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This is going to be a complicated post. It's going to sound like I am defending Elon Musk's concur about the existence of Jewish conspiracies or whatever, while simultaneously defending his remarks in wake of the predictable advertiser boycott that followed. But I'll try to make a clear point.
The media blowback from Elon's "go fuck yourself" remark, in response to questions about the (now likely permanent) boycott, has outraged the mainstream profit media, which found itself offended by such an open rebuke of its corporate advertising model and the control it exerts over freedom of speech. The same model, while also a semblance of a legitimate industry, is also considered the gatekeeping governance that makes sure nothing gets "too out of control."
There has never been and never will be, for example, an NBC-produced documentary on the merit of communism. A thoughtful production that considers maybe we were wrong about all of this. No weekly cartoon for kids that features a scrappy group of teenagers uncovering alternative economic theories of any kind other than the ones that we miraculously know to be the one we happen to live in right out of the box in (and crazily so many other nations don't - weird huh?).
Your (cough) "local" news station's "Action 8 Investigation Report" isn't going to touch the shady practices of your also local new car dealership so long as those dealerships are laundering in payola in the form of local advertisement dollars, despite complaints against them being like a number one actual issue. Not that the "Action 8 Investigation Report" team isn't tough in going after some no-name contractor or some already un-popular local politician it's probably been asked to finish off by community members of the local back channels.
I hope you get the idea.
Big profit media and its control over the discoverability of new perspectives is the only reason the First Amendment has yet to be be repealed in this country. The assumption has always been, if you don't accrue money, or if you pose a threat to those who do, your message and perspective are comfortably handicapped by commercial default.
It's a system that works well enough, because you know, if it didn't, what China does with freedom of speech and online expression wouldn't look so bad.
It's also why the profit MSM is "at war" with social media or the open web, because people being able to talk and argue with each other, is a crack too much in the comfortable system it's taken decades to build. Any chance to point out why people having free access to the thoughts and viewpoints of others, is depressing teens or leading to "dangerous challenges", is taken in a snap.
There is no clearer example of such a blatantly pro-corporate-media-advertising-monopoly propaganda piece than this ridiculous order-up by CNN producers to make sure viewers focus on the triviality of Elon's response than the point he is making. In it a woman described as a CNN contributor and tech journalist -- Kara Swisher -- is invited to take a moment from emptying bathroom hampers or something (as she is breathlessly making her points from home) to pretend that there wasn't a deeper and valid point being made within the orb of all this scuffle-dust flying about.
Calls were evidently made to get this CNN presentation out there. It's absolutely ridiculous to watch, but also, an accidental insight to CNN's panic or "entitlement to narrate away" Elon's point.
Elon has tied one personality, one person, to a service once treading carefully in a sea of unspoken or perhaps more deliberate business rules that once acted as the true captains and the law of order for Twitter. They are gone, and now it is gleefully albeit destructively, him.
And yes he has wrecked quite a bit - I myself am trying to transition away from the service. But like an atom smasher, his actions and controversies have pushed unexpected matter into our view and strung them out for wider examination. Pretty much exactly how he explained his peace in the event that the advertiser boycott does in fact kill X.
I will give him credit for that.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
currentevents deauthorizethemedia twitter
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Although "cameras everywhere" helps to collect and dissect evidence later when these things happen, the other less appreciated one is that it forces rational bad actors to dress this way and to literally expose their intent in real-time to everyone around them, accordingly.
But, people need to be attuned to this to take advantage. See people dressed like this? Lock your business doors, move to the other side of the street, maybe even tail safely if you have that kind of discretionary time.
After awhile, even covering themselves up to hide from cameras will be the actual thing that does these people in. In a few years I expect this will likely be the evolved outcome.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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I was about to create a page here at my blog linking to all of the Low Barrier Podcast episodes that my buddy and I produced weekly (mostly) between March and June of 2022.
But said co-host, Mister Jim Rogers, called my attention to the fact that, incredibly, Spotify still hosts them directly. I didn't think the audio streaming sites did that.
But cool, they can spring for the bandwidth in making them available, and I can call everyone's attention to that collection easily in just one blog post like this.
Production of the podcast began to sputter when the time commitment to producing each episode began to swallow up an entire day, and even more. First we began to miss a week here and there, and then finally, I was set to move and pretty much wound up using that turbulent event as an excuse to pause, then eventually backburn, then abandon, the project.
Aside from doing something consistently constructive - for awhile - the endeavor was very positive for me in that it gave me real respect for podcasters, YouTubers, and all forms of digital creators and influencers who manage to stay focused and non-distracted, adhering to a schedule around their jobs and families, to maintain grit and make names for themselves. It's not easy to do!
If I'm (we?) are able to ever try it again and actually succeed, it will be grounded in the experience and lessons learned from before.
It was absolutely worth it!
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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Yeah but we're not eating the YELLOW snow at least.
Heh-heh.
Ah but seriously, the real value of this video as we may see it here in America, is to remember it when we encounter descriptions of the societies of our own adversaries. We can 't trust the characterizations encountered in the mainstream media which are designed to set a consumer's direction of thinking and to frame foreign morality. We can't trust them because they are no more less capable of putting out nonsense like this.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
deauthorizethemedia regurgitation
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Oh come on, negative 20?
My issue with this many downvotes on the stellar point I made in Reddit above is that I'm so darned right. It's alarming to call a date where there hasn't been any other a "first".
You wouldn't post a question to Reddit or Quora asking "Where is a great place to take my one-day wife?"
It's the same difference.
I hit a bad vein in that particular Reddit section, but I know I'm right, and I know I'm not the only one who thinks calling a date a "first date" before there is an agreed on second, is entirely inappropriate.
Yeah yeah sure, maybe because I'm more cognizant than most that a would-be first date might likely be the only date, than most people, but as I see it, the reality of my complexity simply reveals what is in fact an excellent universal reality. My slimy string of non-appeal drags tied to it the iron ball of wrenching stinkin' truth dammit.
Learn from me!
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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One of my NYC life friends is offering up a series of wellness coaching sessions. I'll let her flyer explain the details!
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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It's not uncommon for me to encounter deer while commuting. But earlier this week my dashcam caught the perilous panic run of one almost going straight into the side of the car ahead of me as it shot for the safety of the other side. It took a pretty bad slide but it seems to have made it unscathed, albeit shaken.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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For the love of god, file an IT ticket.
I've worked in the IT industry for most of my adult life in multiple organizations. The one phenomena that never ceases to amaze me is the IT user bases' absolute objection to make out ticket requests, or really, honor any formal hailing procedure, for their various IT issues and needs, whatsoever.
I actually think I do understand the reasons, which are varied. Ticketing systems represent "administrative level" work. People just like the traction of hounding others directly, or feeling above doing anything that seems to subjugate them even if only in feeling and form (e.g., "I'm Donald Trump and I don't even open a web portal to pay my water bill.")
Despite every good reason to take the minute to file the damn ticket, which includes benefits such as something resulting in a trackable record of their issue and the working progress to address it; providing a central hub of communication between the user and multiple parties around it; better ensuring technician accountability; contributing to a "hive" of information about other issues that can be probed and delved later for the benefit of all, and finally, just to respect the poor IT worker's right to organize and execute tasks comfortably and efficiently. Things that literally give the best, over scattershot, service, in the user's very interest.
Even allowing for some initial resistance (which I personally tolerate well), and even when tickets are not generally required by any sort of policy, which is usually the case, the true awe is that people somehow don't come to understand the value of a filing a ticket on their own. None of the reasons explain a user's reticence to learn that doing so is actually better for them than not. That no matter what the options are, no matter whether a ticket system is forced or not, getting things done well starts with that one. simple. thing.
In fact, it turns out, some people would rather literally murder people and put themselves on death row first before they will file an IT ticket, like Eric Williams.
This guy needed two monitors to work from home - or rather, to enhance his home office. When whatever personal contact he made or "magic influence" he tried exerting in an effort to actualize the acquisition of these monitors in lieu of just filing a damn ticket, failed, he simply walked into his office IT shop and took them.
This technical act of thievery led to him losing his appointment as a judge in his community, which, apparently, triggered him into a campaign of revenge murder, culminating in the taking of the life of the DA that prosecuted him, and another man and that man's wife, who were somehow part and parcel to that prosecution.
In a Dateline video that included William's interrogation wherein he explains why he stole the monitors in the first place, he was point blank asked by detectives whether or not he had put his request for these monitors in writing anywhere. Williams responded that he had not.
Face palm.
Moral of the story stands as given.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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So here is what I think of the Israel/Hamas/Palestinian eruption.
Right now, the issue is the attack by Hamas. Cut away the complexity and depth of the longstanding controversy between Israel and Palestine and what is left is a vicious murderous attack on regular everyday people against the backdrop of at least temporal tranquility. If there is a legitimate beef against Israel, the terroristic "tactic" and strategy against civilians voids it for as long as it takes to punish and more importantly neuter the perpetrators.
Just like many warhawks and warmongers we have here in the U.S., I believe certain sociopaths have an appetite for murder and mayhem first with an argument for it second. It was surely as much sport as it was theology that drove the specific individuals who crossed Israel's border to kill. But more broadly speaking, in the framework of the entire controversy, Hamas has had time to breed and mix the delicate formula of ignorance and sociopathy among people to create such monsters explicitly for their purpose. In the U.S., we perfect that formula to create politicians and commercial leaders who become those faces you might see on Sunday morning press programs. But in desperate places such as Gaza without the elegance of prosperity to cover up such carnality, what happened last week is what you get from these same type of people operating at a much lower level than those of a suit and respectable title.
So, in my blogging opinion, Israel is justified in its predictable military response with probably no "clean" way of going about it. We can hope that whatever happens next ends the threat against them once and for all, that as many innocent people are spared as possible in the process, and that for once, violence won't beget more violence (yeah, right.)
Which does lead to the bigger angst I would hold not against Israel but rather the process that set up this entire matter at the outset. Something that nobody should have been satisfied with. From what I've been able to YouTube and Wikipedia research (which reads as trivial academia of course, but believe me, is how millions and millions of others are now suddenly being forced to develop out of blood curiosity), there seems to have been some drive to "home" people of the Jewish faith that I probably would never agree there was an explicit need for, let alone on preoccupied land.
Instead, somehow "these people are so...something...that we need to work out a way to 'house' them in the world" seems just as presumptuous as oppression or extermination, no matter how well intended. And then to finally agree on a way that would surely just piss off a bunch of other people, sparking perpetual war as it is to be clearly seen now, is just beyond comprehension.
Having sympathy for Palestinian people is clearly not the same as having sympathy or supporting Hamas, the force that hijacked their cause, nor is it decrying Israel or its right to exist today, nor is it not having sympathy for Israelis. What we as people need to consider is Israel's mature evolution irregardless of the ill-conceived reasoning that brought it into being (by at least my opinion). After all when no nation today has a pure history of origins it is unfair to hold such a standard against Israel.
 By Dave for Personal Blog.
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