Supa Fazy

[Meh]

https://www.npr.org/2021/01/05/953515627/facial-recognition-and-beyond-journalist-ventures-inside-chinas-surveillance-sta

[Meh]

Gov. of NY is saying they will have legal sales of marijuana. There is a promotions of a "building roads" mentality to get the nation out of debt somehow, also a promotion of massive broadband extension and emphasis on "security" in 2021.

Are we not a nation of anxious, socially distanced, doped up consumers...producing very little actual GDP and wracking up interest on a federal credit card ponzi scheme.


Huxley... : “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.”


Sigh anyhow. Maybe I will paint some rocks. LOL

[Meh]

I've not got too much to say. Yesterday I went for a long walk, it's cold and rainy. I've spent so much time indoors that when I go outside it's almost like I'm entering an unfamiliar world. I'm probably way too under-stimulated in general. I sort of just want to get away, a bit tired of living here, a bit tired of online classes. My usual complaints.

[Hopalong]

Love the Huxley quote, Posh.

So agrees with my life experience and thoughts.

Thanks for sharing it.

hugs
Hops

[Hopalong]

What kind of paints do you use to paint rocks, Posh?

thanks
Hops

[Meh]

I haven't Hops but I assume for outdoors something harsh and oil based would be preferred as a top coat or just exterior house paint. Something like Rust-Oleum Universal High-Gloss Clear Spray Paint I am guessing but then again sometimes top coats dissolve what is underneath it. A person would have to experiment. I've personally never prepared anything for exterior use.

My neighbor has some in the yard and they are cute, quaint and cottagey, somehow managed to avoid it being too kitschy. 

[Meh]

Apparently Google and Australia and Australian journalists are in some fight over profits. It's interesting this idea of large information companies being private and at the same time being the spine of modern culture, technology, opinion creation and management, mass social communication algorithms etc.

What did we do before the internet? We read papers I guess.

[Hopalong]

Unimaginable wealth, and all of us dependent on the tech.

Whew. There are worlds of profit and most of us aren't included.

Hops

[Meh]

It's amazing and mind boggling, Amazon owns Ring security and Google owns Nest smart home products.

[Hopalong]

When I got my TV after I moved, I wouldn't let the installers hook it up to the internet. Didn't want it to be so smart!

I also saw a documentary about Steve Jobs and the sharp interviewer noted that on his laptop on his desk, he had a little piece of colored masking tape over the camera at the top (before most people thought of it). Me too. I take it off for Zooming.

Paranoid? Not really. Nobody'd see anything interesting. Just pissed off at the possibility. And the idea of those Alexa or Siri things being background-on all the time, capable of hearing everything in your home, gives me the heebie-jeebies.

hugs
Hops

[sKePTiKal]

Before the internet we:

played cards - Euchre & Pinochle were big games for us
board games
played music
read books - the kind that would bonk you reading yourself to sleep (War & Peace & Gulag Archipelago NOT recommended for reading in bed; the sheer weight would give one a concussion)
talked to each other and actually LISTENED
grew things, made things, watched classic TV:
  Mash
  Mission Impossible
  Man from UNCLE
  Twilight Zone
  The Prisoner (BBC production in the late 60s!!)

And politics wasn't a large part of people's mental/emotional existence - we read about it in the papers; we knew about protests - but in my case, was too young to be allowed (and not wily enough to break the rules) to participate.

We listened to music and went to concerts.

[Twoapenny]

That made me laugh, Skep, I can remember more than once waking up with a start when a chunky book crashed to the floor in the middle of the night.  And staying up all night reading IT when that first came out and being wide eyed at school all the next day I avoid Smart gadgets, I just don't really understand them?  And none of the technology we have at home seems to work reliably anyway, or be easy to fix, so I always assume it would just be something else I end up shouting at.  I've never shouted at a book!  Lol xx

[Hopalong]

And before cell phones, we:

made eye contact

[sKePTiKal]

... and learned to predict what people were thinking by watching their facial expressions and body language!

[Meh]

Snort, Skep,

I like that you took the question literally and answered it with very specific activities, U R funny lady...