All The Red Pills

It is the red pill, right? LOL

Stream of thought went like this: FB friend shared a Mike Rowe post about why he's continuing to shoot his show (in response to a "Karen" (not really)). Today I thought I'd share it on twitter, but Mike doesn't share that stuff on twitter (and I couldn't believe I wasn't already following him) but rather his podcast links, mostly. The most recent one was about a "Line in the Sand" and George Bush Sr's bullshit coverage about the time he was in a grocery store and they had a fancy barcode reader. Not a regular one, but a new model that had a scale built-in and could read pretty messed up barcodes, etc... and the media painted him as out-of touch for being wowed by a scanner. Media assholes.

Remember Dan Quayle and the spelling flashcards that he honored by not challenging the teacher in front of her students by correcting the error on the card? Of course you don't. Because the asshole media didn't tell you that.

It doesn't take too many of these incidents to make a reasonable person very skeptical. Now, I'm going to tell you that while I am sure this applies to Clinton and Obama, there is a pattern of this type of bullshit coverage of conservatives that far outweighs any that they got. I mean, c'mon, when Ted Kennedy died, the coverage was slobbering. He KILLED A GIRL.

Trump draws so much crap, much of it deserved, but there are folk out there that have been red-pilled regarding him as well. The two main incidents are the "making fun of a disabled guy" and "fine people." I can't find the well-produced video I saw once of a liberal writer artist dude that found out that the mocking of the disabled guy was total BS perpetuated by the media and that's when he woke up to the reality that they lie like the rest of us do, when it suits us. Scott Adams regularly uses the "fine people hoax" as a litmus test for idiots.

Now, I have to include this next bit, because googling to make sure I got the Pill right led me to this movie and TED talk about Men's Rights.  She learned some valuable lessons while making the movie, definitely, but skip to the end if you like where she says something that is SO RELEVANT: drop your agendas and bias and actually listen to people, especially those with whom you disagree. Only then can we move forward.

If you are trusting the media to help you with that, you need to choose the red pill.

David Samuels and Long Form Writing

This crossed my twitter feed, and it's long. 

Although I shared it on twitter, I'm not likely to share it on FB (where I have twice the reach), because FB sucks these days.

It's worth the time. I say that because it's long. I plan on finding more by him to read, which shouldn't be hard, but I implore you to read this. He's a smart guy, smarter than me, and I daresay, probably smarter than you (and I'll admit that I'm sitting here thinking that I'm smarter than you because I can admit he's smarter than me, or you might say that I'm very proud of my humility!).

Him referencing Steely Dan is just a bonus, 

(To be an American is to inherit the gift of living with one foot in the present and one foot in the future, while the rest of humanity has one foot in the present and one foot in the past. Then, every 20 years or so, we trash whatever tenuous equilibriums we have cobbled together and leap off again into the unknown. So it is, and forever will be, until the oleanders bloom outside my door, and California tumbles into the sea—which might be any day now.)

but here are a few pull quotes:

Flatness animates the work of shitty graphic designers like Shepard Fairey, who thought that Soviet poster art was unironically cool. It was Fairey who created the iconic image of Dear Leader Barack that hung in a thousand dorm rooms next to its black-on-red inspiration, the famous poster image of Che, the greasy, stoned jungle rat. Che was a loser and a failure, and he spent his afterlife as a sullen witness to 10,000 stoner dorm-room conversations that all went nowhere....

or how about:

It’s the same subject-position, 500 years ago and today. We are here because we are living in the age of techno-Calvinism, which was created by the merger of Puritans and iPhones—with the history of slavery and anti-Black racism in America providing the necessary modern-day substitute for the Calvinist emphasis on original sin.

All the statues of the saints must again be smashed. Mark Twain, for racism; Edward Hopper, for whiteness; John Singer Sargent, for making sexism sexy; Miles Davis, because he was too friendly to Jews; John Coltrane, for not being political; Thomas Pynchon, for being a believer in popes; Stanley Kubrick, for selling indulgences; Jimi Hendrix, for antinomian heresy; Steely Dan, for exploiting Black artists; Eddie Murphy and Hugh Grant, for transphobia; Margaret Atwood, for not believing all women; J.K. Rowling, for saying that women exist; Quentin Tarantino, for allowing his characters to say a word that my editor won’t even let me type though it is a part of history and language that is repeated dozens of times in Tarantino’s movies and many thousands of times a day in rap songs. The America of the seekers and its Catholic aesthetic of wild hybridity is gone. In its place is the New Church of the Techno-Calvinists.

 Interesting:

“So, talking about the transition from saints to citizens,” I continue. “If you ask a New England Puritan in 1640, how do you feel about Jews? The answer might be, well, we certainly don’t want any of them living here. But by the time you ask George Washington, who is creating a republic with a formal separation between church and state, do you want Jews here? The answer is, sure. Why not?”

I like:

And in the most vulgar sense, here’s a people who have been oppressed as often, and worse, than anybody in Europe, culminating in the 20th century’s largest and most brutal episode of mass murder, which aimed at the extermination of an entire people, some of whom are still alive. And yet, Jews refuse to be victims. They show none of the hallmarks of having been oppressed. And so, as long as they exist in any identifiable, corporate form, they pose a problem for all theories of oppression by negating the supposed results of oppression, which is embarrassing. It shows everybody else up....

Near the end:

One thing I have noticed in my work, though, is that the people who yell the loudest are usually full of shit. And if the enlightened few get their way, well—there’s no telling what might happen. I’m not being hyperbolic. Anything can happen. Those are the facts. For those of you who weren’t there, it was called the 20th century, and my family lived through it, like most families on the planet—in Russia and China and Germany and Ethiopia and Iraq and Bosnia and dozens of other places on earth, or maybe most places on earth. Guatemala. El Salvador. Rwanda. Burundi. Uganda. What justice means is that your parents’ store will be burned down or smashed up and you and your loved ones will be beaten to death by a mob or lynched or burned alive with napalm or shot in the back by your friends or locked up in a psychiatric hospital or sent off to die in a labor camp.

So happy birthday, America—the golden land of steak and butter, where every man can live like a king and take the kids to the Polar Bear after dinner for soft-serve ice cream, and where people only rarely lose their jobs because of the misdeeds of their relatives.

God bless Americans, in all colors, shapes, and sizes.

God bless George Washington, who defeated the British redcoats who sought to usurp American liberties under the direction of the Mad King.

God bless Thomas Jefferson, who fathered the Bill of Rights and helped bring an end to the international slave trade. God bless Abraham Lincoln, who kept the Union together while abolishing slavery.

God bless Ulysses S. Grant, the swift and terrible sword of the Union, and William Tecumseh Sherman, his partner in crime, who burned down half the South and then annihilated the Western Indians, allowing Americans to span the Rockies with steel rails, and telegraph wires and fiberoptic cables, leading to the rise of the largest-ever planetary concentration of military, technological, and economic power, which Americans have used, overall, for good.

God bless General George C. Patton, the fearsome war-fighter and vicious anti-Semite who liberated the Nazi death camps and cried at what he saw.

God bless America’s national parks system, which was the creation of none other than Teddy Roosevelt, who defeated the Spanish slavers in Cuba and founded the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and guaranteed safe water and medicine and the right of working people to organize. If you take my advice, you’ll get in your car, or borrow someone else’s car, and drive to one of our national parks, and gaze out upon the manifold wonders of God’s creation. You won’t be disappointed, I promise. And if you’re craving some excitement afterwards, you can stop by any roadside strip club and see our nation’s beauty from another angle.

Back that ass up, America! Makes an old man wish for younger days.

Now, go read the whole, rambling, fascinating thing, please.

Too Much Of Me Online?

I was thinking over the weekend, as I was pondering car stuff that my kid and I have been up to (check his posse's channel and instagram and his car's instagram) that I should create a 'gram for my car. That way I can separate the car stuff from the other stuff.

Here's the thing: that would be 5 instagram accounts. FIVE!

I can barely keep up with the 4 I already have. Yes, I already have FOUR.

My personal, first (July 20, 2011), most posted on and longest lasting babyshots_dpt

This re-ignited my love of photography, and the necessity to crop and edit (with the filters) was crucial to re-develop my eye. My largest presence online, actually, and as you can see, that's not saying much.

Next (November 3, 2018) came the companion to my other blog OGLNAWLFB as I really got down to business with losing all the weight I'd gathered. I post on there more than I write on the blog because it's easier (and who has the time for all of this? See below for more thoughts).

I finally decided to create a website, after many years of thinking about it. Between the talent work I do and just wanting to own my presence/name online. After playing around on Squarespace and Wix, I went with Squarespace and had a deal for the first year. That led to a companion instagram account as of February 5, 2019.

Lastly, starting last summer (2019) I started vlogging on Youtube after a casual comment from my youngest. I've had a youtube channel for years, but it seemed that a surburban dad vlog wasn't a thing, so I started that and created a companion instagram for THAT as well... LOL Mostly, frankly, to pitch the merch I created on Teespring to go along with it. (actually, 2 Teespring sites)

As you can see, I've invested time and energy into this already, and another one just for my car would be a bit of a stretch! I do have some content though, and it would, as I said, separate that car stuff from the rest of the online "me." (note: I'll probably just use the Cincinnati Dad account, as it's most associated with the YouTube channel, but keep reading anyway, ok?)

That's the next point, of course: what about this online me?

There's this, almost the oldest online thing I've been involved in. I've been on Facebook (Oct 2008) slightly longer, My first post here was March 9, 2009. Twitter (April 2009) came next. I joined both Facebook and Twitter because my job essentially made me (my work FB may have been slightly older that the above date, I deleted that account when I got downsized there).

I just had the horrible thought that I shouldn't be putting all this info out here, but it's all out there anyway...

I started my second blog on Jan 14th 2013 when I decided I was fat and wanted to do something about it. That didn't really happen until 2018! LOL. Like I said above, instagram is easier to post to, especially that there hasn't been an iphone app for Blogger for years (so frustrating).

Let's not forget About Me. It has links to most of the above, plus my Tumblr (since August of 2013 as a place to post non-instagram iphone pics, and which I branded to go along with this blog) and Flickr. I signed up on About.me (in search of a cheap/free website alternative) August 5 2011!

The funny thing is that I've been secretive about all of these, with the exception of maybe Pinterest (because you had to be invinted and share and all that crap) and Twenty20, which is in my personal Instagram bio for all to see (in hopes they might buy and image). I have an Alamy account for stock photos as well as some photos on Adobe Stock.

But I haven't told anyone about pretty much any of these. There are some accidental discoveries, you know, as instagram recommends my other accounts to friends because we are already connected via my main personal one. I've had this blog as my "website" in my FB profile for years, but as far as I know that hasn't led to any hits.... Why? What's the point of having all these places online and not sharing? That's easy, fear of being judged, mostly by family! LOL I mean, it's sad, but the ones I should expect the most support from are the ones I feel confident would subject me to the most ridicule. That's a damn shame, isn't it?

Oh well, this was a bit of fun for me collecting all these links so they'd be in one place. I'll think I'll take that convertible for a drive....

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A Prophet Is Never Welcome...

In his own house, in this case.

You see, I posted a video on Facebook the other day, me singing a duet for a wedding last year, The Prayer, that I thought went well and I had just received the video from the wedding videographer (as a dropbox link). As a quick sidebar, I had FB messaged them a long time ago, they said they needed to ask the family, and I pinged them a while back. Lately, the song has shown up on FB as people are posting songs and stuff because of the virus stay-at-home situation and I pinged them again. This time, they replied right away and sent me the link).

I replaced any video of the wedding guests and participants with photos I've taken of the church over the years and put it out there.

I received so many nice words, really. Friends from church, school, the gamut. Very kind of them.

But, I am here writing this to vent because no one, I repeat NO ONE from my family even so much as "liked" the video. Well, that's not correct, after a solid day up, a sister-in-law we affectionately (most of the time) call The Troll (long story) messaged me supportive comments and "liked" it. Two of my three kids are on FB, as is my wife. Nothing. Two out of three brothers and my sister, nothing. Two adult nephews? Nothing. Father-in-law, brother-in-law (or his frequent FB using GF), nieces, etc? NOTHING.

So, there it is, I'm not gonna lie, my feelings, the feelings of a 54 year old father that has been performing his entire life, are hurt. That sucks.

Why post here? No one reads this. Whew! That's why. That's why I didn't post on Twitter, my son reads my tweets. Sometimes.

Ok, enough whining, I just had to get it off my chest.

Brexit, Super Bowl, and Elections, Oh My!

I have mentioned one of the best follows on Twitter, @iowahawkblog, and he had this funny tweet the other day:

I mean, c'mon, that's funny stuff. Turns out he had been in Twitter jail for a while, not for his tweets, but as he put, stupidity rather than malfeasance. The password on his email used to sign up for twitter expired, so it locked him out. I noticed, although he says no one did. :)

The comments have been great, lots of "I dunno, I'm still dead from net neutrality," or WW3 (that Trump started a few weeks ago by killing a terrorist), or Coronavirus, or the Paris Accords, or the Tax Cuts, etc, plus great jokes about how the Brits killed a lot of beers, ciders, and bitters! Humor wins.

That being said, it was a great point, good jokes so often are.

OK, next, I downgraded my website from a business to a personal site, but didn't actually save any money, because the Gsuite cost was free the first year only, as was the domain cost, and I had gotten 30% off the first year price as well. Oh, well, if I make some money with photography ever, it'll go to that.

Man, I was right with the culture vultures about the Super Bowl halftime show, I was like, "well, I guess J Lo wants us to look at her private parts" with the sliding towards the camera on her knees and all, and that's all over the internet now. Seriously, I've been complaining about how the NFL broadcasts with commercials for Two and a Half Men that had Charlie Sheen in bed with several women, etc, aren't appropriate for children (future fans) for years, and this was no different. Shakira's golden mic looked so much like a phallus when she did her uulation that I had to check to be sure it hadn't been photoshopped (and I think it had in some stills going around). Best comment I've seen so far has been another tweet that said something along the lines of "why must women be sexualized like this, we don't do that with men?" Some idiot replied that Adam Levine took his shirt off last year and no one said as much. Duh, doofus. The other idiot I saw replied that "well, your president grabs by the p*$&y, so..." as if that's at all related. Oy. People are not very smart. I'd actually suggest that it's the other way around: a culture that glorifies sexualization of performers in the way that the halftime show did leads to girls and women letting male celebrities get away with grabbing them and more. I've already written about it, but groupies exist, I've seen it, you've seen it, Kobe's seen it (too soon?), and that's what the Trump-BillyBush tape was about. Just because they were famous, women let them...fill in the blank. And the idiot commenter doesn't see the connection between celebrity worship, stripper pole shows at halftime and the casting couch? Wake up, wokesters.

Well, lastly, the Impeachment is going down in a whimper, as it should. Still, one of the best examples of the "one screen, two movies being watched" illusion I've ever seen. People calling Adam Schiff a hero are seeing a movie I've never seen.

Krakatoa

I happened upon this article about how loud Krakatoa was (thanks to Firefox's home browser page, actually) and wanted to save it.

Near the end of the article is a video of a couple that was a few miles away from a recent volcanic event, watch it, and then ponder the closing statement:

This is somewhat akin to what happened at Krakatoa, except the ‘gunshot’ in that case could be heard not just three but three thousand miles, away, a mind-boggling demonstration of the immense destructive power that nature can unleash.

 Like the earthquake that caused the reactor failure in Japan, which actually lowered the coastline, nature is pretty scary, eh?

People Think Stupid Things

This hit my twitter feed, and I'm just going to file it into my pile of: Dumb Things That Some People Think, because, well, people think stupid things...and tell them to surveyors.... if you clicked the link to the story, you'll see it's all a bunch of hooey anyway. Ch12 should be ashamed for giving this any attention.

In fact, this is an object lesson in how marketing spin (for a design company on one has ever heard of) gets amplified by "news" organizations thirsty for content because...well, because, they believe that they must constantly provide fresh, engaging, content, 24-7 to retain viewership and market share and....like a fool, I replied (critically) and they got what the wanted: "engagement" which is the coin of the realm on social media. Best part? The story is a year old.

To be fair, most of the comments in the thread were along the lines of "ugh" and "this means almost 75% think he shouldn't."

*I've met that Santa, at America's Got Talent's auditions we sang at two years ago, and he's great.







*Santa is a male, he's based on an actual person. James Bond is male, he's based on actual people (including the author's inflated perception of himself). Jesus was male when he was here, at least, I don't assume heavenly genders because I'm not sure that matters in the eternal.

Crimes That Have Special Motives?

I am mostly in the camp that says adding the motivation of a crime as additional crime is a little, uhm, problematic: is beating someone up because they are gay worse than beating someone up because they took your parking spot, or they didn't put the fries in your order, if you are already committing a crime and getting charged with it, like assault?

Twitter put this in my timeline (through the miracle of retweeting, it's how I see the Pres's tweets fairly often without following him whether I wanted to or not): 

So, if you want to find the tweet, and the thread, that's fine, but I think that this was the only one of the thread that used actual numbers in addition to the percents of change.

I point that out for two reasons: using percent of change always makes things more dramatic, and that the actual number is ridiculously small. I've done the math on the alphabet people's actual numbers.

With Gallup reporting that according to their research

Overall, 4.3% of U.S. adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, according to Gallup's latest estimate from its June 2016-June 2017 tracking data. That is up from 3.9% a year ago and 3.4% in Gallup's initial estimate in 2012. 

I find it interesting that it's still a tiny percentage of the population that was affected by this massive media story (although it's still a largish actual number: 2015 census says 247,773,709 adults, so that's like 10.6 million people), and the subset of that number that got married in light of the Supreme Court decision is pretty small. Let's do some math.

Using the 2015 number above, and that 4.3% percentage according to Gallup, there are approximately

• 10,654,269 adult LGBT people in the US.
• 841,687 married prior to HodgesObergefell (7.9%)
• 1,086,735 married after two years (10.2%)
• so 245,048 adults got married as a result, so far. (this is off by a little, as we are using 2015 numbers, I get that.)

That's .000989% of the adults in the US. 

That doesn't break out trans people, so let's do that.  Therefore, the 46% increase of 49 crimes among the 1.4+ million individuals is really not that big, is it? Yes, any increase is a bad thing, but using the change percentage so you can call it a 46% increase is alarmist.

BTW, if you did dive into the link at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) you will see that compared to the total number of crimes (and in relation to the important number of adults in the US, just under 250 million), hate crimes are actually pretty rare. This is good. Here's info from the FBI's site.

In 2018, there were 364,800 violent crime incidents, and 419,724 offenses reported by the United States by 7,610 law enforcement agencies that submitted  data.