Twozdaz Theme Music

Another cold morning, although that stuff is relative. Cold for us for December 2, 2025, is 32 F on awakening. Climbed to 39 F now. Been sunny and clear all morning on this frosty Twozda. Looking for a high in the low to mid 50s.

Read that Trump fired some immigration judges in New York. They’ve probably been following the law and ruling in accordance with same, following rules of evidence and procedures, and going by precedence. All that is a no-no in Trump’s alter reality where his rule is law in accordance with standard playground rules where he’s the bully who gets to say what’s what. Judges are suing him for wrongful termination, adding to his stress levels. COSTCO is also suing the Trump Regime for the tariffs. COSTCO ate the tariffs instead of passing them on; now they want Deceiving Donny’s regime to pay back the tariffs because they were illegally declared and collected. Besides that, TACO is still sweating out Epstein files details, faces declining popularity due to rising prices, persistent failures, has had his attorneys general declared illegal, lost some court cases, and is using words or doing things that are finally pushing Republicans to say, “Enough.” Glad they’re starting to catch up. The rest of us have been shouting, “Enough,” since 2016.

WordPress tells me my stats are booming! Again. This seems to happen every seven to ten days, starting a few months back. I suspect bots seeking commentary on Trump. Don’t know who’s sending the bots or what they’ll do with the information they collect. So far, it just intermittently drives up my traffic.

The music today comes by way of convo with my wife. This is in conjunction with discussing something we were talking about buying. As part of the conversation, there was discussion about driving to a place that’s not real close but not real far, you know? Far enough that it’ll take gas and time but not so far that we’d need to stay overnight. Anyway, in this day and age, the alternative is to go online. So it was a question of “Do we want to go all that way?” Yes, we are essentially lazy.

Anyway, catching the surface vibes, The Neurons responded with a song from the 1970s by a group called the Raspberries, “Go All the Way”. The conversation was late last night but the song is stuck in the morning mental music stream. Found an interesting video of the song being ‘performed’. Looked like a classic lip-syncing event on The Mike Douglas Show. Wow, remember it?

The vocalist is Eric Carmen. After the band broke up, he went on to a successful solo career. Remember “Hungry Eyes” and “All By Myself”? Same guy. He also co-wrote “Almost Paradise”. He died in 2024, 74 years old.

Got my coffee in me and it’s time to rock on. Peace and grace aren’t here yet, but it could be the cold keeping them away. Maybe if I travel to somewhere warmer, I’ll find them there. But I’m not up to a trip today. Here we go. Cheers

Thirstda’s Wandering Thoughts

When I publish a post, WordPress sometimes suggests tags. “Would you like to add these tags?” I look at them. Some suggestions baffle me. I don’t see a connection to the post. I believe I already have others included. I delete the one that seems unrelated and agree to add the rest. The system then tells me, no tags added.

So, the whole process undermines my confidence in WP. If the tags are already there, why doesn’t it recognize them and suggest that they get added? Also, how good is its ‘comprehension’ of what’s being posted if it’s suggesting tags which have nothing to do with the post?

I don’t know. It’s probably just me and my compulsive anal retention obsessions or something.

WP Blues

WordPress blues struck again. Reading another’s post, I moved to comment. WP responded, hey, is this you? We’re asking because you’re not logged in.

I clicked to another tab which indeed showed me logged in.

That led me to an uncomfortable place. I don’t want to log in and re-enter my password on a page asking for such when I’m already demonstrably logged into that site. Cause, suspiciously, even though the URL looked okay and the page seemed genuine, it smelled. It this wasn’t a digital offering on a laptop but instead something tangible, it would stink like milk left out in a hot apartment for a month. It would arouse suspicions like a Nigerian prince offering me a million dollars if I just loaned him five grand for a day.

That’s how we live these days, at least in my abode, where phones aren’t answered unless the number is known, where unexpected packages are treated with deadly caution, strangers knocking on the door are ignored, and links in emails are triple-vetted.

Of course, it might have been some sort of WordPress malfunction. That kinda happens, too.

WordPress Blues

I’ve read others’ comments about comments getting rejected by WordPress. Last week, it struck me. I’d type up a comment, click comment, and WP replied, “This comment couldn’t be posted” or words to that effect.

It doesn’t happen with everyone’s blogs. It’s irritatingly random. First time, the poster had written about bowel movements and their poo. I commented and added a facet about menstrual cycles. When my comments were rejected, I wondered if it was about the subject or my word choices. But since then, I’ve had comments rejected about car repairs, animals, food, news, and politics.

Just one of those mysterious afflictions which sometimes strike modern technology, I suppose.

F-I-F

One of several favorable impression I have about WordPress is, they respond fast. Once something broken is uncovered, it’s been my experience that they fix it fast. I really do appreciate that about them.

In this case, it’s about the ability to add tags. Just a few days ago, the bug appeared in my blogging attempts. It was still there this morning. Bang, gone now.

Hurrah for WordPress. Wish more companies were as prompt and responsive.

Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Each morning, I post to WordPress. The first time each day, WP usually suggests tags to add. I click to add them. And every day it tells me, ‘No tags added’.

It amuses and dissatisfies me.

Amuses me because it’s so consistent. Dissatisfies me for the same reason. See, it’s offering something, and then it’s failing. Every day, without fail.

For me, it’s part of a much longer list of small tech failures encountered on a daily basis. Little things. Buttons and widgets not working. Apps crashing.

We see it on a larger scale. One is quiet, like how fucked up deliveries with the post office have become. I tracked a package last week from Newark, California, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, to Roseburg, Oregon, to Medord, before it reached me in Ashland. Ashland, BTW, is closer to Newark than Roseburg, Portland, or Medford.

This week, I tracked a package to Fife, Washington. Where the package entered another dimension and the system has no idea where it is.

We all figure it’s a one-off, so we don’t complain about it. Then, when we do, we often discover the problem is affecting more of us than we realized. It’s a larger problem than realized.

But sometimes, the tech failure is so visible, we can’t look away. Take the Boeing aircraft failures. Or the Boeing Starliner failure that has stranded two astronauts at the space station.

The United States is steadily spiraling downward in many ways. We can’t deal with our gun violence; the GOP stops actions. We can’t deal with climate change and wildfires and the extreme weather it causes: the GOP stops it. We can’t deal with quality failures…well, that’s more about money.

People can’t afford houses. Meanwhile, college students are drowning in debt. Do you think that’s not related?

As always, as these things happen, the GOP is pointing at other things as problems that aren’t problems. Books in schools. DEI. Declining church attendance. Voter fraud.

Yes, there’s a pattern here. We as a nation are stagnating. As a small group gets wealthier and achieve a better life, the rest of us are left dealing with small problems. Problem with small problems is that they add up.

Just ask Boeing.

Another WordPress Sunday

I wrote a post and went to save that draft.

Unfortunately, the button wasn’t there.

Being optimistic despite past experience, I thought I’d add the tags and select the categories.

But no tags could be saved. I’d enter them and they would disappear.

So I thought I’d select the categories.

But there weren’t any.

Couldn’t save, couldn’t add tags, couldn’t select categories.

All I could do is wait and hope.

And post this short rant, to see what happens to it.

Because I’m a WordPress user.

And I’m an optimist.

Part Deux

I published this and it went fine.

I selected update.

To see what happened next.

The tags were saved for the published post.

But there were still no categories.

Sunday’s Wandering Thought

Just one of those days. WordPress locked up in its eternal ‘autosaving’ groove and a post was lost. He usually copies it all and saves it to a Word doc or writes it in a Word doc and then copies and pastes it to WP. But he was lazy today. Should have known better. WP locks up like that about twenty percent of the time — a ‘technical glitch’, you know.

Well, lesson learned again. Don’t trust WordPress.

Friday’s Theme Music

Todays sunrise in Ashland, OR, was 7:40 AM. Sunset is 5:04 PM. A light gray overcast sky keeps the sunshine at bay. The temperature is 42 degrees F but a high of 56 is projected, along with light rain.

Today’s theme music is “Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace, 2006. I chose the music on behalf of the United States and the nation that it’s become. Torn by division, rhetoric and activity turns more violent and urgent. As blacks have been killed by police, people took to the streets to protest the deaths. Many of them were senseless, but officers were exonerated. Several particularly infuriating people, like Breonna Taylor, unarmed, in bed, innocent of everything but being black, killed by police in their zest to ‘serve and protect’. There was also George Floyd, killed by an officer who was busy serving and protecting, by kneeling on his neck until he died while his fellow officers, serving and protecting, looked on. This was apparently for a report of a crime of passing a counterfeit twenty dollar bill. Numbingly, those are just two examples that fueled the anger and protests that swept the nation on behalf of justice in 2020.

Meanwhile, on the right, they got busy protesting those protests, screaming in response, “Blue Lives Matter”. That blue lives really didn’t matter to them became apparent (as if we weren’t sure) as Trump supporters, who are quite right wing, conservative, and white supremacists, battled with the police in support of a coup attempt, beating many police officers, killing one. On the right, they believe that the 2020 election was stolen by ‘the left’. They think that there was all sorts of fraud, uncounted ballots, and thrice counted ballots that helped propel Biden to his landslide (in Trump’s words, as Biden won the EC by the same number as Trump did in 2016). Trump himself, and GOP cohorts, continue feeding this lie. They insist that evidence exists.

This evidence has never been shown.

On the right, they claim the evidence will be shown, and we’ll all change our tune. What’s keeping them from showing this evidence anywhere is the response given by the rest of us.

One note that has everyone (outside of the people who believe that the 2020 election as stolen) shaking their heads, is why would this all-powerful election-stealing apparatus only steal the presidential election? Why would they not steal the Senate and House? Why wouldn’t they also steal the state elections? They use the same ballots. Apparently, though, while the right believes this election-stealing apparatus is all-powerful, it’s not powerful enough to steal those elections. Yeah, SMFH.

With Trump impeached again, Trump unwilling to concede, little change to police policies and practices, and FBI reports that the right have violent plans to change the results of the 2020 election, “Animal I Have Become”, a song about a man struggling with drug addiction, seems right.

On a WordPress note, they appeared to have fixed some issues, in my experience. The site published properly yesterday. Of course, today when I went to post, I couldn’t bring up a page. Took three tries, and the whole ‘post/block’ sidebar had vanished and needed to be called up.

Stay positive, test negative, moderate your drinking, and wear pants (and a mask) when appropriate. Cheers

Fresh WP Madness

Don’t know what’s going on in WordPress world this week. There’s probably a blog post somewhere explaining some shit. Not interested in chasing it down.

On my side, I’m not having ‘issues’, per se; WP is just up to a different level of annoying. Whenever I publish a blog, it doesn’t announce that it’s published; instead it comes up and presents the ‘Update’ button in the upper right hand corner. When I then leave that post after publishing it, WP asks, “Leave site? Changes you made might not be saved.”

That leaves me asking, “Changes? WHAT CHANGES? I just published the friggin’ thing.”

Anyone else seeing any of this? Or am I alone in the madness?

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