Routine Revelations

I am testing Pocket for my “read it later” needs. I’ve been using Instapaper but its web app has not been updated in years and seems to perform slower than Pocket. I am hoping that using Readwise to capture my highlights from Pocket will obviate the need to pay for the yearly premium subscription.

I think police unions are one of the beneficiaries of a police state in the United States, and so it is no surprise they welcome the increase military presence.

COVID-19 is back on the rise nearly every where, now it appears to be picking back up in Wisconsin.

If you call yourself a Christian, how do you imagine the Kingdom of God that Jesus constantly talked about looks like? Being one in Christ does NOT mean we are all the same like #AllLivesMatter. Being one in Christ means we see Christ in everyone and everything through our different skin colors, nationalities, and genders.

Me, on August 6, 2019

We went on our biggest trip in months, to the east side (Auburn Hills) to deposit some checks at our bank, then all the way back west to Novi before picking up something to eat and go back home. Maybe 40 miles of driving, some of it even on a freeway. This is what is now considered excitement due to COVID.

The state of the union. People resisting wearing masks during a pandemic because of tyranny. Actual acts of tyranny pass barely noticed. Lazy or intentional misdirection? I keep waiting for the 2nd Amendment / guns rights / “we need these guns to defend against tyranny” people to react to actual tyranny as if they believe what they say, but I guess tyranny only happens when one is told to do something they don’t want to do. I thought that was the definition of a two year old.

If we had a truly functioning democracy, the primary view on elections would be to provide all means possible to enable everyone the ability to vote rather than seeking ways to rig the system to secure a victory. Election day would be a national holiday or be on a weekend and even occur over several days. We don’t have to know on election night who won, there are plenty of days between the popular election, actual election, and inauguration, by design!

If you start with the premise that there is a relationship between privacy and liberty, then you might find it ironic that Europe has overcome the United States as the world advocate for liberty. The United States has been in the process of becoming a police state since the early 1970s, when the Federal government started viewing some U.S. citizens as enemy combatants under slogans like “War On Drugs” and “War On Crime.” And despite thoughts to the contrary, Trump is all in on the evolving police state just like former U.S. Presidents or representatives.

Currently reading: The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction by Peter Rollins 📚

Reading this one as part of my church book discussion group.

Today is the 51st Anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch. Or the beginning of a great conspiracy theory.

It got hot outside again. Chased back in to the air conditioning.

I see a video snippet of Mike Pence saying “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason for not opening schools.” First reaction is WTF not?

The second reaction is that there are two big issues at play here. One is “anti-elitism,” which is a point of view of which there are no experts to trust, everyone should just “go with their gut” or “use common sense.” In most Republican circles “elites” are Democrats or liberals to be ignored out right.

The second issue is relationship between federal and local governments. It’s clear that the Republicans in charge right now think there is no legitimate role for the federal government beyond defense. In their eyes the federal government has no responsibility for solving “big problems” of the nation. In some ways their view of government is more Articles of Confederation than U.S. Constitution. (I find it ironic that a Conservative group calls themselves The Federalist Society but acts more anti-federalist.)

Stated differently, current Republicans take Reagan’s phrase “The Federal government is not the solution, the federal government is the problem” very literally, and apparently lost on them is the irony that the words were spoken by a man seeking the position of being the top person of that federal government.

Hard to believe that a factor of comparison between the Trump and Biden campaigns are their smartphone apps. The contrast is striking.

Recent feature updates to my blog are the Search and Now options at the top of the page. Click Now to learn more about me and what currently has my attention. It has a easy to remember URL: http://frankm.info.

I think micro.blog needs a new Discover category for plugins, to make it easier to know when plugins have been updated and to find new plugins.