Where were you when…

March 24, 2025March 23, 2025Michael 16 Comments

The last couple of weeks have had some interesting stories in the news, and I don’t mean articles detailing the machinations of a chainsaw wielding immigrant or an orange skinned man-child. I’m talking about interesting stories, real life stuff.

Although I suppose there was a specific date when the world decided to shut down, the media, social and mainstream, must have gotten together and declared it was early March 2020 and have been busily writing up every 5 year COVID anniversary story they can imagine. How healthcare has changed, how cooking has changed, how exercise has changed, how travel has changed, notable moments in the history of, or the lingering effects on life after COVID. It’s a good thing we had that pandemic or else people would be filling up their column inches (and the pixelated equivalent) with really far-fetched stuff like Presidential executive orders banning skinny jeans or renaming established geographic entities. But I digress.

As much as I enjoyed reading the timeline of recent history almost as much as I enjoyed living through the timeline of recent history, the most interesting articles addressed food. If you were to say that makes sense to you because you know I like food a lot more than I like history, you are right! Even though I did get an A in history throughout my junior high school career or whenever we learn about history because those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it.

Apparently, something we aren’t doomed to repeat, or aren’t privileged to repeat, is more home cooking. A U.S. Department of Agriculture survey conducting in 2024 indicated people are spending 55.7% of their food budget on dining out. But…there’s always a but when you start talking statistics…but, according to a national association of restaurants and restaurateurs, more people are ordering take-out and enjoying their dining out dollars at home, including double digit increases in people purchasing complete major holiday meals (think Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter). All this while inflation supposedly had been escalating more rapidly than Dingy Donald’s golf scores. (To be fair (yes,I can be), according to the National Restaurant Association, restaurant prices increased 27.2% from February 2020 to June 2024.)

As I read some of the articles, I discovered new to me 5 year old information. For example, did you know there was a yeast shortage during the pandemic? Now, I am a bread maker. Bread, pizza, rolls. All things yeasty. (Not beer. I’m not crazy about beer and every “home-brew” I have ever tasted seemed to want to challenge rhubarb as the most bitter stuff you can put in your mouth.) Like the rest of the world, I was baking bread nearly every Saturday during the pandemic. But I also was baking bread nearly every Saturday before and since the pandemic, and because I was/am a constant baker (not to be confused with a constant gardener), I buy yeast in 2 pound blocks. Guess I sailed right through the “shortage” with the couple packs I always have in the freezer. Who knew?

What changes from 2020 are you still living with, or without, or would like to again? Maybe next week we should talk about how exercise has changed. Gotta work off all those bread calories. See you then!

Trash Talk

April 12, 2021April 11, 2021Michael 4 Comments

We are already firmly into the fourth month of 2021. That itself is frightening, but more is that we still are filling our conversations with 2020 sound bite phrases (and some even older) which even in 2020 was depressing. So in the spirit of culture cancelling, let’s make a Second Quarter Resolution to, in no particular order, cancel these.

Eraser

Cancel Culture: Cancelling is becoming the new fad falling somewhere between hobby, and cottage industry. Old fogies like me tend to confuse cancel culture with “the mob” burning books or tearing down statues. It originated with some fashion or beauty type person who apparently was tight enough with the Kardashians to have amassed close to 2 Billion views on his YouTube channel lost over a million followers in a single day because of some spat he had with another YouTube beauty person. Seriously. You know I don’t make this stuff up. With origins that trite it’s time to cancel this bit of unculture.

Unprecedented Times: Many of last year’s news stories were unexpected, life-changing events. Of that there is no question. Were they unprecedented as the hyperbolic news media introduced every story. Consider this. To be unprecedented something must not have a precedent and a precedent is not merely the first of something, but the first of something to be used as an example for others to follow. Let’s look at some of 2020’s “unprecedented” happenings. The pandemic was responsible for many of these events. First, there is the pandemic itself. Unprecedented, yes? Well, no, the WHO is currently tracking twenty different pandemics across the globe. Since 1900 there have been 12 worldwide pandemics, the most recent pre-CoViD were the 2013-2016 Ebola virus and the 2015-2016 Zika virus pandemics. Surely the vaccine response was unprecedent. Impressive yes, particularly in scope, unprecedented no. The 1947 smallpox vaccination drive in New York City claimed to have vaccinated 5 to 6 million people in less than a month. Verifiable data indicated 1.2 million doses were administered in the first week and a total of over 4.4 million administered during the 18 day campaign. Other “unprecedented” news stories from mass closures, to social unrest, to riots, to elections, even to the storming of the Capitol had precedents. The January attack on the Capitol was the sixth time the building had been breached and two other deadly incursions involving Capitol personnel occurred within its perimeter fencing.

Essential Worker – Clearly almost every worker can make an argument that a job is essential to somebody. Weather forecaster in San Diego might be stretching things but given that is only sunny there 362 days a year it could be essential for residents to know which three days to stay indoors. While I’m on this topic, there is no question of who qualifies as a Frontline Worker. If you have to ask, you aren’t one.

The New Normal – Do I have to say more?

Uncertain Times – A second cousin to Unprecedented Times, “Uncertain Times” is the nice little catch all to define any time that is uneasy or induces stress, real or imagined. Back when I was ineligible for AARP discounts, we called it a Get Out of Jail Card, AKA An Excuse to Get Out of Anything. You wanna know something, every time is uncertain. It if wasn’t it’s already past.

And finally, one to nip in the bud – Herd Immunity – Yes, it is a real thing, but unless you have a PhD in epidemiology or are a physician specializing in infectious diseases, you don’t know enough about it to carry on a Facebook level conversation let alone an intelligent one. Leave this to the experts. Hey, nightly news people, I’m talking to you, too.

There are a few hundred other choice words and phrases due for retirement: Blursday, Election Fraud, Super-Spreader, False Rumor (can a rumor actually be true?), and Remote [Anything]. Eliminate these and we have a good start on the return to intelligent life on this planet.

Genius

This Person’s Intelligence Does Not Exist

December 10, 2020Michael Leave a comment

There is a site on the Internet that displays pictures of people. Just pictures of different people. Every time you open the site or refresh the page a new picture is displayed. Picture after picture. Never a duplicate. Person ever person. Never a real one. Not one a real, live person. They are images generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Yet they are so lifelike you might imagine you actually know some of them.

Artificial Intelligence is making great strides but it still can’t anticipate the unexpected. You need Natural Intelligence when things happen that you don’t expect. That because Natural Intelligence is more than smarts, memory, and logic. It is that and intuition, discernment, situational awareness and sometimes illogic. Natural Intelligence is what you use when you have to do something you’ve never done before…like living through a pandemic.

How has the battle against CoViD-19 altered your lifestyle? Are you doing home schooling? Are you doing home working? Have any roles shifted? Has your daily schedule been adjusted?

Most of the people I have spoken with have done pretty well making their way through this time. They are adjusting, accommodating, adapting, all the things intelligent people do when confronted with an unexpected situation. Even those who are struggling are doing well compared to the ones who have decided their life will go on as usual, nothing to see here, it’s all a hoax. Those are the ones with artificial intelligence. They’re very good what they do, as long as what they are doing is what they are programmed to do.

Yes that is still the limitation with artificial Intelligence. It seemingly adapts, it appears to be adjusting, it looks like it learning. In truth its intelligence depends on who programmed it, who set its limitations, who designed its algorithms. In other words it might look good on the surface but when you really look at what it’s made of, look for it’s original thoughts, seek out its compassion, explore its sense of duty, look for its heart, you find there is really nothing there.

Kind of like a lot of politicans.

Image from thispersondoesnotexist.com

Stupid is as stupid does

February 3, 2020Michael 4 Comments

It’s official, or as official as it can be on my say so. We can stop worrying about global warming, international terrorism, party politics, and the Game of Thrones unsatisfying ending (just bby what I hear, I never watched the show). We can forget about all of them because I am no so sure we will make it through February. Stupidity has finally caught up with us and we are surely going to perish.

Check out these symptoms.

The coronavirus is a horrible, unexpected, seemingly uncontrollable health disaster. According to this morning’s news over 8,000 cases have been confirmed by the World Health Organization resulting in 361 deaths and that will probably be higher by the time you read this. The interwebs are buzzing, as they should be. We should be trying to do what we can to understand how to prevent its spread. But you aren’t going to find it looking for Corona Beer Virus. That’s what people are searching for on Google trying to find out more about it. Maybe it was last week’s Superbowl hype that had everybody thinking beer instead of flu like pandemics.

Speaking of flu, according to the CDC, as of January 31 there had been 300,000 hospitalizations due to the “common” flu this season and over 10,000 deaths (that’s ten thousand) (one comma and lots of zeros), 80% of whom reported not having received this year’s flu shot. I would call that a horrible, unexpected, clearly controllable health disaster.

There was a report over the weekend that if former Vice President Joe Biden wins this year’s election the Republicans will begin impeachment immediately upon his inauguration for something or other. I found it telling that the news reports last month were that the Democrats voted to impeach Donald Trump. As I recall my civics class, admittedly many, many years ago, it is the House of Representatives who impeach. It’s a shame we have replaced a rather well thought out form of government with a couple herds of sheep.

Americans don’t have the market cornered on odd political stances – or odd politicians for that matter. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quoted in a Reuters report last month that he wants to lose weight but won’t join the 300,000+ who are expected to sign up for Veganuary 2020. (Yes, it’s a real thing and had been since 2014.) (Sigh) According to Johnson, “I thought about it but it requires so much concentration.”

Speaking to The Financial Times, Mastercard’s CEO expressed his dismay at countries adopting or considering nationalizing payment systems saying consumers worried about their privacy may shift back to cash for purchases. Oh my, what would the world be if we were all reduced to being able to buy only what we can afford. Soon people would be forced to work for what they want. In case you are wondering, Mastercard reported $17 billion dollars in revenue for 2019. For comparison Americans spent $1.6 billion to treat the flu during the 2018-2019 flu season. Sorry, no word on if that was cash or charge.

Last month the Japanese billionaire selected to be the first civilian passenger to the moon aboard a SpaceX rocket halted his search for “a girlfriend to take on a voyage around the moon.” About 28,000 women applied. And I still have trouble getting a woman to go to the movies with me.

Finally back in the coronavirus world, a man was escorted off a Dallas to Houston American Airlines flight last Thursday when he refused to remove a full-face gas mask. According to a passenger, “My gut reaction was that he was probably worried about the coronavirus and had put on the gas mask as overkill kind of protection. But then I noticed it didn’t have the filter, so that didn’t really make sense. What we heard from the lady sitting next to him was he said he wanted to make a statement. I don’t know what the statement was. I’m not sure what his goals were. To me, it seemed inconsiderate.” That might be considered understatement!

There you have it, living proof we’re never going to life long enough to see melting glaciers turn the midwest back into swamp land, California fall into the ocean, or cars flying themselves powered by dilithium crystals. Stupidity is the pandemic that is going to get us.

(The real proof is that the best part of the Superbowl for me was the commercial starring Punxsutawney Phil and that Bill Murray guy. See, even I’m not immune to stupidity, but come on, that was good!)