I knew before asking that Foyt and Hill were the only drivers who accomplished this.
Wrong info on the net is not new. We’ve joked for years, “It was on the Internet so it must be true, ha, ha.”
But the shit is getting deep. The way that wrong information is advancing and spreading with AI’s gentle assistance, the joke is now on us.
Sometimes I feel like we’re just two surfers passing by on the web.
Some website claimed, “You’re getting old if you can identify ten of these objects.”
I had to laugh. I know I’m getting old. Don’t need some silly game to verify it. Didn’t need one after graduating high school in 1975, and need one now even less.