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Blue_true

Blue_true's Journal
Blue_true's Journal
July 10, 2021

President Biden fired the Social Security Administrator and forced his

assistant to resign late this afternoon. The President’s action came after a second Supreme Court ruling in June saying that the Executive Branch could get rid is single heads of Agencies.

The Agency will be temporarily run by a Black woman, Kilolo Kijtakazi. Saul has promised to fight his firing, but he faces an uphill battle given two recent Supreme Court rulings.

Good riddance to bad trash.

April 4, 2021

This is a somewhat trivial observation, so if that bothers you, don't read more.

I saw a good photo of Matt Gaetz and noticed some things that caused me to blow up the photo and closely examine his hair. I believe that Gaetz is significantly bald and that his pompadour is a hairpiece.

If you blow up a picture that clearly shows his hair, you should see a couple of things. First, you should see two very distinct hair textures the side hair and the pompadour. I am considerably older than him and have pretty much all of my hair. If you look at my hair, the texture is the same all over my head (I can feel the texture all over my head). Second, if you look at the hair on the side of his head, which typically is the last hair to start balding, you should notice that his side hair has clear flecks of grey and his temple hair on both sides is close to all grey. The pompadour doesn’t have a single grey hair, that I could discern in a good closeup photo of his head.

Why does this matters to me? I have always viewed people that try to hide an unimportant natural blemish with suspicion - I have been the type that believes that we should work with what nature gives us. Serious balding is natural for most men, there are some exceptions. All of us lose hair as we get older and that hair doesn’t come back, the lifelong hair loss starts as soon as we have gotten a full head of baby hair.

On the large scale, Gaetz hiding balding is secondary to what he is, a total asshole. But him apparently (to me, at least) making a clownish effort to hide his baldness, I believe, is a visible indicator of the type of mindset that causes him to be a total asshole.

March 30, 2021

Numbering of DU posts.

I often see what I view as an enormously irritating practice by posters. Instead of giving some context in their posts, they simply give post numbers for other posts. I find that massively irritating. On my DU page, posts are not numbered BEFORE I open a post, I see a number after it is opened. To make matters worse, there doesn’t seem to be a consistent succession to the numbering, based upon seeing one post number, I guess where a post that some person pointed to may be, only to go to that post and find a totally different number.

Do I have my DU account set up so that I don’t see post numbers when looking at all posts in a thread? If not, can people please give context in a reply and stop simply pointing to other posts?

March 30, 2021

Alaska Elections

A DU member and I had a discussion about Alaska elections where a sore loser law was mentioned, after a Republican announced a challenge to Lisa Murkowski.

The sore loser law may be irrelevant. Alaska has implemented a Jungle Primary for 2022, with rank choice voting. In theory, Murkowski could get weak republican support, but be the only second choice of Democrats and as a result, make her way to a top two General with the Democrat.

My guess is Democrats will try to eliminate Murkowski in the primary, but not in a way that brings a republican Trumper into the General. Democrats would want a weak candidate facing the Democrat.

The Trumper republican that announced a run against Murkowski sounds like a real piece of far rightwing work, so Democrats there need to strategize strongly against inadvertently helping her. I believe that a second republican announced a run also, so if Democrats bring in a single candidate that is strong, that person makes it to the General in a walk - hopefully he or she won’t have hidden skeletons in a personal closet that will play in a General.

March 23, 2021

Elgin Baylor has passed away at 86 years old.

One of the greatest to ever play the game. He still holds the record for the most points scored in an NBA Finals game, 61 points against the Boston Celtics, and he was double-teamed.

I got to see him play near the end of his career. I actually rooted against his team (I was a Knicks fan), I always held my breath every time he got the ball on offense.

February 18, 2021

Not that anyone on DU who is not a lurking right winger needs to be convinced

of the power of proper mask wearing (all parts of nose and mouth covered, nose wire used to conform top of mask to cheeks) and social distancing. But below is an actual (albeit) unintentional case study. The person that made this boo-boo is a smart man, Peter Diamandis (Engineering degree, Medical degree and I think one other technical degree, and the Founder of the XPrize that awarded $10 million in 2004 to a person that developed a scheme for private manned space flights).

Any way. The guy was going to put on a big tech convention that is held each year, looking at futuristic tech stuff. Except this year he initially made it remote, until people bugged him about attending in person. So he gave in to the people wanting to attend in person. Being a really smart person, looks like he figured out a way to keep everyone safe. He had people take PCR COVID19 tests repeatedly before they arrived and they were tested during and after the conference. As the old saying goes, “regardless of how smart you are or think you are, you don’t know what you don’t know”. Well his idea, bad ideal. Interestingly one group that was there the whole time had NO ONE set sick from COVID19, by now, you likely have guessed what the group did.

Some details below: I posted a key excerpt in case the article is paid view to you.

There were four groups:

Organization members: 12 of 30 got sick
Faculty: 4 of 9 got sick
Staff: 5 of 10 got sick
Video production: 0 of 35 got sick, all wore masks at all times and social distanced.

https://apple.news/ATjR8SkJuT_mKQXKU3pE6FQ


February 17, 2021

A suggestion.

Once when I went home for a visit from an out of state engineering job assignment, my Mom presented me with one of the old fashioned quilts, the type that weigh like 20 pounds and are made by hand. She lived in Florida and really didn’t need anything like that quilt, but she knew that I was working in a place that got cold during the Winter and maybe she saw snow storms on tv news and thought about me. It was a really nice quilt, but I had no idea of what to do with it. I dutifully took it back with me and for a number of years packed it and took it with me during my new job postings. Since there was no good place to store something that bulky and I didn’t want to leave it laying near the floor, I always found a corner in a closet where ever I was living at the time.

Long story short. On a brutally cold night, the heat in the apartment that I was living in on the assignment went out. Within a hour in the middle of the night, the place went dead frigid cold. There was not a hotel that I could go check into. I pulled all of the store bought warm blankets and used every one of them and was still freezing. Desperate, I found that bulky old quilt that my Mom had given me. I put it on top of the other blankets, immediately I the air around my body started warming up, so much so that I had to take off one of the store bought warm blankets to avoid overheating. It may be hyperbole, but to this day I am convinced that quilt saved my life that night. The nice American made warm blankets were no match for the brutal cold, that quilt that my Mom bought from a group of ladies that hand made such bed covering was more than a match.

As I read the news coming out of Texas one of my first thoughts is why people would not use blankets. Then I remember that night, even the best made modern warm blankets likely were no match for the cold that hit parts of Texas. The situation also made me realize how much of the old time crafts, like quilt making we no longer have. The big bulky “warmers” that can be bought in department store simply can’t match the thick quilts old people used to sit and make, thick and warm internal filling stitched every couple inches so that the quilt could likely be hit by a tank shell and would mostly be still there. It is sad in a way because we have lost that craft, the old ladies likely passed away years ago, but unlike much of the “old days” stuff that people like Trumpers pine about, things like quilt craft and home goods craft done by old women and men is something that is truly lost to us and is irreplaceable.

February 14, 2021

I have to get this off my chest because it is bothering me.

I apologize if this had been discussed.

The situation with the Deputy Press Secretary really bothers me. I feel that his ass should have been fired and here is why. The alleged language that he used, to me, denotes a person that is turned on by the trappings of power. In my experience, the most influential powerful people have been the ones that were not taken by having power, but instead were relentlessly mission driven, to give an extreme, they were just as comfortable and content having dinner at a homeless shelter with homeless people as they were being part of a glitzy affair that drew in the rich and powerful.

I read the articles about his actions and that he was not fired is bothersome. A mission driven person would have never done what he did to begin with. We need mission driven Democrats surrounding President Biden, IMO.

February 10, 2021

Have any of you suddenly discover something about yourself that you never realized?

I have used rakes a lot in my life. I was recently raking leaves at my home and realized that all my life, I have naturally raked left handed. I never realized that until that moment. I am right handed with a dominant right handed tendency, but if I try to rake from the right, I can only do so weakly and for less than a minute.

I know that it is simple-minded, but have you ever had a revelation about something that you do naturally, but based upon your overall makeup, should do another way?

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