Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

I went through this.

I basically stopped paying attention to the internal workings of Germany, the country where I spent half my youth, after some of the outrageous Green policies it took during the mid-2000s, and its stance when it came to the GWOT.

Yes, the performance of the Bundeswehr were important, impressive, in Afghanistan, but they really moved away with Operation Iraqi Freedom.

AfD are being called Nazis.

But nobody is paying attention to the shit-sandwich that the KPD made of East Germany.

And, that the hulking remains of bad Communist industry are being reinflated with “migrants” feels oddly familiar to the US; “they’re eating the dogs.”

I don’t know. Nobody is actually a Nazi. But there’s more than a few Communists still around, even if the guy who’d be Chancellor was born after The Wall fell.

I always want to append “sent to your phone.”

My phone, where my very-full pod queue resides. I’m hearing many people who are pissing-their-pants scared about this.

I’m just not able to be that scared; we’ll figure it out.

I think there really might be something wrong with me when it comes to being frightened.

Set hard resource limits, and make sure the OS enforces them.
Set hard time limits.
Implement roadblocks that have to be performed manually; the PEBKAC can actually be a good thing. (And if he fucks something up, you can now send him an I’m-really-not-angry-with-you coffee wherever he or she is in the world…)

If you’re not doing those basic prudent things, you are the problem. I understand that your guidance counselor might not have told you that, and your shrink certainly hasn’t, but it’s the truth.

But, sorry, I just can’t bring myself to be frightened about this. Humans will figure out a way to constrain new technologies and employ them to our benefit.

Don’t you know, there’s a continuous series of explosions happening under the bonnet of that carriage making a shaft rotate thousand of times per minute!
And any of those explosions could easily kill you!

That’s enough for this morning, I think.

Writing late in the afternoon. Didn’t sleep well last night for a variety of reasons. The title is kind of a concentration of some of the suppositions about me.

No, you’re not correct about me, but I’m exhausted trying to disabuse you of your assumptions. It’s exhausting.

I did finally get the problem with the disability payments straightened out Friday. Though I won’t get cost of living adjustments on the private supplement, I will get them on the Social Security Disability benefit.

The SSDI payment, comes from a different fund than the soon-to-be-cut regular Social Security Income fund. The Boomers’ mismanagement of the retirement fund isn’t going to negatively-affect my benefits. For now.

Hmmm.

Initial line of self-degradation deleted; maybe the psychological therapy treatments are working.

The study is going well. I have no idea if I’m getting a medication or placebo. The discomfort I was experiencing the first few weeks seems to have disappeared; not sure I can really attribute it to the drug (or placebo), as it kicked off before I started taking the pills.

The physical therapist is very pleased with my progress. I am moving better.

So, prompt….

When have I listened to my gut and it was right?
What helped me trust it in that moment?

I really don’t know. I made so many bad decisions since my layoff in 2013. Not trusting my gut on the salary on the first gig following was really a mistake. Could I have waited for something better? Maybe. But I didn’t.

The ensuing hard times led us to where we are now.

*resigned shrugs*

Could I have stopped working sooner than I did? Sure. But I thought I could help, and I wanted to see the changes.

But my body didn’t let me do that.

So, what’s left?

I think I’d shared this before, but it came up across my feeds again, yesterday.

Does kind of fit with what I was writing about in my review of buck’s book.

Things weren’t as great as you might think you remember them. Actually, there were many things about the 1990s that really sucked.

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This dovetails nicely into last night’s Twi^H^H^HX find that Casey Anthony came out sorta in support of Lindsay Clancy.

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

One of the younger folks in the WTF conversation didn’t know who Casey Anthony was. My response was to have him ask his favorite AI tool to tell him more about Nancy Grace. Grok did a pretty good job, actually.

*Search X for Nancy Grace*

And, yep, there’s clips about her analyzing the case.

That the crazy discussion has moved from Cable News to various social media platforms doesn’t really change much.

Something something doesn’t repeat itself but rhymes something.

Or you get big analysis pieces on places like TheFP. Kat Rosenfield’s piece was pretty good, too. (Though I do have to say that I think Kat might be turning off her core audience last couple of months; those convinced they’re afflicted with perimenopause tend to be a bit sensitive….)

Really, Gen Z, you don’t need your own OJ. Isotoner gloves were good. Hertz Rent-A-Car was okay. The Naked Gun movies were funny, but they’d have been just as funny without him.

I was actually in my afternoon class in a plurality-Black government class in high school when the acquittal came down. Either way that turned out, there’d have been people very unhappy.

The 90s wouldn’t have been any better if OJ hadn’t killed people, and believing that he didn’t doesn’t make it any better.

What’s kind of surprising to me is that there’s such narrow focus with the algos when it comes to feeding content.

Meta’s properties decided that I really need to see a lot more Nixon content.

Do I have conflicted views about Nixon? Absolutely. Do I think he was the worst president ever? No. That distinction would go to Wilson or Buchanan, depending on whichever side of the coin came up. LBJ and Carter were also pretty lousy.

I’m sure that government isn’t going to fix the problem. California is thinking about the babies, Nancy. Whichever way that comes out, the verdict isn’t going to “fix the problem.” But a lot of lawyers will get rich. And a lot of politicians will be able to cut campaign ads explaining how much they care about the kids; almost as much as Nancy Grace, even.

Well, Experimental, but keep with the sound alliteration. I seem to remember there being a word for it, but I wasn’t an English major, and my web-searching skills are failing.

Interesting way to spend a birthday. It’s an odd experience, but I suppose I understand what they’re doing. Various standard neurological tests, blood tests, ECG, vision tests, cognitive tests, etc. They’ll pair those with the MRI results to see what’s happening in my brain. brain stem, and spine.

I’ve only taken two of the pills so far. Not a lot to report on those, really. A bit of gastric discomfort, but that could also be what I ate yesterday.

We’ll see how it goes.

Next physical exam should be around Labor Day, though that might have to wobble a bit because of the holiday.

Interesting how the teachers’ union goons want May Day as a “Day of Action” where they can fill their rallies with students who can’t choose not to participate, or state their opposition.

It’s disgusting. But, you know, UNION YES!

So I don’t know exactly when I’ll get back to do the fall follow-up.

Still need to figure out a bit better what the actual schedule of exams is going to be, but they seem willing to work around my schedule.

I think I’m ready for fall. I would ask, “you?,” but I’m pretty sure nobody is reading this.

Sometime during the really bad years of censorship, I was getting really tired of hearing podcasters who almost uniformly used the really bad NPR “Delicious Dish“-style almost-whispered delivery.

Who can I listen to who actually projects?

I remembered Bill Cunningham. Willie hosts his daily radio show on WLW in Cincinnati. He also hosts what became of the Matt Drudge Sunday night national show.

Cunningham often prefaces really-bad TV talk show clips by saying something along the lines of “I watched The View so you don’t have to.”

I forced myself to listen to JDVP, tying it back to Cincinnati, on Rogan. At least one of the recent WTF episodes had several tidbits about it.

I’d listened to him in the run-up to the election. The interview with Vance then was kinda interesting. Yeah, there were a few really off-the-wall things, but it’s the kind of thing that’s really to be expected of someone who would have been a mid-2000s Midwest Democrat. Vance came too late to collaborate with Harry Reid, but the sorts of batshit-crazy utterances are absolutely in line.

His analysis of the various Epstein conspiracy threads is….I’m failing to find the right word.

So, what was Vance’s take? The the really interesting stuff was from the 2008 trial, and that’s been deleted, but the Trump administration did a bad job rolling things out this term.

C’mon, guy. You were in the crowd who were floating the outrageous conspiracies during the Biden Administration.

You also didn’t do much, either then or now, to tamp down the weird, often antisemitic, claims. You know he was hiding money for Mossad, right? No, and you don’t know that, either.

So the nutbag Rogan audience is disappointed?

I don’t care.

Your focus on this issue is one of the myriad reasons why I’ll never vote for you. The 400-some members of the House who also cemented that distinction by voting to release a bunch of investigative data. Bubuhbut GOVERNMENT SECRECY!!1!

Yeah, there’s things that come through that need to be forgotten.

My tagline here is “everything gets deleted, eventually.” Maybe some day, it’ll be more difficult to remove the most-random thoughts from storage, but even that doesn’t make them things that should be shared publicly.

Can you even imagine?

Spoken: “She looks very nice today.”

Unspoken: “I wonder what she looks like without the dress, and these are the things I’d like to do with her.”

Keep those things to yourself. Nobody needs to know. Just like nobody needs to know about whatever crackhead fever dream someone told police about Epstein.

Would I turn down a chance to have Skyline Chili with JD? Absolutely not. Would I enjoy watching a Bengals’ game with him? Form a luxury box, sure. Outside during “The Freezer Bowl?” No way. Would I go fishing with him? Yeah, probably.

Absent the stupid things done after 9/11 (And I’m looking at you, TSA), I probably would have had a similar reaction to Harry Reid.

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Summer writing compulsion starts tomorrow. That it lines up with my participation in the clinical trial is pure coincidence.

In many places. Certainly here inside the Beltway Swamp.

But it’s cool here inside our apartment. I am almost certain that it’ll remain that way until all the festivities are finished. (This might be an instance where using “done” might be appropriate considering the weather.)

So, what am I doing otherwise?

• Summer writing. Again. I know I shouldn’t, but it’s something to do, and last week’s test kind of found the words flowing out. I do wonder if I can string together something more substantial, still.
• Financial planning. Questions to my lawyer about what I am able to do or not do while I’m getting insurance income. Can I get reimbursement for stuff like the research study? Would converting my conventional tax-deferred retirement holdings to Roth IRAs be possible, still? If I earn income through passive sources (e.g. dividend income), does that affect my insurance payments?
• Still trying to get through Euphoria. Um. Well, I only have a couple of episodes left’. might as well finish.

It’s not often I actually start writing a review with the title, but that’s how it’s coming out.

Manufacturing Delusion by Buck Sexton. The title of the book, itself, is a take-off of Chomsky and Herman’s Manufacturing Consent, a somewhat-seminal leftist tome that tied the origin of pretty much everything bad in the world to Capitalism, and US Industry.

After I finished the book, I said I should give it a few days to let my thoughts coalesce. They have, and although I respect Buck quite a bit, my initially-positive response has soured.

Time to get into the meat-and-potatoes.

• Recap of his bonafides is pretty good, and I understand how he reached some of the conclusions he posits. I admit holding reflective-antipathy towards CIA assets. I don’t know that that instinct has ever mislead me. Moderate Governor Langley in Virginia shows that brilliantly with her performance. (Missive about the Blue-Again-As-Harry-Byrd-Intended General Assembly’s performance excised for brevity; ask me offline). His bits about things like the Japanese Sarin attack in the 90s is something I certainly remember, but didn’t really pay close attention to. It’s similar to the 1994 AMIA Bombing, where the attorney who was working on the case in 2015 suspiciously “died by suicide” (I really hate that modern rewording….). But the bigger takeaway from his list drove another point home — in many, many, many ways, the 1990s sucked. I spent last week in Biloxi, Mississippi. Yes, quite a few things were rebuilt following Katrina, but I do remember Biloxi in the 1990s, spending a continuous month there so I was there long enough to sit for my Drivers’ Exam. Back then, pretty much every strip mall throughout d’Iberville had a pawn shop catering to people who’d lost their shirts at the newly-parked casinos. Hmm…. Maybe I’ll pick up an acoustic guitar while I’m down so I can plunk around on my train ride home. Nope. They’re all gone. No pickin’ in the Amtrak roomette. I did pick up something cheap on Space Cowboy Jeff’s Prime Days sale. It should be here later this week. But the roads in and around Biloxi were awful back then. Any wind would bring down branches. Over near where my mom’s house is, I can remember how badly twice-daily tides would cover some of the corners. But all of that is fixed now. Everything works. There’s Intertubes actually faster than I have at home inside the Beltway. Despite several storms, the power stayed on. The oppressive heat of a Mississippi summer was well-contained by air conditioning inside wherever I was. (My cousin’s kid’s car excepted, I stayed cool..). As I was going through Buck’s book, however, I started going through memories of the 1990s. I mentioned the Sarin attack and AMIA already, but there were many others.
  • Mogadishu
  • Ruby Ridge.
  • Rwanda
  • Bosnia
  • Oklahoma City
  • Khobar Towers
  • 96 Atlanta Olympics
  • Sudan “Wag The Dog,”
  • USS Cole
  • And so many others…
    During all of that, nothing new really was built, the Federal Debt continued to grow, and…. The 90s weren’t so great.
• The Stalin discussions are interesting.  Does it say something that a Georgian could win full power in the Soviet system? (I’ve said previously that a lot of the Left’s problems with ACB are that she’s not an Ivy League product. Small private undergrad? Notre Dame Law? You know how I know she’s a racist….?)
• I expect Putin to really start in on rehabilitation of his mentor Yuri Andropov. (My own prediction listening to it, but I think you can find out a lot about Putin by looking at how Andropov behaved in Hungary and Czechoslovakia…)
• The distortion means that reality becomes what the state says it is.  (COVID was of natural origin.  Hunter Biden wasn’t corrupt.)
• Stalin still has 70% approval in Russia, which is disappointing. (But maybe unsurprising.)
• Putin is rehabilitating Stalin because nobody is around to remember. (I’m wondering how true this still is with Ukrainian drones hitting all over Russia over the past couple of days. In the US, the rehab efforts lately have been on Jimmy Carter, and against Reagan. Yes, Carter let people brew beer, and ended some of the stupid regulations that were in place. Volcker did a good job at the Federal Reserve. But you have to keep at the top of mind lowering the Georgia flag to protest prosecution of Lieutenant Calley, Operation Eagle Claw, and his later support of the terrorists who’d become the DSA.)
• I feel bad for him that he went to UMass Amherst. (I did search a bit, and my reflexive antipathy is traceable to The Shadow University, and what I was doing on campus around 2000. What’s happened on campuses nationwide is actually the sort of thing I was concerned about. I believe in values generally enshrined in constitutional protections. And, no, I don’t hold those views on account of my overwhelming privilege. I graduated from Mencville High School in Newport News, Virginia, and that was the third high school I attended. I worked through college, a small public university, though I probably could have foregone work if I’d been okay with the restrictions that came with that. I was on the air with CBS News on a phone coupler when the clocks rolled to 1/1/00 after helping prepare for the switchover.)
• The self-segregation exercise are appalling. (And I think the HR staff who sponsored those sorts of things should find other ways to earn a living. I never really know where to put myself in those exercises. I’m not nearly as white as Senator Warren. I actually am physically-disabled. My privilege was attending three separate high schools as my dad was on Active Duty in the Army.)
• Tying the land acknowledgements to Maoist roots is interesting.  Er.  Good. (Who the hell am I supposed to acknowledge? My heritage is so varied that it’s tough to pin down. And one of my ancestors, who was a Choctaw elder who’s buried in the Congressional Cemetery after dying in DC following being honored for his efforts against the English in the War of 1812.)
• Good recap of the George Floyd riots, and their effects on his section of NYC.
• Decent recap of DeBlasio. (I would offer that NYC had two competent mayors since Ed Koch, who was taken down by the people now running the DSA.)
• The weapon use of law is important, too. I KNOW whatever is wrong, but I’m doing what the law says. So I’m free of any culpability legally and morally. 
• The bits about outlawing Kosher food preparation is incredible. We’ll force them to eat the way the law prescribes, or they can STARVE. (Interesting parallels can be drawn to some of the Green New Deal alchemy….)
• Evil can be, and often is, pretty banal.
• Race and Ethnic restrictions on the legal field. *cough*DEI*cough*. (This kind of gets a reinforcing smack both with some of the SCOTUS rulings last few months, and the “moderate” members of the Party of the Klan losing NYC primaries to radicals.
• Volksgerichtshof courts from Nazi Germany were an interesting bit. I’m reminded of some of the pushes for justice not delivered by the conventional US courts. (I tend to prefer justice systems based on English Common Law, but I can appreciate those based on Napoleonic Code. Few of the “justice” pushes recently are based in either, and are really the whim of the deciders. Whether that’s campus administrators, CHOP/CHAZ, people who called for the executions of George Zimmerman, Kyle Rittenhouse, or Derek Chauvin. Or Donald Trump.)
• Interesting framing of his childhood in nasty NYC to Giuliani.
• Brief reflections on Muller probe, and Alvin Bragg, but little discussion of just how wrong the “walls are closing in” crowd were.
• I think there’s a ton more to delve into about Jack Smith. Smith’s convictions of “Tollbooth Bob” McDonnell were unanimously overturned by SCOTUS; 8-0 after Scalia died. And this is the guy somebody in the Garland DOJ hired to get Trump? Really? (How has Smith not been disbarred for what he did with the Mar-a-lago raids over the classified documents? Who, exactly, hired him in the first place?)
• Interesting section about the use of fear to compel compliance. If you don’t wash your groceries….. “Doing the right thing” satisfies: Extinction Fears, Climate apocalyptic worries, the way-more-deadly-than Ebola Virus.
• Paul Ehrlich. I suppose I understand the inclusion with his recent death, but I would argue that there’s nothing at all useful from his writings. I guess that he’s a great example of spreading fear to force compliance.
• I think he makes a correct association of Malthus and Ehrlich. (How many other charlatans have so perilously-humanity? These are horrible people, and it bothers me that some are trying to rehabilitate their images.)

Conclusion: it’s not a bad piece of work, but I don’t think most things are as cut-and-dried as he presents them. I’m trying to be less frustrated by things than I have been lately; this book didn’t do a lot to ease my mind. Whatever I think about the purveyors is really unimportant, but I’m not going to think of them fondly. You’re terrible people, and I only will associate with you if there’s absolutely no alternative.

The next thing I’m plowing through is Enemy Feminisms by Sophie Lewis. I’m almost finished, but, much like Buck’s book, there’s things that are overcome-by-events. Hers has a less-recent publication date, but I’ve already noticed a few places where the usual narratives have been severely-disrupted by events in the second Trump term. I’m not sure I’ll write a review of that, but I’d be willing to discuss with someone else who’s consumed it.