From One Of My Readers

Shared with permission.

Dear Friends and Bloggers,

As some of you know and some may not know, this year has been extremely difficult for me to comprehend. I also know that I am not alone with this disruption in our lives that caught so many of us off guard and feeling desolate and depressed. What I offer is my personal opinion of the outcome of the election, its aftermath and my acceptance of the results. It does not come easily to say I took such a downturn during the campaign and the election that I sought medical help that precipitated some changes in the meds and a period of being alone, away from my family and friends to do some deep thinking of life and a way forward. I am still a work in progress but I am making progress. At the clinic, my doctor shared with me that there has been an increase in patients seeking help for mental issues as a result of our election, so know that you are not alone in this and together we may find a way forward to right the devastating wrong that has been inflicted upon us.

Thinking through the events of this past year. I realize that my anger is justified and my belief in the goodness of such a large percentage of our population was totally misplaced. After all the evidence dealing with the deceitful, bigoted, misogynistic and careless behavior and disregard for most of the people in this country came to light and was reported extensively, how the Republican/Maga candidate for our top office still was able to win, not just once but twice is astounding and mysterious. The bottom line – mean spirited and hateful people vote for mean spirited and hateful candidates. This was made abundantly clear on November 5th, this is part of our history now and my hope is that the authors that pen America’s story will report what transpired and that it will not be able to be silenced and whitewashed. Which leads me to consider this important fact; the reasons for America’s involvement in World War II and the allied forces that believed in the concept of a democracy united to end the ruthless takeover of the world by a handful of dangerous demagogues, was scrupulously chronicled in thousands of texts, yet her we are again witnessing a group of power-hungry billionaires intent on damaging our way of life, and it is certain to affect all of us in some way.

America has become a nation of a miniscule group of sadists(those desiring to inflict pain and suffering for their pleasure) and a large population of masochists(those deriving pleasure from oppression and being beaten down and disadvantaged). Consider the people of the Southern United States, people who vote for the Republican ticket time and time again, and rarely benefit from the decisions their representatives in Congress make for them. They remain in poverty, being the citizens who use most of the aid from the government, with the least of educational benefits and poorest economies in the nation.

I think we can all agree that these next 4 years are going to be a challenge, but I actually hope for the worst. I want the next president to surround himself with the dumbest and least experienced people he can find, and it looks like he’s doing an excellent job making that happen. I want them to enact all kinds of laws that will further impoverish and inconvenience the middle and lower class. That may sound harsh but at the end of my life approaching fast I have little to lose as a senior on a fixed income. A reality check and a kick in the pants is what’s needed for our younger generations to know that they’ve been coddled and babied and now’s the time to feel true pain. I want the threatened tariffs to wreck the economy and send even the monied few into a tailspin of desperation. The common people need to live life with gas at $12.00 a gallon, compact cars selling for $80,000.00, eggs at $16.00 and mandatory insurance for home and car that will cost what no one can afford. The abject severity should open the eyes of the blind, deaf and stupid that voted for this most miserable excuse for a human being.

The turnaround won’t happen soon. It will take an uprising of unfathomable determination unseen since WWII to begin the reparations needed for our fragile democracy to survive. I hope for that, seems hope is all we have at this minute. As a meme I saw recently said, if we can eat one billionaire, the others will fall in line. Possibly not, but it would be fun to witness the reaction. Thank you very much for your time. All of you inspire me every day with the work you do on your blogs. ~ Milleson

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Moments After Which There Is No Going Back

From The Atheist Revolution:

What is it about the 2024 U.S. presidential election that I’m still having a hard time coming to terms with? It isn’t the outcome itself, as that did not surprise me. I figured that Trump would win. It was clear that the news media missed him and wanted him back in office. The surprise had more to do with how he won. This wasn’t another case of wining the electoral college and losing the popular vote. He won both.

What does it mean to win the popular vote even when it does not determine the outcome of an election? It means that more of the Americans who bothered to vote preferred the winner of the popular vote. It is, in essence, a popularity contest. And Trump won it. This is the part I’m struggling with the most. Knowing everything we now know about him, more American voters wanted Trump back in power. It is tough to look at the country in the same way I once did.

Same, Sir. Same.

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Quote of the Day

He doesn’t have to be compromised by Putin. He’s on Putin’s side. He’s his friend. Hes his fan. He loves Putin. He loves the things that Putin represents — authoritarianism, the entire ugly corrupt Russian power structure. Donald Trump looks at it and says give me some of that. They could have taped Donald Trump fucking a goat – it wouldn’t matter. He’d be Vladimir Putin’s best buddy no matter what. So as the idea of a conspiracy to explain Trump’s behavior it fails the Occam’s razor test. Trump is an authoritarian asshole. He’s going to love other authoritarians. It’s almost definitional.” ~ Rick Wilson

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Off to a Rough Start

I recorded my first minidisc in over a decade last night.

And after I finished, ejected the disc so it could finish writing the table of contents, and when I reinserted the disc to listen, the machine took a crap. C13 Read Error. Ugh. And it wasn’t just that disc—it was even brand new, unused ones. And of course the seller I bought it from said it was fully functional and doesn’t accept returns.

Being a nerd that’s still relatively good at fixing shit, I did a hasty search online and ended up getting very depressed. Firstly, because there wasn’t a whole lot of info out there and a lot of it was, “Take it to a Sony Service Center.” Yeah, like that’s an option any more…

I did all the suggested troubleshooting: cleaning the laser’s lens, blowing out the mechanism with compressed air, reseating the ribbon cables that run between the mechanism and the main circuit board, etc. But none of it worked.

Anyhow, after mulling it over while wide awake at 4 am this morning, I thought about one other possible culprit: dried lubricant on the sled rail.

After getting ready this morning, did a search on YouTube and found one video that described the error and what needed to be done. It was basically everything I’d already done, but I felt that if the guy in the video could resuscitate a machine that was in much worse condition than mine, I certainly could get this one working.

I pulled the top off again and did everything I’d done last night and in addition, ran a Q-tip drenched in isopropyl alcohol along the rail and under the gears that drive the mechanism. I cautiously inserted the disc from last night and viola! it worked!

So fingers are crossed. As I type this I’m adding a few more tracks to the disc from last night and so far everything is working as it should. The true test will be when I’m finished and it has to write to the TOC (Table of Contents) before ejecting…

UPDATE: It worked!

UPDATE #2: It’s hosed. After recording two discs, the error returned. After popping the cover was obvious the disc was refusing to spin up, triggering the C13 error. I spoke to the seller this afternoon and she’s agreed to refund what I paid for it upon return of the unit. On the positive side, the MZ-S1 arrived today and it works like a champ.

Nugget acquired

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World AIDS Day

As is my tradition every December 1st, I remember…


Kent Kelly


Ken Cohen


Steve Golden


Dennis Shelpman


Jim Hagen


Chuck Krahe


Michael Nelson
Jim Nye


Kevin Ohm


Rick King


Ron Aiazzi


Grant Neilsen


Ric Hathaway


David Koston


Kim Holstein


Jerry Straughn


Fred Sibinic


Russ Alvarez


Ken Borg


Marty Kamner

John Trapp


Harold Gates


Peter Whitman


Scott Woods

Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Ben Walzer
Steve McCollom
Philip Ruckdeschel

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Alien: Romulus – Is It Worth It?

No.

It finally appeared on streaming for free, and all I can say is I’m glad I didn’t pay for a ticket to see it in a theater. I was already fast-forwarding about 2/3 of the way into it.

So many worn-out tropes. So many blindingly-stupid characters.  The Xenomorph is so well known by now, my reaction has become, “Oh, it’s you.”

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