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Random acts of randomness

Michael 11 Comments

Over the weekend we worked on Moments of Motivation for the ROAMcare site for September and October. It’s a good thing we’re almost done with the year because I’m not so sure I can keep a positive enough outlook to find another 9 or 10 somethings to feel motivated over.

Here are some random thoughts that gave me pause this weekend.

The US has more guns than people. We currently stand at 1.2 guns per person. I know for a fact that neither I nor my daughter have any, so someone is walking around with over 3&1/2 guns. Actually, there are some walking around with way more than their 1.2 allotment. Late last week, local firefighters responded to a house fire but had to wait an half hour or so until the 20,000 rounds ammunition stored in the building stopped exploding before being able to move in to fight the fire. Crews salvaged more than 100 firearms.

Dingy Donald was in Scotland last weekend to play golf at his newly acquired second golf course there, drop in on his original course there, and visit a third that somebody else still owns. I guess because the American taxpayers paid about $10 million in transportation, lodging, staffing, and security, he figured he owes us something, so he also paid a short visit with the European Union President to sign the new tariffs deal. After signing the deal that lowered tariffs to 15%, the grifter in chief said, “We did it.” Oh, care to take a guess what the tariffs rate with the EU was before the orange menace was crowned…err sworn in. If you said 15%, give yourself a piece of Belgian chocolate.

In the interest of fairness (I suppose) news came over the weekend that not all violence is gun violence. Eleven people were stabbed at a Walmart in Traverse City, Michigan on Saturday in what a Michigan sheriff said appeared to be a random act. No,I don’t think so. The stabbings were done with a folding knife. So this random dude decided to go Walmart with a knife in his pocket, decided to take it out, decided to open it, and decided to slice and dice his nearby fellow shoppers. Does that sound random to you? The sheriff may have trouble with his overall view of life though. He also mentioned to reporters, “Eleven is too many.” Hmm. No word on what the right amount for a weekend stabbing spree would be.

And lastly, on the international front. On Friday, the Russian parliament (who knew they had one?) passed a law to make it illegal to search the Internet for “extremist materials,” punishable by a fine up to the equivalent of US$64. No word on what constitutes extreme. According to an article in the AP “the official definition of extremist activity is extremely broad.”

Okay, that last one did it. I can whip out another dozen Motivation Moments now no problem.

TGIAI

Michael 13 Comments

The Associated Press published an article yesterday, “Teens say they are turning to AI for friendship.” Teena quoted in the article indicated that the use of AI for help with schoolwork is nearly universal, nearly 70% of them at some point, and half of them regularly have used an AI Companion as a “digital friend.” A survey cited in the article determined “31% of teens said their conversations with AI companions were “as satisfying or more satisfying” than talking with real friends.”

As the story was picked up by local papers and news outlets, comments on it picked up, many of the “that’s scary” type. I think what’s scary is how this demonstrates how bad teens are to other teens, especially as other surveys have noted how bullying is skyrocketing, not like we’re seeing it among adults more than ever and coming from the Oval Office on a daily basis.

The survey studied the AI habits of 1,000 teens over two months. The researchers were taken back by their findings, concerned that teens will not be able to assimilate into society without having peer to peer interaction. They didn’t see then when one 18 year old said, ““AI is always available. It never gets bored with you. It’s never judgmental. When you’re talking to AI, you are always right. You’re always interesting. You are always emotionally justified,” he was describing a companion to replace the real ones who were always judgmental and emotionally damaging.

A person, even a teen, wants to feel valued. In the social media blurb to yesterday’s Uplift we began, “Nobody likes to be taken advantage of.” That’s the bully’s prime motivator – to take advantage of others’ insecurities and take without concern. Although our discussion revolved around misappropriated gratitude, we can say from personal experiences that when others perceive us as valued contributors, our self-esteem grows. As self-esteem grows, the need for validation from others decreases as we can provide our own validation.

This is what teens need. People to see them and thank them for being them. Not to have on a friend they created from a companion bot.

That Gratitude Attitude suggests some basic ways to recognize and show appreciation to people for being themselves. We even dove into the family setting. Take a look, practice daily gratitude, and save a teen from having to build a friend. 

Never can say goodbye

Michael 11 Comments

Yesterday was the 56th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. We can land a man on the moon but we still can’t come up with a good way to end a text message. It’s also the 58th anniversary of the first Special Olympics. And still after all this time I can’t come up with a good way to work that into a referene on the absence of a good way to end a text message. Then again on the other hand, we’v had text messages for 41 years old and I still can’t come up with a good way to end a text message. I think I have a texting dysfunction.(Technically texting is 33 years old. It was invented in 1984 but not first used until 1992. I guess they had a hard time coming up with a good way to say hello.)

Having been born and raised in the telephone era, the transition to short messaging systems has been long and difficult. All these abbreviations and pictures with no punctuation. Anarchy I tell you!

To be very frank, I’m still not comfortable with the habit of just jumping into the conversation. No “Hello, how are you?” “Are you busy?” “Hey, s’up!” How do people think it’s appropriate to start off a conversation with “on my way,” or “be there soon,” or worst of all, “omw.” But having gotten beyond that I still can’t just stop. It’s like just getting out of— hmmm, its like sending a card that just says happy birthday and not signing it because the recipient should be able to figure it who it’s from by checking the postmark.

Closing a phone call is easy. “Bye,” Bye.” And you’re done. Messages seldom end that cutly and dryly. Oh, someone might get a “but” in but usually it’s as abrupt as it started and I’m not sure if they’re done so I poo back on and say something to see if they’re still there.  And so on and so on and son on.

You may need shaking your head and quietly chuckling over this, but I know it’s a problem, a real problem, and others experience it too. I know because I got into a text message conversation yesterday afternoon with another who couldn’t say goodbye and we finally got around to “hanging up” around 9:30 last night. It’s a good thing we don’t have to pay for those things individually anymore.

A flood of information

Michael 5 Comments

Quick, name a devastating flood that happened in the US recently. Did you say Texas? Did you know there have been seven fatal floods and flash flood in the US since the Guadalupe River valley was flooded on July 4. There were another three in the two weeks preceding the Fourth of July Texas floods.

Indeed, the Texas July 4 flood was the most devastating, but to those who lost loved ones in Maryland, West Virginia, or New Jersey, devastation is not a relative term. Why do we not think of these or those in. North Carolina, New York, or New Mexico.

I though about all these places because of local flooding that has been happening here in my neck of the woods over the past few weeks. We’re sort of used to them. We see flash flooding routinely, and though not as often, river flooding occurs regularly also. We haven’t had a deadly flood for a few years. Those in my neighboring states of West Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and Maryland can no longer say that.

I have my thoughts about the dearth of information surrounding these floods when there should have been a flood of information. Let’s stick with that. Considering these areas will not have emergency funds funneled to them by our benevolent leader, we bear the responsibility to care for our neighbors.

In yesterday’s Uplift we talked about what it means to be a neighbor, to share your humanity, to let your goodwill flow, it was British theologian Richard Whatley who spoke of neighborliness as “an ongoing flow of goodwill.”  He identified five steps to being a good neighbor: be generous, be ethical, be fair and honest, be kind constantly, and be peaceful.

Is a neighbor just the guy next door? Your neighbor is your fellow man who deserves your neighborliness. How do we that? We have suggestions in Will you be my neighbor?

Make me happy

Michael 11 Comments

I think I might have figured out why that sad pack of humanity in Washington DC are all so unhappy all the time. They have no happy place. They have places where others can be miserable which allows them to be seem grander, and they think that makes them happy, but it doesn’t. They have places where they can openly insult, harass, and persecute others, and they can feel superior thinking that makes them happy, but it doesn’t.  The have places where they are expected to lie, cheat, and steal resulting in the collection of more wealth than one person can spend thinking that makes them happy, but it doesn’t. No, none of that does. None of that makes for a happy place.

A happy place is that placed where you can smile and although others may not understand, you smile so big that they will smile along with you. There are three things necessary for something to make you happy. It has to be pleasing or contented. It has to be satisfying. You have to be confident that what is pleasing to you isn’t harming anyone else.

And if you want to move from happiness to ecstasy, encourage someone else to be happy. No, don’t just encourage them, help them to find their happy place and to be happy.

Last week in ROAMcare’s Flashback Friday post we discussed happy places. I’ve written something similar in days gone by. Regarding happy places, the things that stop you in your tracks and bring a smile to your face, that these are not the pillars of happiness, the really big life changing events that come to mind when you think life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness type happiness, but are the little things that are part of getting us from one hour to the next, the things that turn drudgery into something faintly tolerable. They are the things and places that barely register to the rest of the world yet bring you profound happiness.      

There is a destination in Pittsburgh that personifies happiness. Called an artistic wonderland, Randyland, founding in 1995 by Randy Gilson and Mac McDermott, is a massive, unique outdoor art installation that captures the fun in everyday, reused, and upcycled material. It grew from Gilson’s pre-Randyland days when he engaged in “guerilla gardening,” turning vacant lots into explosions of color and life.

Randyland is a happy place, one of those unusual spots that, although not for everyone, is for everyone, and is where you can’t not find something to smile about and leave happier from. It is unabashedly one of those quirky places that nobody was ever going to say couldn’t be done. And it doesn’t hurt anybody. 

Find your happy place. You can do it. And others around you will be happier for it too.

 

 

Happy Half Year!

Michael 4 Comments

Ahh July! One of the two months tossed in by the Caesars Julius and Augustus rendering the clues to the position in the calendar by their names of September through December moot.

The month that added pages to calendars and is the reason February holds the short end of the day stick started in the hubris of a petty little tyrant. (Warning, Donober may be just around the corner.)

Still there are some good things that came out of July. Not only does July contain within its weeks National Hot Dog Day (on the undoubtedly soon to be more available July 4) it is in its entirety National Watermelon Month and National Ice Cream Month, perhaps not at the same time. Fun fact(?) or perhaps Sad fact, the Fourth of July was not declared a federal holiday until 1938.

Not only was it in July (the one in 1687 specifically) that Isaac Newton published Principia, that contains within its pages his laws of gravity and motion, it was also in July (the one in 2001) that the wildly popular sit-com “The Office” premiered (the British production). And it was on July 13, 1923 that some future real estate tycoon erected the famous HOLLYWOODLAND letters in Griffith Park on Mount Lee above Beachwood Canyon that you might be more familiar with as the Hollywood sign after the last four letters were taken down in 1949.

For the fans of vaccines, and other reasonably intelligent people, it was in July that the rabies vaccine was first given to a patient. Microbiologist Louis Pasteur administered the vaccine to a nine-year-old boy bitten by a rabid dog on July 6, 1885.

For those who think weird like me, July is the first month of the second half of the year. In yesterday’s Uplift we suggested July is a good time to reaffirm your New Years Resolution. Ours is to find something everyday that makes you start the day smiling inside and work on that until the smile defines you. Read more about it at Half Year Resolutions. It’s good. Trust me.

Mid-century modern

Michael 9 Comments

From newspaper columnists to social media influencers (gag), oodles of people, some een intelligent, have been running “best of the first quarter of the century” lists. Don’t worry, I’m not joining them. You don’t have to stop reading before it turns boring. It may turn boring, but that won t be because if a list of my top ten anythings from the last 25 years.

Frankly, I’m not so sure we’ve completed the first quarter of the century. Go back to kindergarten, earlier for the more precocious of you. When you count, do you start at zero? No, you start at one. No matter how you look at it, we may have gone through 25 years starting with a 2, but only 24 of them were in the twenty-first century. So maybe next year, after we’ve completed the quarter of the century, I might make a list or two.

One thing all these spurious lists have done is make me think what significant progress we have made – not in the last 25 years, but in the last 75. I picked 75 years because that brings us mid-century of the twentieth century. I don’t go back quite that far but I am ld enough to be an American mid-century classic, built in the 50s. Some parts still original.

I grew up during the 60s, a period of civil unrest in a town where everybody was wary of everybody. Other areas had racial issues. We were siloed off by nationalities – Italians, Greeks, Croatians, Irish, and then overlaid racial tensions. But it wasn’t so bad. Since nobody could be top dog, we learned long before the rest of the world we can probably do better by ignoring the obvious difference and concentrate on the things we have in common, like some terrific ethnic dishes. Laugh if you will, but 70 years later, Nationality Days still fill the air with the aroma of everyone’s “old country” kitchens and several interesting fusions.

By the time we got to the 90s, it looked like the rest of the county was starting to embrace the whole melting pot idea.and it was working. And then some 5 foot 9 inch 300 pound spray tanned orange manwhore came along and convinced all the backward hat wearing men and their husky, tattooed women that the world needs more hatred. Weak as they were an still are, the sniffling crowd sucked up to his man girdle and begged for more kool-aid.

But in the meantime, start making those best of lists of the twenty-first century and we can revisit them next year. Maybe we’ll all be in a better mood by then – if we haven’t all died from preventable diseases that they burned all the vaccines for.

Lovable Loser

Michael 5 Comments

The block of pine whittled into the shape of approaching that of a 4 wheeled vehicle sat perched atop the hilltop created by the wooden track. Someone blew a whistle, someone else started a stopwatch, a third someone dropped the pins holding back the blocks of pine. The Pinewood Derby, a mainstay to this day in Cub Scouting, was underway!

I never won The Derby. I remember coming close but my memory doesn’t extend to remembering how many places down the leaderboard I considered close back when my age could be expressed in single digits. But I definitely remember not winning. I remember that because each year I tried to do better. I think I did. I do remember the dads saying how much faster everyone got this year.

I also remember we didn’t have any juggernauts in the wood race car circuit. No one was a perennial powerhouse. Someone new always took home the big trophy. (I have no recollection of this at all other than my intuition but I’m pretty sure that big trophy stood about 3, maybe 4 inches high.)

The pinewood derby isn’t the only thing I never won. It heralded in a lifetime of losing. I don’t mind. Sometimes it gets old never getting to take home the big trophy. But along the way I’ve amassed an impressive number of little trophies, plaques, and certificates.

There were losses in Little League baseball, high school baseball and basketball, college bowling, gun club skeet shooting, and car club rallying. Actually, at the car club I do have a few first-place plaques but only in the novice division rallies. There too the big trophies eluded me.

Another set of competitions I’ve proudly lost at have been speech contests. Going back to high school forensics competitions I’ve only ever come tantalizingly close to a trophy I’d have to readjust the shelves in the bookcase to display. Even today, after countless attempts at Toastmasters International World Series of Public Speaking I’ve never broken past the district level, leaving me only halfway to the international stage and the really big trophy.

I’m happy with my life of loserdom. Each time I didn’t win, or won only to put me back into a more competitive position, I learned something about myself, what got me that far, what I need to go farther. Toastmasters has a rule, if you ever win the WSOP, you cannot compete again, not even all the way back at the club level contests. You’re one and done. I think it’s a sound system.

We looked at winning, losing, and learning, in this week’s Uplift, Run the Good Life. We said, “Winning isn’t everything. Not quitting is! Run the race so you get the most out of life,” and much, much more. Go on, take a look.

Buddy can you spare a billion

Michael 13 Comments

One of the annoyances of being addicted to 70 and 80 year old movies (and older even), is having to translate certain period references to their twenty-first century equivalents, most notably (at least for this discussion), is money. As in, the value of money.

An obvious fact of money is that money of this year is almost always going to be worth less than money next year. (Eventually it will likely become worthless but that is a discussion for a different day.) The point being, when someone in a movie made in 1933 tosses down a dollar coin in payment for a meatloaf dinner, pie, and coffee – and gets change(!) you instinctively know money went a lot farther then. (Further?) (Whatever). Those aren’t so bothersome. But when someone says something like, “I want to put $1,000 down on Nag #1 to win in the third race,” I get to wondering, just how much is that guy gambling.

I did some research, and I found out that $1,000 American dollars in 1933, when adjusted for inflation is the rough equivalent of $24,000-$27,000 today (depending on whose rate of inflation you want to apply. So our erstwhile horse race lover is splurging with let’s say $25,000 on his horse race.

Some of the more criminal endeavors in the so called gilded age were really up there. A garden variety kidnapping when the perpetrators then demand “$50,000 or youse’ll never see da brat again,” are looking for a payout of $1.25 million of today’s dollar bills. (In December 2024 a cryptocurrency executive was kidnapped and returned after a ransom of $1 million was paid so maybe that’s not so far off.) (I wonder if those guys got money or crypto for their ransom???) (Anyway…)

In the 1930s, the richest man in the world was John D. Rockefeller. Topping out at about $1.4 billion 1934 dollars, making him worth $35 billion dollars today. Some would pooh pooh that trifling amount. Today’s richest of the rich are worth over $200 billion dollars, except they aren’t. A billionaire in the 1930s had a billion dollars in dollars. True, some of that might be in the value of their business (in Rockefeller’s case, Standard Oil), but their businesses were worth their values in real dollars. Today’s wealth is more a standard of leverage than liquidity. If John D. wanted to buy the New York Times for $20 million dollars, he would have gone to the bank, taken out $20 million dollars (or maybe he’d get it out of his change jar at home), and paid Adolf Ochs $20 million dollars. (He didn’t do that and probably missed out on a great deal because newspapers were a dime a dozen during the depression years.) Today if someone wanted to buy say Twitter, they’d be lots of stocks transferred and “financial considerations” made but nobody ends up with real folding money to put in their wallets.

The other thing about the difference between 90 years of inflation is that not only has inflation devalued the dollar. So called market adjustments must also be taking into consideration to really determine the purchasing power of a dollar is. Remember those $25,000 dollars oof today’s money that would buy you 1,000 of 1933 dollars. You need about 2&1/2 times that much to buy what $1,000 would buy in 1933. The actual spend equivalent of $1,000 1933 dollars in about $62,000 today.

Put another way, in 1933 the average income was $1,300 per year. The average house cost $5,700 or 4.4 times the annual average income. In 2024, the average U.S. income was $62,000, the average house cost $520,000 or 8.4 times the average annual income. We are actually making more money but getting less spending power. By inflation only, that average $1,300 dollars is about $32,000 today but the average income is almost twice that. By calculating for inflation alone, that $5,700 house should cost $140,000 today. The house price rose 3.4 times higher than the rate of inflation.

Remember those numbers when you read in this morning’s paper that your Senators approved the Big Bastardly Bill taking even more of your money away. I’m sorry, any billionaires reading please, please ignore that last statement. You’re going to get to keep 38% more than you did last year. Everybody else go out for dinner this year. After next year’s tax bill you probably can’t afford meatloaf, pie, and coffee all in one meal.

Who do you think you are

Michael 11 Comments

Recently I’ve been thinking about relationships. Someone dropped a “like” on an older post, “Golden Oldies” as a matter of fact, and it reminded me that I had said the longest relationship I’ve had in my adult life (which itself is pretty damn long) has been with my little roadster. I’ve used that line a few times in blogs posts. I’ve used it a few times in speeches. It’s true you know. That has been my longest relationship outside of family, although now she’s more like family than some family.

Lots of relationships, even the short ones, can become more like family than some family. My partner at ROAMcare is more family than friend, and I can think of another 2 or 3 friends who fit in that category. Along the same line of thought, some acquaintances turn into friends when they really have no good reason to have done so.

I’m not sure where to put those we come across in the blogging world. The ones we connect with are more than just fellow bloggerets. Some we may have actually made our acquaintance with though I would think they are more than acquaintances. I’ve never met another from the blogging world although quite a few have made an impact on me.

In a post about a week ago I quoted Kurt Vonnegut. “We need gangs,” Vonnegut said, “I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.” The comments made it clear that here too is a gang. Perhaps that’s how we identify. As gang members.

One of the first of our gang I ran across was Bill Fyfe. Author. Correspondent. Canadian. We’d converse by email, an occasional postal correspondence, and by comments. Nice guy. Bill died a few years ago. His site, WD Fyfe is still active. Three or so years ago I was entered in a Toastmasters’ contest, and I needed a character for a narrative speech. So now in addition to his books and still active site, he is memorialized in a speech on YouTube.

Gang member? Acquaintance? Friend? Other? I don’t know what we are. All of us. There is something that somehow attracted us to each other. Of the 1600 or so” followers,” why is it that there is only a good handful I can call, if I were to call them anything, my gang member friends. That seems a good enough compromise.

In this week’s Uplift we tossed out the idea that one of our needs as fellow humans is to connect with other humans, often other humans who are nothing like us. Check out Opposites Attract and see if you don’t agree.