“Deciding what is good and evil is the foolish pursuit of humankind. In this life, you will have trouble and some of the trouble will come because we can’t discern the source of our healing.”
— Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church by Barbara A. Holmes
Is communication on a corporately owned platform communication on a public square? I don’t think so. The first amendment constrains governments from impeding free speech. In other words, it protects citizens from government, not the other way around. Citizens United endowed corporations with rights of citizenship, so then Isn’t Trumps executive order really an impediment on Twitter’s free speech rights?
Flipped on the air conditioning.
It is the first morning of the year on which it is warm enough to sit on he patio.
I can recommend all the books that I read recently, but two that I highly recommend is The Book of Joy and Falling Upward. Falling Upward was a life changer for me because it opened my eyes to what has been going on around me, particularly in the last five years.
Looks like the micro.blog community is posting book recommendations this month, you can find what I am currently reading on my now page.
I think the COVID-19 response exposes a problem with the current state of lack of trust created through an increase in extreme points of view, both left and right. Consequently, people now seem to only trust what they can see with their own eyes or what make sense to them. Therefore, people are less likely to take COVID-19 seriously until they are personally affected in some way.
For such people, a young person’s account of surviving COVID-19 published by the New York Times is not believed because they don’t trust the New York Times. Likewise anything published by the NewYorker. A blogger’s first hand account is meaningless because I don’t know the blogger.
In short, the problem cannot be placed on external entities that are not trusted. The problem isn’t with journalism not doing something so much as journalism having no credibility from an extremist point of view unless that journalist is identified as having the same extremist point of view.
“One day, the mainline Christian movement will itself recognize that Jesus was never into expelling or excluding—only transforming and integrating. In fact, you might say that, for Jesus, the very act of expulsion is the problem.”
— The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder by Richard Rohr OFM
Daring Fireball: Howard Stern on Trump
Howard Stern echos something I’ve said for a while, but I think what may be the case is that these people don’t necessarily love Trump himself so much as what he represents to them, which they personally identify with. They see themselves in Trump’s persona and thus any negative statement about him is translated as a personal attack in them. To these people we are deep within a class war between “elites” and what they believe are “normal people,” which they define as anyone who agrees with and acts like them, and which they call “common sense.” The war began when Newt Gingrich ascended to Speaker of the House.
I am one of many people who really like the note-taking app called Roam that is currently in beta. However, it seems some think that bidirectional note linking is the primary feature of Roam, and while I think bidirectional note linking is a differentiator it is not the only reason why I prefer Roam. For me the main reason why I like Roam is that it is an outliner for developing and maintaining a wiki that automatically supports bidirectional links.
I’ve tried amplenote.com that claims to be an alternate to Roam that supports bidirectional links, and I does in fact do a very good job of importing content from Roam. However, Amplenote is not an outliner and I quickly found that true outlining, not just bullet lists, is a must have requirement for me.
It should be obvious to people that an illness that spreads between humans and human density are bad combinations. The virus still exists and does not cause symptoms in all people, therefore putting yourself in any confined space like crowded restaurants and packed airplanes is putting your life at risk.
“The cross calls all of us to a mystery of transformation. On the cross, none of us is in charge, none of us is in control, and none of us can possibly understand, just like Jesus himself. On the cross, someone else is in control. Someone else is in charge. Someone else understands. Someone else is obviously a much more patient lover than we are.”
— The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder by Richard Rohr OFM
“Private feelings are our form of truth today, a kind of ultimate self-absorption—understandable because there are no universal patterns. Yet, in expressing private feelings, people really think they’ve done something great.”
— The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Chaos, Reorder by Richard Rohr OFM
Corporations don’t want government to tell them what to do. They pay lots of money to politicians at all levels of government from POTUS to state representatives to make sure they can do whatever they want. These corporations don’t care about people who work them as they are expendable, thus there will be no rules placed on companies that are doing nothing more than keeping plants open to make money regardless of how many of their employees and the citizens in the surrounding community dies.
There was a day when there would have been strikes all over the place, but union busting has mitigated that risk to corporate America.
The flowering trees in my neighborhood are starting to bloom, including one of the largest flowering trees that I have ever seen.
I wonder if the families of the people who died in the swing states agree with President Trump? They will answer the question in November.
Today was the best weather day of the year so far, with sunshine and temps in the 70s. Fortunately my schedule enabled me to take several walks outdoors. We live in a condo, of which I often brag of not having to cut the grass. Today the lawn care company was cutting the grass for the first time of the year due to the governor lifting restrictions and allowing them to work. Just smelling the freshly cut grass lifted my spirits, a small bit has returned to normal.
Republicans ought to be nervous. A presidential re-election during a time of crisis ought to be a slam dunk, but Trump is not competent enough to know when to stay out of the way.
I hope this is a good sign. Today is the first day that my county reported single digit new cases and deaths since the COVID-19 crisis began.