September Sweater Weather

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, hello world. How are you? 

It's good to be writing on a good day off work today on a Saturday. Here, I'll jot down some notes on what I've been up to, plans, and things I'm looking forward to. 

First off, work has been good, steady, and doable. It's been about a year in now at this new job and its going well. I'm been reading a lot in between my shifts, jamming guitar with a heavy metal drummer, going for walks, eating well, and playing video games. I've got a lot to be thankful for, and I thank God for the life I'm living. 

The last book I read was a long slowburn of a read, Felix Gilbert's From 1890 to the Present, A European History, pretty amazing that a history book could span from 1890 to the present, but wow, that book really gives you a long overhaul and view of Europe from the years right before the First and Second World Wars, and the information is invaluable especially as an American for me, because, most of the information in that book is not taught in American grade school or high school, and only partially covered in college history courses, but not all, as not all college courses even will cover Europe, particularly Europe in all this much dense overdetailed information. A major criticism of the book online was that readers felt that Felix Gilbert didn't discredit and shame the Nazi's enough, and that he didn't explain with more inherent detail, why the German people were so willing to just commit Nazi atrocities and crimes against Jews, simply because they were told to do it, and they were readily and willing to do it, but it isn't really explained why with more full details. Well, why, then? Only the shadow knows. 

Moving on, now I'm reading a book about the history of France, a book entitled Revolutionary France 1770-1880, and this book is a lot more drier and more dense and facts based, despite being about a very revolutionary era of French government. Also, I'm reading Bram Stoker's 1897 modern novel Dracula, inspired by this current weather change and spooky Witching Season that we're currently thriving in, especially with this cold weather change. The change in temperature from 100 degree overheating at work to this 84-86 degree days, it's quite amazing. 

In addition, I've still been looking around at other jobs and seeing what's out there in my area, and it's not looking good. If you're not at a job currently it is very difficult to get in with a job anywhere. I had a job offer recently to a job closer to where I'm at, but circumstances being what they are, I'm not inclined to leave what I'm doing and try to start something new, given that there is a lot of uncertainty right now in the job market and the economy. I've been doing well, but I'm on a strong budget and I'm following my budget religiously, so its hard to want to try to dip out of a job that is going well, and try to do something different, even if it may be better in the long run. I'm saying, that jobwise, things are full of so much uncertainty, that even looking into working somewhere else might not be a good idea unless there is some massive benefit to working there. Like for example, in my case, this job offer I got is closer to my place, which is a massive benefit, but, even that being the case, I still have to stop and think about it for a long time, because everything is so much up in the air nowadays. 

Lastly, I can't end the rant without mentioning AI. LA and NY public schools decided to ban AI in the classrooms. This is good. Also recently, social media companies agreed to pay a massive fine and admitted that they have been treating kids wrong with allowing them too much social media use. These are good sociological things happening in the realverse. I do like AI and I do think more and more AI will take over and more and more we'll just be controlling the information it provides and goes with, like we'll be the AI's boss, and use the AI, but all important real decisions will be done by real people, and I notice that's the way its been going, even myself personally, using AI in the workplace. 

I use a lot of AI personally at work to look up products/donations and check what they're worth. I almost never go with what the AI prices the items, rather I think about it, check all the parameters, quality, condition, item type, etc, and then I make the ultimate decision over how much the item gets priced. But you can kind of see how even using it at this low level retail level, it gives you a lot of leverage over the amount of productivity in the work you do while using the AI. Obviously, I can do my job without using AI, all I'm doing is pricing donated items and reselling it, but using the AI allows me to have more control in my productivity, if I can figure out what an item's worth faster without thinking as much or as hard personally, then I have a tool which allows me to work a lot faster than I was able to before, last year, since before I started using AI at work. 

That's a lot to unpack there. But yeah, so it basically comes down to the fact that the low level retail personnel, the low level office worker, these are the basic employees running a business, working at a business, and they're using AI in a way that benefits their job workflow, and I do think this is the future of work using technology in America. In a way its an exciting time to live, breathe, and do work in America. On the other hand, you do tend to see a dehumanization of the worker in the workplace. If AI gets better at a much faster more exponential rate that it has been going in, this could spell disaster for more detailed tech work employees, workers, and bosses, because it could mean that lesser skilled and less tech skilled workers could outpace them, develop more, and become better much more skilled workers, armed only with AI, the willingness to learn new more advanced technology, and a curious mind. 

Note: Keep in mind that without the temperature changing to like 86 degrees here, I wouldn't even want to talk about AI, using it in the workplace, and the future of it in the workplace via newer smarter employees. If the temperatures kept hitting 100 degrees I would've been stuck kept to talking about barely surviving working with poor AC, and incoming blackouts, like what they had in Gary Indiana, which went underreported in most areas. Remember, this is still post-covid, and that means incoming cold, flu, and post-covid amongst young people. Get ready for Halloween.

On AI, Existential Threat, and the Collapse

Good evening ladies and gents. Hope you all had a good Sunday. I wanted to write here a bit more about AI, existential threat, and the Collapse. 

    First, AI is the latest buzzword of the last couple years and it's really taken the world by storm. I've used a ton of AI art generators to generate art mostly for fun but also here for the blog so its got some pictures to go along with these giant blocks of text. A lot of media and news sources want to keep constantly making the claim that AI is here to take your jobs, that we're training AIs to replace us, that using AI for art isn't real art, that the best thing for humanity is to just not even use AI for anything at all and sort of boycott it by just not using it at all ever.

    But I don't think not using AI is going to do anything whatsoever. In fact, if you're not using AI to augment your skills, abilities, or even for personal fun, research, and learning, then, my God, you are going to become behind in life and your other associates around you are going to surpass you in the occupational, intellectual, and the Culture itself. What I mean to say is that if you are boycotting AI, not using it and haven't used it yet, or just think its the worst thing in the world, you are going to be behind in the future economy and Culture. Think of it like a person who doesn't use a smartphone, they're definitely at a disadvantage, or someone who doesn't use the Internet, well, that person is like a fossil at this point. 

    Moving on, I don't think AI is going to replace us and I'm not sure if I believe that its really such a shocking blackbox that news and media outlets keep saying that it is. I think it is imperative for news and media outlets and people around you to say that AI is bad and you should never use it and that its going to replace you, and I think the reason why is that because if they can get you to be stuck up on AI, get you scared, get you excited, all of it generates more media and attention, which is then used to pump up AI and get more revenue and sales from AI, especially because now all the biggest stocks are all tech/AI companies, actually mostly AI, all the big money is all on AI now, trillions. 

    So keep in mind, if you think AI is bad and stupid and shouldn't be used for the sake of humanity, that's probably what they want you to think, especially because even bad news is sensational for these AI companies, and not only that, but sometimes you can see it as good news for people who love bad news, as this also generates media, attention, and revenue. 

    Second, the existential threat of AI. Is AI an existential threat to the United States, China, Europe, and the globe? I'm not a genius but I would say no, not at this moment in time. I think the global threat of extreme heat, fires/earthquakes/storms, fascism, obesity, cancer, dementia, nuclear disaster, war, contagious diseases, and drone warfare are much more of a existential threat to this world than anything AI could inflict upon us, at least that is how I feel on the subject, at least at this current juncture, but that could change if suddenly AI becomes some sort of electronic God and takes over every city and town in America, but now we have entered the realm of science fiction? Who here has read Alfred Bester? Or, if you're even older, who here has read The Machine Stops? 

    Third, we are now in the age of the Collapse here in America. You don't have to think and wait for the Collapse, it's already here folks. You aren't going to wake up one morning and all the news media outlets are going to tell you straight out, 'this is it, this is the Collapse,' rather, America has declined more and more after only very small intervals of time. Now, it's gotten to the point where America has fallen so fast that as a normal human being, you just don't have enough time, energy, cash, attention, or resources to even to keep up with the fact that everyday America is declining faster and faster. 

    Lastly, if I was a boomer I would say that throughout my life the decline of America was slow and took place over successive stages. However, I'm a 40 year old guy and I found out for myself that the decline of America happened very fast, its almost as if it happened in the blink of an eye. 

    It's like the Romans when they had their decline. The Romans were so busy living luxurious lives, having orgies, and watching the fighters get eaten by lions at the coliseum, they were so busy doing that, that they didn't have time to realize that their entire civilization had fallen. 

    Which brings me to America. America is sort of like a baby Rome, short of the years required to truly be a longstanding civilization, but has had the military strength to subdue all her foes and take over through the sword of imperialism. Not bad for only 250 years, eh? 

    In conclusion, and I'll end it like this. I think most Americans just don't have the wherewithal to do anything to stop this and some of them might not even care and yet even some more know this and are using it to their advantage to scheme, loot, rob, disenfranchise, and take over things to keep control and turn things to their advantage at other peoples' detriment [Trump in a nutshell]. 

    There will always be bad actors but given these terrible circumstances of a failed state, a failed government, the cataclysmic collapse of the American Empire, that not only will there winners and losers but there will be more criminals and bad actors of any and all sorts, infinite in their form. 

    I'll end it like this, I might be the only person you read who's my age who will tell you this like this, other people won't be able to articulate it in quite the same way, and they don't have the free time to really talk about it, write about it, or articulate it. Leisure is the hobby of the intellectual class. 

7/12 On Extreme Heat, Electricity, and Radiation

Evening, happy Saturday folks. Here I'd like to jot down some general ideas on extreme heat, electricity, and radiation. 

    First, the weather has become ridiculous and unsafe for humanity, animals, and plants. We're getting our first big heatwave of the summer starting on Monday and temperatures will be in the 90s and 100s. On top of that there are lots of heat-related natural disasters happening all over the country and the world. 

    For example, in California there's been some dozens of fires all going on at the same time in different parts of the state. In other parts of the US, there are natural disasters like extreme rain and lightning storms, flooding, and the usual stifling burning heat that is downright dangerous if you are not probably hydrated. And of course I know you heard about the recent earthquakes in Venezuela and Japan.

    

    Of course, the main reason why all of this happening is cause and effect but I also believe that the Earth has always been hot and gotten hotter no matter what the circumstances. We polluted the environment by having everyone and their grandma drive cars all the time all day long, decreased regulation regarding natural resources, and we use a ton of electricity, power, and radiation. 

    For example, AI companies are now building AI datacenters and the datacenters require so much power and expend so much power and radiation to run them that they're using tons of water just to keep the datacenters cool, to keep them from overheating, and probably so they don't just start burning down. 

    Just think about the average person. They live in a home or apartment, they have tons of electronics, they own a smartphone as well as maybe some smart devices, they probably  own a desktop computer or laptop, and they definitely have a TV, or if they're old school, they might own a radio or something. Okay, so just think about that for a second. Any one or all of these things by themselves or together generate a ton of heat, electricity, power, and radiation. Yes, if you keep your smartphone in your pocket all day, yes it is generating heat, power, and radiation in your pocket, and yes, that might not be a good thing for you in the long run, but that's beside the point. 

    Rather, I want this idea to hit home, that pretty much anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. Let me say that again for the folks in the back. Anything and everything in the post-modern 2026 world is running on tons of heat, power, electricity, and radiation. There are some people who believe you can actually feel and hear the electricity and radiation that is being used surrounding us although I'm not sure I can really feel it myself, but rather I believe that there are tools that could be used to hear and feel electricity and radiation around us, but we probably don't have the proper scientific tools and equipment to actually measure it because it hasn't been invented or created yet. 

    Now, there are people who believe that this is conspiracy thing, that the government controls the weather, and that its getting hot because they want to do population control and whatnot. There's even large groups of people online who believe that because of all this extreme overheating going on this Earth, that it changed time, that somehow time has suddenly sped up much faster than ever before on the planet.

    However, I don't really believe that is true. But apparently there are people who believe that the government has been able to control the weather since the 1940s, and perhaps even before that, if you go by that crazy logic [science fiction]. But rather than this being a government conspiracy or something like that, rather it just a fundamental fact of life in this era of humanity, its heating up. 

    Second, where am I going with this? Well, I guess I'm trying to just bring more awareness to the fact that extreme heat, overuse and overreliance on electricity, and radiation is just as much of a deadly threat to humanity [or more, now it seems like its much more of a threat] as the extreme right-wing MAGA base destroying and distorting the Constitution, or Fascism, The Ice Secret Police, or Terrorism within or without, public shootings/stabbings, or War, or Covid, Cancer, mental illness, old age and dementia. 

    I'm sorry to say it folks, but we're living in a pivotal epoch in this era of humanity, where pretty much anything and everything could possibly kill you, turn on you, inform on you, get you fired at your job, get you arrested, shit man, times are so bad that I don't really want to say this, but personally I believe this is true, that you really can't even trust anything or anyone right now in this era of humanity. From my last experience at my last gig, the reality is that if you do something wrong or make some kind of mistake even if you didn't hurt anyone or steal tons of cash, everyone will turn on you, and you won't get any help from anybody. 

    This is where I get to the more paranoid section of the blog, lol, but I stand by this, at least at this current moment in time [but I am able to change my mind and be more positive and uplifting], but yes, I believe you can't even trust people at your job, your inner circle of friends, family, shit man, you might even want to think about cooking more of your own homecooked meals because I hate to say it but, they could be putting something in your food to make it more addicting, and start to make you want to eat a lot more even though you're full. 

    Yeah, you might laugh at me when I say this or you'll say, 'he's paranoid!' like the Ozzy song, or whatever, but yeah man, I personally believe they put chemicals in the food, drugs [it goes without saying], and alcohol, to make it much more addicting and make you keep coming back for more much more often so they can keep making more sales off you. Even the extreme heat and capitalism are going together. 

    Keep in mind, I'm not an anti-vaxxer, I'm not into that kind of wrong-headed thinking, but I can sort of understand why people could feel like the Covid vaccine was a hoax. If the vaccine was a hoax, why did so many elderly customers from my market job die from Covid just because they refused to take the vaccine? A good portion of elderly customers dropped dead from Covid after refusing to get the vaccine. That place was depressing and sad!   

    Third, my point with this post is just to bring awareness, but also you should ensure you stay grounded because things aren't what they seem and things are not normal folks. None of this is normal. When I was in high school during the 2008 financial crisis and we were going through the Iraq War after 9/11, as crazy as those times were, those were normal times. These years, these post-Covid Trump years are not normal. 

    I just can't state that enough right now, none of this is normal. We got a lunatic running the United States and almost every day, every 12 hours something he or his Cabinet did is reported in online news, and almost every single one or many things he did is a scandal worthy enough of impeachment but because the news is on a short cycle, almost all the bad things Trump and the MAGA Republicans do gets reported, dismissed, and somehow swept under the rug, and 12 hours later, it or something like it happens again, and they get away again and again. Make it make sense, folks. This ain't normal.

    In conclusion, you might not agree with me, you might even be a right-wing nationalistic almost fascist type of person and you voted for Trump, however, I believe that its good to get information from various sources and from a variety of different sources and types of sources and even types of people. 

    You might find this entire post boring and unimaginative because you're a young person who likes to party, drink, do drugs, and play video games, that's fine too. I hope this content reaches a wide variety of people. Remember folks, I'm just a 40 year old black guy with a high school diploma. 

    If this stuff doesn't interest you at all then you just haven't enough experience in life. If you're a kid and somehow this post got to you, remember, you're young now but at some point you're going to get big, and you're going to have to take the rap for this stuff, and mommy and daddy aren't going to be there forever, so you better start learning to understand this stuff at a young age, probably even younger than when I did because I learned about life through the school of hard knocks and it wasn't pretty, fun, or pleasant. Remember folks, when you [or they/them] fuck up, its reeducation through labor. And that's every country, every state, every city, every village.  

    Lastly, if you weren't aware yet, what you don't know can hurt you. That being said, no need to panic, worry, or be paranoid about anything at all, but just keep in mind, that there's something strange going on during all this heat and destruction. 

    I would've liked to have become a teacher in this lifetime because I believe kids are naturals at knowing things like the truth, and that even when bad kids seem to act out against teachers and whatnot, that sometimes they are not completely in the wrong, rather it is just that they out of all the 'normie' kids, have somehow picked up on the fact that the teacher could be bullshitting them, and they're calling it out. If you're someone who's kept that sense of childlike wonder and intellect and call people out when they BS you other people will notice and you will stand out. But that's a whole other post.  

    Concluding, in other news, Lindsay Graham died. He had a good reputation until his good friend John McCain died, then he become a MAGA Trump sycophant, so he ended up sort of disgracing himself after what otherwise could be seen as a pretty decent right-wing leadership position in US government. Watch this space. 

7/10 On AI, AI Art, and the Culture

Good evening folks. I just wanted to jot down some thoughts I've been thinking about since the last post. 

    First, I think more and more people are becoming aware to the fact that AI isn't really as great as its been doing on the stock market. Sure, the American economy is betting a lot on AI and the fact that AI is going to save money and automate things so that workers will be able to do work that is more important, creative, and more meaningful. That's what the techno bro AI companies want you to think. But the reality is that the best thing we've done with AI is create chatbots that aren't really thinking or sentient, rather they spew out things they've been trained on, and they've mostly been trained on the internet. 

    Me personally, I've found a lot of fun and tinkered a lot with AI. In fact, I use AI at my job everyday to look up the prices or products and items that aren't always easily figured out by just regular google searches. The use of AI in a retail environment is great, but again, it's still in a limited position. 

    For years, I worked as a Self-Checkout Cashier Clerk, mostly using the crappy automated AI self-checkout machines, but the thing is, that those machines can only do so much, you have to actually interact with the customers yourself to really know what's going on. These things are limited and on top of that a lot of times late at nights when the store was busy, these self-checkout machines would freeze, automatically shutdown and not work, and it would take forever for them to get back running again. 

    Basically, these AIs aren't coming for your job, not quite yet. You really can't trust any type of AI with basically, anything important, serious, or critical. And yeah folks, that means you can't trust AI with most things that actually matter. I've personally found a lot of fun and utility in using AI to create images. I've been doing it for like two years and its been a blast but of course there's always the dilemma of 'you're doing AI art thats not real art, that's not art,' versus the people who don't know anything about art, and the artists in between who are smart enough to have already been utilizing AI art generators over the past 2-3 years. 

    Secondly, even if you can create stunning great AI art, there's always the issue, how can you get paid being an AI artist or utilizing AI in your handmade art? Well therein lies the rub. You can create AI art all day and be amazing at it but you will still have to work hard and put in the work in order to get paid and actually have a career making a money off your AI art. 

    Even regular artists have to put in a lot of hard labor in order to actually make a living off their art. So just because you can create good AI art doesn't mean you can get paid or make a career out of doing it. See what I'm saying? Even as amazing as AI art generators are, it's difficult to make a career out of using and making AI art, basically they're not going to actually replace real handmade, hand drawn, hand painted, hand sculpted artists. Not by a longshot. 

    Now, that doesn't mean that real artists should shun the AI art generators and throw a tantrum, rather they should use it to enhance their creative abilities and artistic potential. Those that don't learn the new softwares, AI art generators, and products won't be quite as successful as those who do. For example, a lot of Americans love Japanese cartoons anime and whatnot. A lot of Japanese art studios are using AI in anime and have already been doing so for years. 

    I wanted to rant a bit on AI because I keep seeing that people are thinking AI is really amazing and great, and yeah it is, but only up to a very limited point. For example, AI could write something like what this post has written in it, but it can't do it with my personal style, timbre, or swagger. It will always pale in comparison to the real human behind the AI, the ghost in the machine will never be as smart, creative, or innovative as the human in front of the screen. 

    Time after time, I keep seeing people using AI in a way that makes them look like they've never done any thinking for themselves, or if they do, they just haven't figured out the right way to calm down, clear their thoughts, and put themselves in order to actually organize what they want to accomplish, so using AI becomes like their crutch. That's not a surprise and I'm seeing that more and more with customers in the retail environment checking prices with AI, employees checking prices with AI, and my various friends and associates around me who use it for their various reasons. That being said, I'll post my various most recent AI art pictures below this post. 

    Third, the Culture we live within has changed a lot since the 2008 Financial Meltdown during the Obama Presidency, which, oddly enough, seemed like a very normal time period and it didn't really seem that crazy even though we had gone through September 11 and the Iraq War and whatnot. In comparison, the post-covid Trump years seem much worse and the culture has become debased, extremely right-wing, nationalistic, and the main problem imo, very dumbed down and stupid to the point where people don't even do basic things like read and write anymore. 

    That being said, I am the Culture too and I'm here to say to young people its okay to be smart, you don't have to pretend to be dumbed down around other people, you should read books, write, educate yourself to the best of your abilities, and who knows, maybe you're goodwill and influence will spread to others around you and they will become smarter just by having interacted with you even briefly. One can only hope.

    I fear that we're in such a dumbed down society that because people are very uneducated and unschooled and have less morals and standards, these qualities in a nation, in a state, in a city even, even in a job or workplace, this means that things are much more disorganized and it makes it easier for bad actors to wreck havoc in various forms. 

    One of the scariest things that has happened to me recently is that something bad or off happened [not particularly to me but near or around me] and pretty much everyone including those in charge and those who were subalterns were all basically so dumb that they didn't do the right things and things went south. I think for me the fact that I was surrounded by people who just wouldn't think it through for whatever reasons, people who just couldn't think at all very well, that for me, was absolutely terrifying.

    Lastly, I'll end it like this. I'm not exactly a stable genius like Trump says he is, [he's a dumbass lol] but I've gone through a lot of work to educate myself without even going to school or anything, and when I interact with other young people 20s, 30s, even my own age, there is a general vast difference in the amount of knowledge between those people and say people who are in their 40s-80s. 

    One of the things you'll find is that even older people could be a bit uneducated and set in their ways but overall, they have more common sense and smarts that those of us in our 20s, 30s. Respect your elders and learn from them, without them you would never really be able to become wise which is above being learned. 

    I'll end it like this, if you aren't very well studied, don't read or educate yourself in anyway whatsoever, you just can't really become successful in life or in your goals. How do I know this? I've learned this the hard way through the school of hard knocks. I struggled through my 20s and 30s and I didn't go to school, I never got a degree, I'm just a 40 year old black guy with a high school diploma, an imagination, and curiosity. Nowadays, most people are kind of coasting, trying to provide for their wives, their kids, its hard to actually free your mind and educate yourself. 

    If you ask me, this is the main reason why Trump came to power and the country is in decline. If you keep the Culture happy with futbol [special shoutout to the World Cup], football, basketball, videogames, porn, sex, drugs, alcohol, its no wonder that they would never really be able to think for themselves. Remember, knowledges makes a man unfit to be a slave. Watch this space.

RE: Post July 4th

 

Good evening, denizens of the internet. It's been a long time since I've written any blogs, and it's good to be online tonight at 2 in the morning, jotting down thoughts and ideas. 

    First, post July 4th, I can't help to have the blues. Yes, life is good, as long as you don't weaken, but looking at everything in terms of our government, our environmental challenges with global warming, job security, and even just basic life's necessities like rent, food, and gas, its like Americans have really been pushed to the farthest limits. The War with Iran seems to be winding down and there's security and so called peace talks but nobody really knows what's going on for sure with this current second Trump administration. Trump has become the ultimate right-winger's dictator. 

    Everyday, there's some new scandal involving Trump, what he's doing, this and that, and almost every other day you see it on the news TV or even news online headline readings, and you just know that any one single incident of these are grounds for removal of the Presidency, termination of the Presidency from him, and impeachment. The fact that nothing happens and he walks away unscathed is a stain upon the US Constitution, which is not being upheld by this current administration. 

    But the main problem I have with Trump is that he's become a fascist demagogue controlling a vast amount of the US population through Fox News, social media, cable news media, and a vast array of extreme right wing MAGA republicans, who seem to not only be extreme right wingers that want a fascist dictator strongman, but who may unknowingly and begrudgingly be doing harm to the US constitution, government, and even ethics itself. 

    Think of all the right wing MAGA idiots out there, some of them I've physically encountered myself in the workplace, on social media, and various personal associates of mine. Most of these people aren't complete haters, they love America, some of them are racists and nationalistic, but you'll find that among the extreme right wing in any country. A lot of the MAGA crowd people are simply not guided by the facts, reason, evidence, and proof. 

    Instead, you'll find that the MAGA population have a limited worldview, they all watch from the same news media sources, they don't read books unless its some sort of Ayn Rand. Once you get to know them individually you find that some of them have some sort of vendetta against certain things of the world: they hate immigrants even if they are immigrants themselves, they have low information tendences, they watch Fox News and listen to right wing podcasts, and almost all of the information they get from these sources are all very much low information things. For example, a right wing podcast would talk about something Biden or the Democrats did a few years ago and say what a controversy it was, and that it went unreported. I see that type of thing from the MAGAverse all the time. It's a cheap, crappy tactic. 

    So, forgive me if I'm watching England destroy Mexico during the World Cup 2026, and right after the Fourth of July, forgive me if I feel that a sense of right wing extremism of imperialism has taken over the day. Those weird Ayn Rand kids from the early 2000s I used to disagree with in history class are loving the Trump era. But I think for those of us who know better, who had to work harder, who had to learn much more, and struggle and persevere more, those people, those are the people know that something is not right. But hey, that's not to say that you can't have an easy life and still be cognizant enough to know that this second Trump administration is hastening the destruction of the American experiment. 

      Okay, so I'm kind of rambling a lot about Trump tonight. But even bigger than Trump himself is the cult of personality that surrounds him. Isn't it a little strange that people who like Trump seem to love everything about him and his close government officials praise him like a lapdog? To quote Adam Schiff, here is a guy who's using the highest office of the land for his own, private, personal, political gain. That being said, I worry about the future of this nation, if it will really still stay a nation in the same characteristic sense that it always has been, but for those who know, we know that the American experiment was never supposed to include everyone, all the time, and allow everyone the right to vote. So there's a bit of a sour taste to this year's Fourth of July. Consequently, I spent the Fourth just chilling by myself, reading Kafka's first unfinished novel entitled Amerika [with a k, ironically], and its funny, because I find myself feeling like the young German immigrant who just freshly arrived in America, because I find that my country, this modern America, is almost alien to me, and a lot of MAGAverse people probably wouldn't want to allow me to be in it and living a good life while they are struggling. 

    That's a lot to unpack there. So yeah, I've been bummed out with this Fourth of July. I've been trying to put more of my focus into my reading, continuing to read the western canon as well as history, philosophy, artbooks, and books on culture and ideas. I've found that with this job having less hours, it's given me a lot more time to work on my personal pursuits like reading, music, gaming, walking, and listening to music for relaxation. I've found with this job budgeting is a lot harder, but who knows, perhaps this is good for me, having less money to spend and go crazy going out all the time with. Next time you see someone giving cash to homeless person, stop them and say, 'Don't delay the revolution!" 

    Lastly, with all seriousness, I think the comedown on AI is coming because now we're at the point where most Americans are realizing that although the stock market is focused in on AI, the truth is that AI wasn't really what it was supposed to be. It's rather a lackluster tool to generate ideas based on words, most are our advanced AI are chatbots, regurgitated language and ideas from the internet, or who knows from. AI video ended up being a bust, and AI generated video content isn't that fun, creative, or exciting. AI chatbots tend to be useful only for specific things but not things that most average people need them for. For me personally, I've found a lot of creativity and utility in using AI for images and I've sort of gotten a thrill out of doing that since the beginning of AI image generation, but in terms of actually doing anything serious with AI or AI actually becoming a mainstay in peoples' lives, or even buying a CHATgpt subscription? Forget about it. More and more Americans are realizing that if you couldn't do it without AI, having the AI won't really change much for you, in a sense, the AI is overhyped, overplayed, and its so 2000-and late, as the Black Eyed Peas song goes. 

    If you read through this, you're probably pretty smart and a bit of a reader. How does it feel to be smart and read things? Keep playing on the A Team, folks. Thanks for reading. Below are several of the AI images that I've had a lot of fun creating in terms of the word descriptions used to create them, a lot of my prompts are sometimes tons of paragraphs long, much like this sort of spontaneous dialogue online here. Watch this space.

March Madness

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. How's it been? I've been silent on the writing since the new year. I feel the need to write as an outlet because I believe reading and writing is the greatest tool for communication as a medium. Sure, I talk to friends and family, but you just don't get to really say everything you want to say with friends and family. That's why I've had this blog for so many years. The blog is a good outlet not only for creativity but also to say everything I want to say. I haven't really been too busy or anything, but I do think I had some slight writer's block that lasted all of February. But I've been good. I've been reading, working, and tonight I was playing guitar and electronic keyboard, just practicing, and improvising. 

I've been on a roll since the new year 2026 reading a lot of books. So far already since January I've read 10 books: The Mammoth Hunters [by Jean M. Auel], Van Gogh The Passionate Eye [Pascal Bonafoux], Plato's Symposium, Caesar's War on Gaul, Lolita by Nabokov, Words of Wisdom, The Nibelungenlied,  Cousin Bette by Balzac, The New Grove Mozart, and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I'm also currently reading The Portable Medieval Reader and A History of China. My reading has stayed mostly in the realms of fiction, non-fiction, western canon but I will sometimes still read science fiction, more modern day science fiction as well as the golden age sci fi stuff. 

All the reading has been keeping me sharp and keeping me going. The state of our country isn't good and now all of a sudden we're on day 5 in a war against Iran with our partner Israel. What does reading all these great books of the western canon tell you about the political nature of the times we're currently living in? As Hegel would put it, "We learn from history that we don't learn from history." As bad as Trump and the MAGA Republican tinfoil hat crowd are, we have seen this before and we have been here before. 

Even this war against Iran. We're shooting at them with all these airstrikes and we're hoping for a regime change with no boots on the ground as of yet, which is unheard of and has never happened before. Well, this scene looks a lot like Bush's declaration of war in Afghanistan, but at least Bush got approval from Congress to go to war. With Trump, he declared it and we were instantly in war. It's an interesting time to be alive in the United States, being someone of my age, of my education, of my economic and social class. 

You see, you could argue that Americans like me, American citizens with good education, good family structure, they're doing okay economically, they're eating well, they're exercising, they're getting entertained, they have friends and family, they read books, etc, well you might say that Trump, what Trump does, and the new war against Iran, maybe it might not affect them as much as you think. 

The reality is that the Trump regime has had a profound influence on practically every facet of American culture, politics, entertainment, and governance. I believe, personally, that ever since President Trump was elected, since even the first time, American culture has largely degenerated and gotten worse and worse. I could even see it among the largely minority employees and management at the retail grocery job I worked at for years. You could see that because they loved Trump and praised him, they wanted to become like Trump, which included becoming more hateful and full of cruelty towards others around them. For them Trump wasn't just a symbol of American conservatism, he was the example to show them that it was okay to be a racist, to be hateful, to be cruel, and show it anywhere and anytime they wanted. Yeah, it was that bad there folks. That was just a market. Imagine how people who love Trump would act in a mob [January 6], or in Congress as leaders in the White House. Houston, we have a problem.

Which brings us to the end of February 2026, a new war with Iran. This war is like the perfect foil for Trump because he was already in trouble for the killings of two US Citizens with his gestapo-esque police force ICE [Rene Good, and Alex Pretti who were called terrorists by Kristi Nome leader of Homeland Security] and in addition Trump was in trouble for his too close ties to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Also, there's the fact that the economy under Trump has slowed down a lot, there's a lot less jobs, food and gas prices are very high, and companies are putting more and more money and effort into AI [stupid idea] when in reality, Americans are struggling to pay rent, eat well, and find a job that gives them enough cash to live in a house or apartment. Trump's problem as President as always, has been affordability, as Democrats would say. Trump inherited a robust economy from Biden, and now when you go to Fatburger you're paying $24 for a burger, fries, and a soda. 

It almost seems at times like what Trump does is seemingly random. Which makes you wonder what is really going on in this world, what systems are controlling what's going on behind the scenes. For example, you notice how not once has Trump pushed back against Putin despite Putin's war crimes against Ukraine. So it makes you wonder, what does Putin have on Trump? Is Trump really a pedophile rapist like the newly reported story said? If its true, then we have to seriously discuss and decide what kind of a country we are and what kind of a country we should be. Because if we allow a guy who's done that to be our President and get us into a war then we have fundamentally failed as a democratic experiment. 

It helps to be somewhat of a cynic right now. In a way, to stay informed, you pretty much have to read the news every 24-48 hours or watch the news on TV daily, just to stay up to date on basic information, but in reality, you still have to question everything, not only Trump and his administration and their actions, but also the news and media itself, as well as yourself. Henry David Thoreau has this great quote where he says all the news stories are all things that have happened in other super old news stories from other times and years. That was a stunning revelation because in some sense, yes, it's very true. 

But why is this, why is that quote true? I think a small part of being a cynic is the feeling and knowing that something is amiss, something is not right, even though you don't know what it is, something like a conspiracy, who's to say that there isn't something like that going on right now and/or has been going on since the foundation of this state. Like I said, you have to question everything, even yourself and your own beliefs, even if you have a low education level, play videogames, and are more concerned about being 'turnt at da club.' There's something undeniable about the current times we're living in that has an eerie similarity to the past, something we don't understand, or perhaps will never be granted the right to understand. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!

New year, Happy 2026

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Happy 2026! It's already been wild this year but we must keep pushing on with our goals and work. 

Personally, I've been tired a lot this year so far but I try to balance out a lot of rest with a lot of work at the job and activity at home. I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of music. I discovered Bach cantatas and I found a correlation between Bach's cantatas and Mozart's opera work, its downright fascinating. I've also been tuned in to Small's jazz club in Greenwich Village NYC, tuning into a lot of live performance music as well as their nightly jams. There's a community online there and we chat and talk a lot about music, everything from straight ahead jazz to avant garde jazz to classical and sometimes even rock. There was a funny moment during Christmas where a random jammer at Smalls went viral for having a breakdown and cursing out the other jammers. It went to the heart of how people that have breakdowns in public often get made fun of and criticized even though it could happen to anyone, and that we need to be more understanding of others. Other people thought he was rude and probably on drugs. The incident went viral and lots of youtubers made response videos about it. Yeah, that was a interesting phenomena during Christmas. 

In addition, it wasn't really that the guy was terrible. However, he brought an acoustic guitar to the jazz jam, which is a no-no, but he said in a interview video he's been struggling financially and doesn't have money for a regular electric guitar, which goes to him struggling mentally and apparently even being homeless for a while. I would agree that the hardcore jazz elite who shamed this guy publicly on YouTube got it wrong, and that we should be more understanding of this guy and his problems. He wasn't really that good at jamming, and he's not really a 'jazz guitarist,' and he doesn't know the songs per se, but his rhythm comping to the tunes and under the soloists was decent enough to be there onstage and I thought a lot of the jazz elite were publicly shaming him, to their own detriment. I think, even as hardcore musical afinados, we should be more understanding of different musicians and their ability to play the music, especially jazz, because not every jazz musician is a Charlie Parker or a Wes Montgomery. I've seen high caliber jazz fusion musicians perform at The Baked Potato in Studio City, LA, and a lot of times even their playing was uninspired and mediocre albeit tuneful and tasty.

Moving on, more importantly, everyone I know who has a heart has been disgusted by the murder-killing of Rene Good by an Ice Officer. What can I say about this? It's an outrage and should be denounced by our government but of course with Trump and the Trump administration he has decided to double down and say that Rene Good was in the wrong and that the Ice Officer did the right thing to do what he did. Compare the way the Trump Administration is treating Rene Good with the way they treated Charlie Kirk, that pretty much sums up the divide between the so-called woke far-left and the maga Trump republicans. But the way its being talked about through the media is that this is left-wing versus right-wing but the truth of the matter is that its more about the way American citizens are treated by Ice Officers and those in law enforcement like cops. It's more like a George Floyd killing than anything particularly political, but the media has us all divided on the issue as if it matters that she was a left-winger. I suppose in a way, it does matter, but for me personally, I see Rene Good's killing as like a George Floyd killing, for white people. 

In addition, I think race matters here in this context because I believe white people think that they have certain rights when it comes to law enforcement. Well, this incident rebukes the whole idea that white people have rights when it comes to law enforcement, because we see in this particular incident that Rene Good didn't have rights and that she was seen as something 'less than human,' and this particular Ice Official decided it was in his best interests and that it was okay for him to deny her her human rights, and kill her, murder her. 

Downright chilling stuff. Her story should chill us and warn us that we're not in Kansas anymore. This shows us Americans that Ice has been politized and policed against us as Americans and that if you or anyone is on their list you are in for a lot of trouble. We're probably too far already down the Maga Republican rabbit hole to get out of this deep backwater that we're in. What's the answer to this? I guess the Democrats would have to come to up with some deep strategy to win and take back control in 2028. But there are lots of problems with voting such as the fact that most voters aren't even politically aware or smart enough to make decisions that would be in their own best interests. One man's vote has to equal one man's education and without that, the system develops an outsider character like Trump to somehow win the White House for the second time after being convicted of rape and being two times impeached. And don't forget about the Epstein files. 

Lastly, there's a lot going on and it's hard to follow if you're just one person trying to live your life, provide for yourself and your family, and to be a productive intelligent member of American society. After all, if you're too busy struggling to make money at a job, providing for yourself and your family, and don't have enough time to dedicate to learning and educating yourself, then there's no way you can actually think about how things are so bad in America right now. You have to sort of have some kind of privilege to be able to read the news everyday, learn more about what's really going on in society, read books, educate yourself, these are things that not everybody really has time or space for. In fact, you'll find other people my age are spending their time playing video games, working nonstop at their 9-5 jobs, maybe they drink and/or smoke weed, they gamble, they're doing stocks, they're doing crypto/bitcoin, but most of them aren't politically aware or class conscious to the fact that things are going south very fast, probably faster than I can keep up to even write about in these blogs. Let me rephrase that, they're politically aware, but they're struggling so much that they can't do anything to change the System from within. Even from the last post I wrote, a lot has happened. 

In conclusion, there's a lot we can do but most people are going to be too busy trying to survive and maintain and cope with the life they've been given. We as young people are struggling to maintain the lives we've created for ourselves and our families. Not everybody can sit around and write blog posts about their thoughts or even read the news daily. And this ends up working in the bad guys' favor, because we have developed into an uneducated underclass that is too busy playing video games, gambling, and too busy working all the time in order to survive, that if you even think about the idea of questioning the status quo or the government, or the system itself, you will looked upon as like some kind of weirdo. "Is that a conspiracy too?" You tell me.