Snow has been on the ground and our constant companion for going on a couple of weeks now and they say more may be on the way. Last week we were snowed in at our house for about 3 days before we could get one of our vehicles dug out and cleared enough to venture out. We were fortunate as neither Cathie nor I had anywhere we had to be and nothing we had to do that we couldn’t do from home.
Cathie worked from home for about a week and with that week sandwiched between two weekends, that was the most time we had spent together in years other than being on a vacation.
I suspect she learned things about me she would rather not have learned about my habits since retiring and only working part time now. For example, Monday is watering plants day. When it is too cold and snowy to walk outside, steps must still be obtained by walking a path within the house which needs to be kept clear of obstructions.
Being snowed in also gave me some additional time to think and to share with her some of my observations, rantings, and ravings. I am now sharing them with you as Cathie reached the end of her patience with them some time ago and if I don’t let them out, they turn into gas and nobody wants that. So here it goes.
How long do you leave out a glass of water in your house and still drink it? It’s not like water goes bad or spoils like milk but at what point does it get weird?
Claiming that something is propaganda could itself be considered propaganda
Our local Kroger has new carts! I grabbed one yesterday and am happy to say that I did not have to fight it as one of the four wheels spun independently, did not have it lock up on my so violently that I was at risk of being thrown over the front of it, nor did it whine like coyote in mating season. Kroger was crazy but with my new fancy geolocation enabled cart with Wi-Fi, I was able to glide through the aisles and find my products with ease.
I would be perfectly fine with plain old precedented times. I’m not sure how many more unprecedented events I can handle.
I am really tired of having to access my phone multiple times a day for a text code to be sent to me so that I can get into a program, use my email, download an app, log into something, or access an account. What do people do who don’t have a smartphone? Or a phone that doesn’t receive texts? Or if they don’t know how to text?
How did we decide as a society that we no longer need headphone jacks on phones and other devices? And if we are all just going to use wireless earbuds now, can we not still have them on a cord? I cannot fully embrace and enjoy wireless ear buds due to the crippling anxiety I have that I am going to lose an ear bud that is going to cost quite a bit of money to replace.
We live in a time where the phrases “I’m just going to recharge my camera with my suitcase” and “Here, we can plug the doorbell into the couch to recharge it” are sane and perfectly understandable things to say to someone else.
I think Alexa has become just a little too comfortable in our household. She is making recommendations for purchases that seem rather accusatory and judging, she is responding randomly to things she has not been asked to answer and claims to not be able to answer things I know she can answer. She can give me a treatise on the historical origins and the unique differences that have evolved in pizza making based upon distinct geographic regions of Italy but can’t tell me when our local Pizza Hut closes. If she can look up the history of pizza, I know she can look up the hours of our Pizza Hut.
I never used Tik Tok, but it sounds like come this weekend it will be shuttered. Apparently, this is a crushing development for many as it has become a prime source of entertainment, news, and even income for many people. In addition to influencers being out of work, I suppose there will be a number of Chinese spies who will also be left with little to do. Somewhere there is a Chinese spy who will actually be glad to be able to take a break from curating and managing your personal Tik Tok algorithm that results in a feed of Yellowstone fan fiction erotica, the latest in Stanley Cup accessories, pimple popping videos, train accident clips, ice fishing tutorials, and expert Excel tips.
I’ve been reading a book called Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. It is about leveraging technology to help us gather, collect, store, and curate information that can be easily accessed and used to create. I am only a few chapters in so far but there are a few quotes that have struck me thus far and seemed especially relevant to me in this Tik Tok culture of ours.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. – Herbert Simon.
So many of us share the feeling that we are surrounded by knowledge, yet starving for wisdom.
Information becomes knowledge – personal, embodied, verified – only when we put it to use. You gain confidence in what you know only when you know that it works. Until you do, it’s just theory.
You are on your smartphone just like everyone else, but you aren’t doing what they are doing. You are creating value rather than killing time.
certifiable 
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