I’m still here

I should be writing my “eight years clean” post. I used to fuss over the milestone post every year, but this year I forgot about it after the Facebook share. Maybe I’ll still get to it, but I can’t think of what to say. Is that weird?

Anyway, I find myself awake and alone this evening, unusually so, because for once my son is not feeling well and can’t play games on my computer. I gave him some meds and he went to bed early. So for a change I can write something. It’s been a while.

I don’t really have anything much to say though, but what I can say is this… I’m tired. My car is once again not working – this time it was the clutch, but hopefully that will be fixed tomorrow. But mostly I’m tired.

I find myself in an unusual position at work. Two months ago, our (software) architect left the company. Last month, three other developers left the company. We have three large software systems there, two legacy systems and one newer one. The legacy systems are the ones that pull in most of the revenue. And me, once upon a time a terribly unreliable, disloyal and downright bad programmer, is suddenly the expert. The only expert on a number of things. It’s quite strange to suddenly become so important. Also tiring. But I think I like it.

A new developer started today, and in time, he will get to learn the systems, but I’m going to be the one everyone turns to for some time, and, this is the good part – I do have some ideas of improvements I can make to the software, and I finally have the freedom to do so. I just need to find the time to make the changes I need to make. It’s kind of fun though… I can focus on larger changes to the bigger picture, but I’ll be able to delegate the smaller things to the newbies. It’s reinvigorated my interest in programming, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to write here, and I may get even less in the next few months until we can finish making the stability changes needed and getting the new developers up to speed.

But I’ll try to find time to write here when possible…

Edit… For interest sake, my current clean time: (generated by an app I wrote, that I use for the FB share)

All I Know For Sure: The Making of First And Last And Always

Good grief! I amlost never “reblog” anything, but I cannot resist sharing this incredibly detailed account of the various mixes and recording process of what will always be one of my favourite albums of all time. I’m more of a Wayne Hussey than an Eldritch fan, but I reckon the sound of this great work of art that is First And Last and Always is better than most of what Hussey did later in The Mission.

heavyleather

by Robert Cowlin

The date is Saturday 2 June 1984. By invitation of WEA Records, a young Dave Allen stands amongst the throng at Amsterdam’s Melkweg concert venue. Presiding over the audience are three guitarists, two in cowboy hats and the other a rampaging hulk who careers around the stage whilst abusing his instrument; and a velvet-draped shadowy figure mated to a microphone stand as if it were a morphine drip. The PA stacks throb under the pounding weight of a Roland drum-machine, spitting forth a constant melee of machine-beat Armageddon. The band Allen has come to see is The Sisters Of Mercy, and their new distributor – WEA – wants him to produce the band’s debut LP. Allen was fast becoming well known for his audio engineering and production work on records suited to night-time listening. Having just finished producing The Cure’s top ten hit record The Top (Fiction Records…

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Yeah, I like you in that, like I like you to scream

32 years. 32 years since The Cure released Fascination Street. I love this song, but fuck’s sakes… I’m getting old.

Well, now I’m getting old…

Happy birthday, Miechelle!

Just a short one but… My cousin, Michelle, she who told me that Santa Claus wasn’t real, when I was six and she was eight years old, is 52 today. Holy shit, we are getting old.

Well, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. And I know I’ve said this before, but angry as my mother was at the time when you “spoilt” Christmas for me… And me too – I was furious because I realized immediately that it was true… you did me a favour, cuz. You helped me to think critically from then on.

Another fucking 30 day ban from Facebook

This time, a perfectly innocent comment got me a 30 day ban.

It was on this post:

… which received these comments:

To which I added my own comment:

It would seem that the phrase “men are arseholes” triggered the ban. Either that or someone is reporting my comments. Major double standard here… We have people like the so-called “Activist Mommy” who posts nothing but homophobic hatred in the guise of Christian love, people carrying on about “farm murders” and white genocide (which isn’t real) as an excuse to spread their vile racism, “all lives matter” and ‘It’s OK to be white’ – also racism, and people encouraging paedophilia and violence against women. All that is allowed. But dare say something bad about men and you get an instant 30 day ban. What the actual fuck?

You might see more posts here again, now that I’m off social media for a month. I do have a Twitter account but never really got into it…

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Edit: I was just talking to someone who complained that a hacker has reopened her deceased father’s account, and despite a year of back and forth and her sending the death certificate, it remains active. I suppose, since my previous attempts to create a backup account failed, I could use my deceased mother’s account. I could. But I don’t think I’ll do that.

This woman can command hurricanes, has ended Coronavirus, and brings dead pets back to life! Praise Jesus.

Covered by FriendlyAtheist here, but I couldn’t resist writing something too. Also I want to try this WordPress block editor because I can no longer seem to embed videos using Open Live Writer.

Embedded from FriendlyAtheist’s channel. I suggest you read their stuff.

OK, so she’s clearly out of her fucking mind. But what gets me is that she has a following. She, a faith healer who says she can do this through prayer, has made the following claims:

• She can turn metal into bone.
• She made a grown woman grow taller.
• She can command the weather.
• She ordered coronavirus to “cease worldwide” in March, after declaring it “illegal”.

Why is is that religious people can make these outrageous claims and there is no accountability? Never mind they seem to have become confused when they also claim that god created everything. Apparently everything doesn’t include everything all the time, although they still happily hand out their trite platitudes when your loved ones die. So when people die, it is god’s will. (Sometimes?)

By the way, it took me about two minutes to figure out how to add bullet points with this fancy block editor. I don’t like it at all and I haven’t even seen any category or tag options yet. So far this editor is a disappointment to me – I expect to be able to type and do common formatting without thinking about it, but maybe I need to give it a chance.

Coronavirus misinformation continues (Stay in your fucking homes)

We’ve had our first two deaths in South Africa. The US now leads the race in terms of confirmed cases. So a snapshot right now looks like this:

Yet the fanatical religious people still share arguments like this:

I don’t get how anyone can choose to ignore the fact that the confirmed cases are increasing exponentially, and this is without proper testing. Of all people, it’s the extreme religious ones who are fucking it up for the rest of us. Note it isn’t all religious people, but it is often the most religious ones. I wonder if this doesn’t demonstrate something? Does the extreme end of a view not give a better indication of the view’s repercussions? (Sorry, I am having trouble phrasing this. Hope this is clear.) Anyway, it seems that faith is especially dangerous right now, especially if that faith gives you the confidence to put yourself and others at risk because you think you are protected by something for which no evidence exists. It’s almost like false hope is fine when it comes to comforting your feelings, but potentially tragic if you trust it against things that actually exist.

This situation is ongoing. One cannot compare it to flu, or previous pandemics, unless one was able to somehow get a snapshot of those previous pandemics at a similar stage. And how would we define such a stage? Previous pandemics were not nearly as contagious. For example, Ebola was not airborne but was spread only by direct physical contact. This virus is the most dire, the most serious threat to life as we know it that most of us will live to see.

Please stay in your homes and do not be fooled by misinformation like that I screen-shotted above.

Also, it’s not only the older people dying. For example, here’s an article about a nurse who was in his 40s, who died of it. We are all in danger and it should be our priority to not only take precautions to avoid crowds where we might become infected, but also to avoid them in case we are unknowingly already infected. You might suffer only a mild infection but pass on the virus to others who then die.

WTF? Banned from Facebook for 30 days again!

I just saw an email that informed me a post violated community standards, and looking at it I do remember the GIF, of a Japanese (I think) girl… flashing her vagina. I remember seeing the GIF, but do not remember sharing it. In fact I recall liking and then unliking it, so I must have shared it by mistake… I don’t usually use Facebook on my phone.

So now I’m banned for a whole month for something I must’ve posted in error. Oh well…

And just after all this, I took my phone out my pocket, and the screen was completely black. I thought it was broken. It took me two reboots before realizing that the screen brightness was turned all the way off. So apparently all this might have resulted from not locking my phone. (I never do.)

Edit: About an hour after writing this, I tried to make a call, and my phone was in airplane mode. I didn’t deliberately do that either. Might be a good idea to lock my phone with a pattern or something? I don’t understand how I managed to do so many things by accident… sharing a GIF I had viewed and decided not to share, changing the display brightness to all the way off, and enabling airplane mode…

 

Sorry, post deleted

I just published a post that was a little too personal and decided to delete it. Sorry about that. Maybe I’ll bring it back another time.

Isn’t it time for revolution already?

I’m starting to understand why people believe in certain conspiracies. Like the New World Order or the Illuninati or the Rothschild Banking conspiracies. I understand especially this year, when I’m getting further and further into debt, struggling a little more to pay the bills, and ignoring the fact that I’m probably never going to get out. With my salary paid into my account, my balance approaches zero for the only time every month, although only for a few minutes, and then returns to tens of thousands in negative again. I see other people living dream lives in dream houses that I will never be able to afford, and everything I do makes zero difference to my life but contributes towards millions more into their fat bank balances. Yeah, it’s easy to believe that someone is pulling the strings, that I and others like me are puppets being controlled by the Big Bad Lizard puppeteers, or something to that effect. Easy to believe that exposing them will somehow make a difference. I can see why people want it to be true.

But it isn’t so. The truth is simpler. This is capitalism. This is where it leads… Corporations thrive and make tons of money. We are born to work for those corporations, making money for them while we barely get by. And then we die. Game over. It doesn’t matter how hard we try or how many hours we put in, or how good we are at our jobs. At the end of the day, working harder means making other people richer, faster. It means we are more valuable because we make more money for them.

And who are they? That’s the bit the conspiracists are missing. Not the lizard people; not the Illumninati; not the Rothschilds. There’s no ringmaster running this circus. They are simply the ones who are born rich, who land positions of power. Do you really think someone rises to the top of a corporation, where they sit with unimaginably high salaries for doing very little, by working hard? They’re not in control of us; in the real world they’re just watching their own interests. They don’t even care that we exist, except for when we make mistakes that affect their income. They look only at the money coming in as they continue to get richer while we get poorer.

In years to come, things will get even worse. Climate change will lead to a miserable life for millions. Millions will suffer and die. Meanwhile, the rich, who are insulated and isolated from the harsh reality of everyday life by the protection their money affords, can deny it. This is why people like Donald Trump, idiots born into wealth that led to power, can deny human-caused climate change. It never affects them directly. “Let them eat cake”, he might as well say…

What’s happening is the Middle Class is falling away. We get poorer as the rich get richer. It’s not going to stop, and no matter how hard we work, our lives will continue to get worse. There’s nothing new I’ve written here… A few years ago, only anarchists were saying this. But now it’s coming from people like me, ordinary people. The only way to fix this is revolution. The rich are a burden. They need to go. (And there is irony here. It’s happened before. The ancestors of the rich didn’t work for their wealth either, mostly. They took it.) If we had more people who saw the reality for what it is, and less believing in silly conspiracy theories which put fictitious evil overlords in control, as well as less people indulging in magical thinking and having faith in imaginary deities watching over them, maybe the revolution(s) could come sooner. But as it is, it probably won’t happen in my lifetime. That disappoints me.