Tag: Trump

What Makes a Believer

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Are you a FOLLOWER or INFLUENCER?

The 92 yr old mother of a friend is getting kicked out of her assisted living apt. Developers convinced the Seattle City Council they should be allowed to ‘update’ the residence of old people and turn it into ‘workforce’ housing for the tech industry. They are taking over hundreds, if not thousands of older folks’ homes, the apts they’ve lived in for over two decades.

What happened to us? When did we stop caring about anyone but ourselves?

I didn’t grow up this way. Born 15+ yrs after WW2, during the ‘Golden Age of economic growth,’ there was a 20 (or so) year respite where people actually cared about their neighbors, their community, this country. Not so much now.

Money. Money. MONEY is all anyone seems to care about. But why? What changed? What happened?

Housing was well constructed in the 1950s through mid-60s. American Lumber Standard Committee (ALSC) sanctioned 2 x 4” posts cut to 1½ x 3½” — a profit grab for the lumber industry — making new builds far less sturdy. Today’s contractors build post-frame as much as 18 to 24” apart, again to increase their already absurd profits. Earthquakes, fires, floods, severe weather, these new developments put up crap housing that require constant repair with even mild storms.

My mother-in-law turned 90 last April. She’s on Medicare, having Social Security taxes taken out of every paycheck for 60 years. These payments were supposed to give her medical coverage in old age. Since her 90th, Medicare will no longer cover her colonoscopies, or mostly any preventative procedure. Our govt wants her to die. Like NOW. She’s done giving up half her paycheck to SS, and our govt has no need for her. Our (not MY) president, and the majority of our congressmen and senators don’t care they OWE HER for the PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE they’ll get the rest of their lives.

Depressing? You bet! It’s going to get worse, so if you can’t handle the TRUTH go back to scrolling Insta or streaming Netflix, and stay blissfully ignorant pretending you’ll never get old and have to deal with the ugly, greedy TRUTH coming at ya.

Got parents? Even if you are not old, they’ll be getting there. What happens to them when they can’t afford assisted living, or there isn’t any because of the unrelenting greed of today’s development industry? Even better, what happens to YOU when you have to lay out your salary to cover your parents aging. Or is that out too? You’ll let ’em wallow in filth and neglect?

How did we get to this horrible greedy place, this place where half this country voted in the second coming of Hitler who made it very clear he only cares about himself and making the rich richer?

Have we always been this way — GREEDY and IGNORANT? According to Stanley Milgram’s study, we always have. While Self-interest is part of our nature — the greed — most of us are fundamentally followers. Influencers, like actors, models, musicians; and authority figures, like doctors, therapist, even politicians draw BELIEVERS. We accept, even participate in bad medicine, injustice, inequity, intolerance, racism, sexism, sometimes murder and even slaughter of millions following the status quo.

Shortly after WW2, Stanley Milgram, a Yale professor did an ‘obedience’ experiment. (Watch trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sngGqBOLWaI)

Milgram was a Jew. He wanted to find out what motivated Germans to turn on neighbors. Why would 90% of German citizens allow the slaughter of children on the same soccer team as their kids? Or passively watch the displacement and murder of Jews they once shared meals, holidays, and special occasions? Why would Germans agree, and even support genocide, rape, disembowelment while still alive, torture beyond any sense of sanity? Milgram wanted to know.

The MILGRAM EXPERIMENT, as it’s now known, revealed some striking and profound truths about Germans, and all of us.

It PROVED that humans are SHEEP, highly obedient to authority figures and willing to harm others when instructed to do so.

Humans are sheep, follow the flock, the crowd, influencers, salesmen, priests.

We FOLLOW because it’s easier than THINKING.

We blindly follow our parents’ beliefs in fantasies like God, or Jesus, with no proof either exist, or evidence that Christ was ever born. None whatsoever, though tax rolls have been found at Christ’s (ostensible) time, without mention of Jesus at all.

We adopt behavior that even we don’t like — that’s not the best of us — with justifications like “everyone does it!” Engaged with your cellphone while driving today? Most who do, don’t THINK they’re really increasing their odds of killing themselves or someone else by upwards of 25%.

Intoxicants, from drink to weed will not cure cancer. Alcohol is toxic for the body. Smoking weed is carcinogenic — cancer causing. And mental ‘health’ pharms are addictive and eat the crap out of your liver, among a host of other side effects. Hey, but everyone does them, right?

What Makes a Leader?

While Milgram’s experiment revealed most humans are essentially sheep, following a herd, whether family, friends, priests, or govts, SOME PEOPLE, a few outliers, are not. In fact, they lead the human flock.

Hitler did. Trump does. Oligarchs, like Musk, are leaders to many who are delusional enough to believe they too can become a billionaire. On the other side, Susan B. Anthony, FDR, MLK all moved this nation towards a more equitable country.

Are you a SHEEP or LEADER? If you’re thinking: I’M A LEADER, you’re likely lying to yourself. Humans lie to ourselves (and others) a LOT! Like following, lying is part of our nature.

WATCH the Milgram experiment. The odds are you’d be one of the 65% who tortured an unseen man with electric shocks to death, simply because someone politely asked you to do so. Not threatening, not aggressive. Just “Please continue,” was what the admin in the experiment asked. And the 65% claimed they were just ‘following directions’ (sheepishly) allowing them to deliver shocks that were lethal.

What happened to us, to humanity to turn us into greedy, self-absorbed monsters?

Perhaps we’ve always been this way. Or maybe not. Maybe there was a time humanity worked for the benefit of the group instead of just the SELF. I don’t know. What I do know is Milgram’s experiment gave us a window into our own psyche that PROVES humans are fundamentally sheep.

Armed with this knowledge, we can recognize (THINK: examine) when we’re blindly going along with the flock. And we can choose not to.

 — 

The TRUTH about Mark Zuckerberg

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

IMAGINE working your ass off all through high school, studying instead of partying, volunteering with school and community groups so you can get into a good college. You send out your applications, to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, as you have a 4.8 GPA, and all the right clubs on your resume. Your mom kisses each envelope before mailing, “for luck,” then hugs you, with her silent prayer that you’ll be accepted everywhere, that the world will see her beautiful daughter the way she does.

Pins and needles until the letters start coming in, or maybe they won’t, and no college will want you, keeps playing in your head, until March rolls around and letters DO come. Cal Berkeley wants you! UC Davis wants you! Stanford wait-listed you. And Harvard ACCEPTED YOU!! You’re dancing in the kitchen with your mom, dad, and little brother, laughing, hugging, celebrating your achievement of hard work and tenacity. For the moment, you let yourself bask in the glow of your family’s pride.

August comes around, and you are settling into your dorm room at Harvard. Your roommate is nice enough, though she’s hardly there. Unlike you, she’s very social. She got into Harvard on her daddy’s dime. He went there too. She has a 3.6 GPA, but got a free pass into the school, as did ex-president George Bush Jr (with a 2.35 GPA). If nothing else, Harvard is incestuous. Known as ‘Legacy students,’ over a third of Harvard students are related to past students, with money.

You love your classes. Your professors. A few months into your Harvard experience you are doing well academically, even if you haven’t made any real friends. You assure your mom you’re fine, though you don’t tell her you’re feeling more than a bit lonely. The popular girls, like your roommate, came in with money, and come from money. They dress trendy, buy expensive, look sharp, act confident. Make it in Harvard, or not, they have no worries after school. The rich rarely have to worry like the rest of us.

You come back to your empty dorm room one afternoon, turn on your computer, and are about to get started on the paper you have to write for Expository, but the image on the screen stops you dead. Your face stares back at you, next to some sexy female student. Headline reads, “We were let in for our looks? No. We will be judged by them? Yes.” Subhead says, “Who’s Hotter? Click to choose.” Under YOUR PICTURE voters agree you’re not.

This is the beginning of Facemash, which eventually became Facebook. This is MARK ZUCKERBERG’S idea of fun — making women feel like shit for his entertainment. IMAGINE what that girl must have felt when she saw NOT under her Harvard profile picture. IMAGINE if it was YOUR CHILD. Or YOU.

And here’s what ZUCKERBERG said the first night he released Facemash: “I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.”

This is MARK ZUCKERBERG then, and THIS IS MARK ZUCKERBERG NOW! He is still the same ugly, petty, small man/child, pulling the same ugly crap, indifferent to anyone but himself, ignoring the pain he is causing around the globe now.

Zuckerberg was already a second-year student at Harvard when he began Facemash. He was not a child. If ZUCKERBERG was a decent man, a man of compassion, empathy, not cruelty, he never would have COPIED HOT OR NOT, an app that was already out there. Zucky just ripped it off! To debase Harvard WOMEN. Shame on you ZUCKY, and your MAMA and PAPA, for not teaching you how to treat others with respect and kindness!

ZUCKERBERG is still indifferent to anyone but his own needs, even today. His Facebook recommendation engine helped get TRUMPY ELECTED! Twice! How? Facebook only shows you what ZUCKY WANTS YOU TO SEE. You do NOT see all your connection’s posts. ZUCKY only shows you posts that REFLECT YOU. Upset about inflation? FB will show you Russian and Republican advertisers (disguised as friends and connections) who sell you that Trump will fix the economy. We are all merely seeing posts that reflect our personal concerns and opinions now.

ZUCKY only sees his own reflection too. It’s what allowed him to debase women at Harvard. It is allowing him to keep his screwed-up recommendation engine on and running. Republicans spreading lies, ZUCKY doesn’t care. He cares about getting and keeping advertisers. His “fake news” AI department is a joke. I know someone working there, and they tell me he isn’t trying to stop it at all. It doesn’t serve him to do so. He wants advertisers, and you don’t get them, and keep them, limiting ad sales.

He got lucky debasing women from an app he RIPPED OFF. Now he’s god to so many in Silicon Valley. Sadly, they are so blinded by his “success” that they cannot see the ugly little man/child he was @Harvard and still is. Humans get our moral fiber, our value systems, between 0–8, maybe up to 10 years old. Mark clearly didn’t get much moral guidance from his parents. And amoral people rarely change. They need a brick to the head, to ‘hit bottom,’ and ZUCKY ain’t fallin any time soon. In fact, Mark’s aligned himself with powerful Republicans to protect his self-interests.

The spoiled, self-serving brat is guiding the world to disaster after reaping huge profits on fake news without restraint to get Trumpy elected again. We now have a fascist running our country [into the ground] for the second time. Why? On top of getting him elected again, ZUCKY is paying Trump millions (billions?) to stop the Fed’s from breaking up Mark’s META monopoly.

MARK ZUCKERBERG, your power was wielded by the wealth of your parentage — mere chance, dumb luck. You’ve prioritized status and image over compassion and authenticity. Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Your crime, Mark, is the narcissist you’ve chosen to be.

Imagine how you and your wife, Priscilla Chan, would feel if YOUR DAUGHTERS, Maxima and August, were voted NOT HOT, deemed UGLY their first year at Harvard, as no doubt they’ll go there with the money you have made on the wasted hours all of us have spent on FACEBOOK and INSTAGRAM.

DELETE Facebook

DELETE Instagram

Parenting

Trump

Musk

WhatsApp

Murdering CEOs is Trending

by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

Will shooting them all stop these corps stealing from the 99%?

I’m writing a dystopian novel called The Power Trip about 4 Stanford undergrads that build a MMORPS game where PLAYERS manipulate other players — MARKS — to do what they ‘suggest.’

In one scene, the fictional CEO of fictional HealthNet is shot to death on a street in San Francisco by a social activist who lost his parents in the Nipah outbreak of ’36 due to poor care at Stanford Hospital. I wrote this scene a decade ago, enraged by our healthcare system in the U.S.A., and was reviewing it as it played out in real life last Wednesday on a street in New York City with the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

And I’d like to tell you that I feel bad for his family that he was gunned down on a public street in broad daylight, but…

I really am conflicted on this one. Brian Thompson, the real life (though now dead) UnitedHealthcare CEO was not a benefit to society. He headed up an insurance company that kills people every day by limiting doctor care, drug pushing for big pharma, and denying claims with no foundation other than pure greed, destroying lives daily. He was a father, which makes him particularly dangerous because more like him in this country, on this planet will not help humanity thrive, but hurts our survival.

American’s have a SHORTER LIFE SPAN than China, Greece, United Arab Emirates, and 51 other nations on this planet. We are 55th in life expectancy because of the poor quality of our FOR PROFIT ‘healthcare’ system.

Was there another way to stop this CEO from hurting people than murdering him?

Not that I know of. And while I’m not an advocate of murder, unless you run a Power Trip on him to commit suicide, Brian Thompson wasn’t going to change his marauding ways.

Can’t sue him. Sue any major corp, and their stable of lawyers will tie you up in court until you or your organization can no longer afford representation for your case.

Can’t talk to him, convince him to do right by the patients who pay for his family, his lifestyle, and the politicians UnitedHealthcare supports. He exhibited his relentless greed, and clearly didn’t care about anyone outside his personal sphere.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that corporations are people too. In doing so, they expanded corporate rights to donate as much money, resources (lawyers), and lobbyists to whatever cause, and political agenda they wanted. Corporations control the politicians of this country. We are NOT “by the people, for the people.” The U.S. was started by oligarchs who convinced the rabble to fight their battle to avoid paying taxes to Britain.

The U.S.A. is now and likely has always been a totalitarian society ruled by oligarchs and the super wealthy who will do anything to get rich and stay rich. Brian Thompson’s estimated net worth at death was close to $50 million, which he made saving money for UnitedHealthcare by killing off patients. That $50M is public facing, not how much he likely had hidden in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.

So, do we kill all the oligarchs wrecking this country?

  • We can’t get rid of them legally. Our govt protects corporations and the executives who work for them, not the 99% of the rest of us in this country.
  • We can’t convince them to become moral people who care about someone beyond themselves.
  • We can’t elect politicians that will be ‘by the people, for the people’ when the oligarchs and wealthy corps are paying our representatives to create laws that divests them of all culpability to keep them rich and in power.

What to do with the greedy oligarchs like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Charles Koch, Harold Hamm, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Warren Buffet, and CEO’s like Dave Brown (CEO Xfinity), Gail Boudreaux (CEO of Anthem/Blue Cross), Patti Poppe (CEO of PG&E), Sarah Chavarria (CEO of Delta Dental), Michael L. Tipsord (CEO of State Farm Insurance), Thomas J. Wilson (CEO of Allstate Insurance), Gregory Adams (CEO Kaiser Permanente), David Cordani (CEO Cigna Health), Jason Hollar (CEO Cardinal Health), Mike Slubowski (CEO Trinity Health)…etc?

Would shooting them all stop these corporations from stealing from the 99% of the rest of us?

If it would lead to a more equitable system of government — ‘by the [majority of] people, for the [majority of] people,’ — is it then the ‘right thing to do’ to murder these people to change a corrupt system controlled by the greedy 1%?

What Makes a Great Man

by jcafesin, posted in masculinity

Men are the freight train comin’ at ya.
Women are the poison in your food…

I’m a guy’s girl, meaning I’ve spent most of my life hanging out with men instead of women. The freight train comin’ at ya, I prefer men’s straightforward nature, their directness, their unwavering, solution-oriented trajectory. Men are simpler than women. Not less intelligent, just not so round-about, from behind, underneath.

Women, by contrast, are the poison in our food. Eons of subjugation have forced us to become puppet-masters to get what we want/need for ourselves and our children. Not a judgment call, simply a fact that until very recently might was necessary for our species survival, putting men firmly on top of the human hierarchy. Greater muscle mass to kill mastodons gave men the ability to take what they wanted, including sex. From our beginnings, men have assumed they controlled the household with superior strength.

Notice I said, “men assumed they controlled the household.” Well, you know what happens when you ass(of)u(and)me…;-}

Seriously though, probably pretty early on, like cavemen times, women figured out how to get men to do what we want using our wit and wiles. Genetic transfer of memory over thousands of generations of women passing on how to be manipulative eventually became woven into the DNA and imprinted on our XX chromosomes.

Regardless of why women became… complex, the fact that we are scares me about us. Women don’t only manipulate men. Quite often our children, sometimes even our friends, and all too often ourselves. I’d much rather face a freight train because if I’m paying attention, I can get off the tracks before getting slammed. Hence, why I’m a guy’s girl.

Men have historically subjugated women simply because they could. A mere six generations ago, women were not allowed to own their own property or keep their own wages. The only way to keep her family fed and a roof over their heads was to placate to a man. Until as recently as the 1970s, women could not get a mortgage loan without a co-signature from a man. And even today, stats from Dept. of Labor for 2023 show women still make 83% of a man for the exact same job.

Times truly are changing, though. Want a mastodon? Buy one on Amazon. Men’s physical prowess is unnecessary in today’s world. Upwards of 60% more women graduate college then men today. Most educated women pursue a career path and can pay their own way through life now, even if we still typically make less then men. Most of us don’t need a man’s financial support to survive or even thrive. Technology — from the Pill to the PC — has made it possible for women to control our own destinies, and function equally alongside men in most of today’s business environments. The few jobs still requiring brute strength are being replaced by robots.

Men are losing their position atop the social order with every advance of technology, and every law enforcing equal rights. And falling off the tip top position of authority hurts. I get that. It’s why more men voted for Trump than women, by a lot. The new pres elect promised to MAKE MEN GREAT AGAIN, but this is a lie, like most everything else out of the man/child’s mouth.

  • Great men don’t need to subjugate anyone. They value input and recognize insights from their spouses and colleagues to their children.
  • Great men don’t need to be ‘right’ all the time. They respect other’s POV, often learn from them and alter their position.
  • Great men think with their brains, not their ‘little heads.’
  • Great men are humble, remorseful when they screw up. They don’t blame the people they’ve hurt when made aware. They apologize and try not to repeat the hurtful behavior.
  • Great men know how to listen. Hear. Remember and learn from what is said and discussed.
  • Great men can disagree without rancor or hateful rhetoric. They’ve no need to put down their wives, their colleagues, or their children’s behavior or POV.
  • Great men don’t make their career/job, watching sports, doing hobbies, or fulfilling personal desires more important than anything else in their life.
  • Great men are connected outside themselves. They consider the lives they touch and care about the radiating effects of their actions before taking any.
  • Great men do not need to be served but take pleasure in serving others.
  • Great men are aware of their own emotions. They understand what they are feeling in real time and express their feelings instead of brooding with silent contempt.
  • Great men are not afraid of looking vulnerable or asking for help.
  • Great men truly care about the world around them. Not just in words but deeds — volunteering, teaching, giving, sharing, investing their time in not just personal pursuits but helpful and kind actions.
  • Great men are empathetic. Compassionate. Kindness is the foundation of what motivates most of their behavior towards others.

All of the bullet points above (and many more not listed) are also what makes a Great Human Being.

I’ve been privileged to know a few great men in my life. I am free to express my thoughts and feelings to them without worrying they’re going to dismiss what I say, put me down, stonewall me, or try to silence me by derailing the dialog when they’re losing their position with my reasoning. Our relationships are of mutual respect. I never need or desire to play puppet master with them.

Playing the role of puppet-master is exhausting. Figuring out and then implementing the primers and triggers to motivate the behavior I want takes more energy than I care to invest. I prefer just TALKING and honestly expressing what I need, which is why I generally suck at puppeteering. And quite frankly, with so few great men, or women who aren’t honest with themselves or those they try and manipulate, it’s been a lonely life, always on the outside looking in on communication games I don’t care to play.

Gaming honest communication to get your way, get what you want, or ‘win’ a dispute is destructive in the extreme. Successful relationships — where both parties feel heard, respected, appreciated — from partners to parenting to friendships and colleagues require listening and caring about the other person’s feelings, thoughts, and preferences, and of course, understanding you can’t always get what you want, but both get what they need in equal measure. Only in doing so can each be a safe harbor for the other.

It really is time to eradicate from the human lexicon these ingrained antiquated gender roles and social positions that have been in place since the beginning of our existence.

It’s time for men to realize that to be a Great Man now requires more than brute strength or bringing in an income. Step down from the throne, shed the bravado and learn to build partnerships on a foundation of trust through mutual respect and compromise.

Women must come out from underneath, behind, quietly poisoning the well of honest communication with puppeteering. Instead of continuing to play puppet-master, stop accepting slights to avoid conflict. It only builds resentment. Boldly, honestly express how you feel and what you need. Don’t settle on being ignored, undervalued, invisible, constantly acquiescing to his desires over your own. Don’t manipulate. Communicate. Keep pushing the envelope of awareness, and know evolution takes millennium to change what has been since humanity began. We are all works in progress, and we must learn from one another to thrive together.

On Medicine Today

by jcafesin, posted in civil rights, politics

Got Covid again last month. Second time, close to a year after my first go-round with it. I’m fully vaxed. Workout 5 miles a day, 5 days a week. No underlying medical conditions. Low-risk age group.

I got Covid the first time at a karaoke bar when the person sitting next to me literally spit in my mouth. Not purposefully. She was singing with the tone deaf performer, along with most of the bar. It lasted 5 days. I had the typical symptoms and I thought it was done, but 4 weeks after I tested negative, I ended up with a vitreous detachment in my right eye. Two weeks after that, I was in the hospital with vertigo.

My husband took me to Emergency, and after throwing up in the empty waiting room for 20 minutes we followed a nurse into a small glass enclosure. She instructed me to get into the bed while she asked me questions I could barely answer, entered my information into her iPad, and left. The doctor came in 30 minutes later and asked the exact same questions as the nurse. The doctor instructed the nurse what medication to give me intravenously, and what prescriptions I should pick up on my way home, then left. I did not see him again, and was released from the hospital half-hour later.

I was at the hospital for about two and a half hrs, 20 minutes of which I spent in the waiting room, and another 30 waiting for the doctor. Besides the nurse, the only other person who came into the enclosure was a woman collecting $350, credit cards accepted into her handheld payment device. I received a saline solution for hydration, and Metoclopramide to curb the nausea, (though by the time it was administered, my nausea had passed). Oh, and I saw the doctor for less than 5 minutes.

The hospital bill for my Emergency visit was over $3,500. I personally paid out-of-pocket close to $1,200, though I am fully insured and pay $700+ monthly for Blue Shield medical insurance.

Getting the picture why I was scared out of my mind of having Covid again?

Beyond the damage to my health the virus was undoubtedly doing, how much was this second round of Covid going to cost me in downtime and money?

I’d heard of Paxlovid from their constant TV commercials. Pfizer, and their like seem to sponsor most network news these days. “If taken within 5 days of symptoms, Paxlovid reduces severe Covid symptoms in high-risk patients by 86%,” the authoritative male voice-over proclaimed. The ad closed with a quick list of all the reported side effects, including, but not limited to death.

The commercial ran through my head as I lay awake with body aches and sweats. Four days into suffering from this new round of Covid, I asked my husband to call the doctor I’d seen only once, the previous year, for my Long Covid symptoms, and get a prescription for Paxlovid. A part of me didn’t think the doctor could legally prescribe the drug since I don’t exactly fit the ‘high-risk’ profile. The on-call doctor who I’ve never met prescribed me Paxlovid, assuring my husband it was the best course of action to shut down the virus and minimize the risk of another round with Long Covid.

Promises. Promises.

During the time DH was procuring the Paxlovid from our local pharmacy, I searched the internet for data from studies on the drug. The first 5 pages of Google returns were from Pfizer and other Big Pharma corps. Big Pharma pays Google billions annually to advertise their offerings, so of course, Google’s top search results are from their highest paying clients. Google’s returns also included a range of ‘medical’ websites, like WebMD, CVS.com, and Medical News Today, supported by pharmaceutical giants through affiliate marketing. Nine out of ten medical sites pulled their content from Pfizer’s website, all proclaiming the wonders of Paxlovid.

Feverish and exhausted, I searched for FACTS. I started crying reading all the lies from Pfizer, and every other site Google returned, all of them dismissing the complaints from people on Reddit or other discussion forums about their horrible reactions to Paxlovid. Pfizer, and therefore every site that got their content from Pfizer, were all spreading PR lies claiming there was no proof the ill effects reported from taking Paxlovid were related to their drug.

Frustrated and desperate to get the TRUTH, I called the doctor who’d given me the prescription. Talking to him was on par with reading Pfizer’s website — he literally quoted their PR, told me everything I’d read already. When I questioned him about, well, anything negative I’d read in my research, he told me, “Don’t get on the internet and look this stuff up. All it’ll do is scare you.” He went on to instruct me to take the Paxlovid for the next 5 days as prescribed, and I’d be fine. “You may get a slight metallic taste in your mouth, but that’s about it, and that hardly happens to anyone, like 3%.” This was a direct quote from Pfizer I’d read many times in my research. My doctor was repeating to me the same bullshit that the sexy, busty, bubble-headed female Pfizer rep sold to him about Paxlovid.

I had almost every side effect, other than dying, (though some moments I wished I would) from taking Paxlovid. The metallic taste in my mouth was so severe it made me sicker than Covid. I could barely eat. It made me dizzy, and nauseous. I had trouble sleeping while on it. But worse, I got Covid again, a third time, 2 weeks after I had a negative test. And Pfizer KNEW I WOULD. They call it “Rebound” cases, and if you look on Reddit, you’ll find MOST WHO TOOK PAXLOVID GOT A REBOUND CASE — meaning they tested positive for Covid again, weeks after they thought it was over. Without Paxlovid, I got over my first round of Covid in 5 days. It took me almost a month to clear my system of the virus on Paxlovid.

Until Covid, I’d been in the hospital 3 times in my life. I wiped out on my bike and screwed up my knee at 23. I ended up at a Public hospital without insurance at the time (staffed by young intern doctors and training nurses relatively clueless about medicine beyond gunshot wounds and ODs). The other two were to birth my kids.

What these recent experiences have taught me:

  • Google returns and promotes LIES. Google is the ONE (and only) SOURCE MOST USED to get their information.
  • Doctors LIE. They are clueless about most new pharms they prescribe. They simply repeat what these pretty young women are selling them, accepting ‘gifts’ of cash and vacation perks; or maybe they’ll check out the link Pfizer sent them about their new ‘targeted’ cure for Covid.
  • Big Pharma LIES. They consistently over-promise and under deliver. They steal from consumers because our govt lets them. Hundreds of billions of our tax dollars go to fund Pfizer and their like. They should be GIVING AWAY THESE DRUGS because U.S. citizens have PAID FOR THEM WITH OUR TAXES. Yet, they charge us fortunes while making themselves billions annually.
  • Our medical system is BROKEN. Medical debt is the #1 reason for bankruptcy in this country. Money for medicine DOES NOT WORK for anyone other than the wealthy, and the U.S. congress, and our elected officials.

What to do with these FACTS?

  1. Get your information from MANY SOURCES, not just Google!
  2. Don’t blindly believe your doctors, as they choose to remain ignorant to the fact that 74% of the 50 new drugs approved by the FDA in 2022 had little proof they actually worked. Research! Reddit. Discord. DuckDuckGo. Bing. White papers, valid medical studies (called Abstracts)…etc.
  3. VOTE BLUE, as Republicans want to take away Medicare, Medicaid, and most social services. They believe in “Trickle Down Economics” which has created more oligarchs than any other socioeconomic practice — loosening regulations and providing tax ‘incentives’ for corporations and individuals with high incomes. Democrats, though not much better as they are still slaves to Corporate America’s lobbyists, at least have an eye out for the middle class in this country. They support more social services, like the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), mental and reproductive healthcare, Medicaid and Medicare, and lower prescription drug costs. In 2024, close to 69% of the world’s population has some form of Universal Healthcare, while the U.S. still does not. UHC is not socialism. Access to quality medical care regardless of income should be a Civil Right. Let’s do better — serve the many, not just the few! VOTE BLUE.

    Believing is NOT Thinking

    by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

    My father is a fervent Republican. My mother was a Democrat. I once saw him put his fist through the maple cabinet an inch from my mother’s head because her vote was going to cancel his in the second Reagan election. Though he never hit her, connected anyway, he often shouted, slammed things, threw things, even at me, when he encountered resistance (reason) when espousing his conservative views.

    My father doesn’t believe Global Warming is real or caused by us in any way (absolving himself of conserving resources).

    My father believes all non-believers — atheists and agnostics — are dangerous fools to be converted.

    My father distrusts all Muslims.

    My father believes in trickle-down economics, though it’s been proven again and again it makes the rich richer while wiping out the middle class.

    My father doesn’t believe in gun control. “If they come for me, I’ll stop them at the door.” He quotes the NRA with fervor! “Take away what kind of guns we get to own, and you chip away at the foundation of the 2nd Amendment,” he preaches.

    I remind him he can’t stop a tank with an AK-47. I implore him to examine history, and context, that the right to bear arms our forefathers were talking about were pistols and shotguns that took three minutes to load and didn’t fire straight or would blow up in your face. Automatic assault weapons were neither considered, nor anticipated when the 2nd Amendment was written.

    He scoffs. As his daughter, and a woman, I am clueless.

    As a mother of two amazing, spectacular children, I am horrified, not only by mass shootings on school campuses, but everywhere else, every time an assault weapon is used against our own because the NRA wants to stay rich. And our government officials, Republican senators in particular, ostensibly “by the people, for the people,” are paid off by gun lobbyists to let them.

    I grew up in L.A., on the Valley side of the Hollywood Hills. I went to school with writers, producers, directors’ kids, all fairly to extremely liberal. My father was the outlier in our neighborhood and among my parents’ colleagues and friends. The Great Divide between the Republicans and Democrats, fueled by Reagan pushing religion, conservatism, then ignited by Bush Jr’s Christian administration, and then concertized in lies, ignorance, and hate by Trump, didn’t exist yet. My parents lived together in relative peace, except around election times.

    We have become a polarized nation, and this serves no one here. On the personal level, it has divided me from my family. My siblings, like my father, are fervent Republicans. My sister, disgusted we’re raising our kids without religion, decided she’d had enough of my liberal leanings and checked out of our lives entirely, leaving our kids deeply hurt their aunt had abandoned them. My brother used to forward me emails from his Born-Again community that Obama was a Jew-hating Muslim who believed it’s okay to kill babies. During Trump’s reign, he spoke of the evil liberals who supported abortion and insisted the rights of a fetus eclipsed those of the mother. My brother’s ignorance is only eclipsed by his blind faith in his Christian leaders’ conservative rhetoric.

    The chasm in our morality and our philosophies is so diametrically opposed at this point that the rare times I talk with my father our dialog quickly sours, then invariably turns contentious. I’ve told him time and again I won’t discuss politics with him, but he insists on little digs, like, “Do you care about your kids?” He has not spoken with our children, his grandkids, in 7 years, or acknowledged them in any way, not birthdays, no calls, ever, and virtually never inquirers about them when I call him, which I always do because he doesn’t call me.

    Truth is, it’s getting harder and harder to call him. Almost two decades after my mom’s death, my father is undaunted by age or illness in his quest to spread conservative lies. He’s a true believer (as are most hard-core Republicans) because believing is easier than thinking. Being told what is right and wrong, good or bad, is simpler than considering the complexities of our behavior, and our obligations to each other and the world we inhabit.

    My remaining family believes women should not have the right of choice with our own bodies.

    My father and siblings believe gays should not have the legal, nor moral right to marry. They believe homosexuality is a mental illness.

    My family espouses they believe in “less government” — preaching the Republican’s canonical tagline — but want to govern (restrict) women’s choice and limit our birth control resources; control who gets to marry; limit medical treatment to those who can afford care; allow corporations to buy politicians that allow the mass murder of our children and citizens for corporate profit. They’d prefer to believe the GOP rhetoric that Global Warming isn’t happening and support the ‘rights’ of Big Oil to drill and frack our planet to death, instead of investing in renewable energy for our kids, and the welfare of Earth forward.

    I’ve been wondering when it’s time to say goodbye to family, even before they die. I’ve been grieving my sister’s departure from our lives since her exit 15 yrs ago. The little connection I retain with my brother and father seems… over. My kids have no relationship with either. We have virtually no common ground and share little time that doesn’t quickly turn combative. So really, what’s the point of trying to stay in touch? Harsh? You bet. Ugly? Yeah. I’m profoundly saddened that we’ve come to this impasse. Hurts. A lot, knowing almost half our nation feels as my family does. And I am mystified, disgusted, and shamed by their gullibility in choosing blind faith over thought and reason.

    We are again on the precipice of our survival as one nation, but this time the war isn’t with rifles that blow up in our faces when shot at the ‘enemy.’ Now, we must recognize the enemy is ourselves — choosing ignorance over reason because it’s easier to binge-watch Netflix, peruse Instagram, or stream gameplay on Twitch than it is to think.

    My daughter, a recent college grad, told me most of her friends off and online — this new round of young voters — will not be voting this election. They’re taking a stand, showing how they feel about our government, they claim, neglecting to understand without voting they are essentially voting in Trump. They say they’re disheartened by their choice between a great-grandfather and a misogynist (who they don’t say is just 3 yrs younger than Biden.) They focus on our current president’s age because their feeds on Insta, Facebook, Reddit [and their like] tell them to — flooded with GOP marketing to sway young voters Biden is too old for another term. They get their information from social media and blindly believe their feeds, not knowing, or even caring that what they are scrolling through is personally targeted at them, and designed to manipulate them to buy, try, subscribe, and believe in snake oil.

    The chasm between us will continue to grow with more believers buying into the derisive rhetoric of their religious leaders, politicians, Google’s search results, and ‘personalized’ marketing on social platforms and apps. More families are finding themselves on opposite sides of an ideological divide that will likely tear them apart, like mine, unless we STOP believing and start thinking what is right, not only for ourselves and our family, but broader, more complex considerations that include finding and creating ways to help our neighbors, community, this country, and our planet thrive.

    The Fallacy of Palestinian Protests

    by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

    My daughter, a college senior, told me yesterday that she joined the Palestinian protest on campus.

    “I believe that genocide is wrong, Mom. So, I stood up for what I believe.”

    I think she expected me to be proud of her, but her words made my skin crawl. My daughter knows nothing of the history of either country. She has no idea why there is a war between Israel and Palestine now, how the war even started, or why Israel is bombing the Gaza Strip. In fact, she has no idea where the Gaza Strip is, or why it is there, or who their govt is.

    I raised my kids to stand up and speak out when they encounter racism, sexism, ignorance, hate. I did not teach them to blithely go along with the crowd. That’s how Nazis came about.

    Do you know that Hamas, the government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked attack on Israel, killed over 1,200 people, and kidnapped 253 in October of last year?

    No.

    And did you know Hamas was raping 12–48 yr old girls and women they kidnapped, then posting it online to terrorize victim’s loved ones?

    I haven’t heard that. All I heard was Israel was bombing civilians in Palestine and killing mostly women and children.

    Do you know that the government the Palestinian people voted in are using their women and children as cover for their terrorist shit, and that is why they were getting killed in Israeli bombings?

    No. But it doesn’t make it right that Israel is killing kids.

    No. It doesn’t. I didn’t say Israel is right. There is no right here, baby. Both sides are wrong. I’m not pro-Israel. They know that Hamas is sacrificing Palestinian children, yet instead of targeted strikes against Hamas, they are wielding an iron fist. Badly. Ugly. For sure. 100%.

    So, what’s wrong with me joining the protest then, when even you don’t believe Israel is right? she asked me, exasperated.

    My beautiful daughter, siding with one side or the other is divisive in the extreme. It perpetuates the problems there, and creates more here, between us. Call out bad behavior, like Israel knowingly killing civilians regardless of their reasons. Or Palestinians voting in a fanatical religious government with an agenda to kill all Israelis. Neither is right. Call out bad behavior, not an entire nation. Do not get on the PC train because your friends are and you wanta fit in. Do the research before taking a stand. Blind faith means turning off your brain. And that is never OK.

    So you think I shouldn’t have joined the protest?

    Do you know professional agitators are targeting campuses like yours to get all you kids riled up? And that most of these protests wouldn’t even be happening if not for the pro-agitators who are paid big bucks to get online and throw a protest.

    I thought they were all student here. Who would pay someone to do that?

    I don’t know. But right now I’m betting on the Republican party. They want to destabilize our nation because the more chaotic the better Trump’s chances of winning the election.

    Seriously? she asked, aghast, as she feels like I do about our misogynist x-pres.

    I don’t know, honey. What I do know is ninety-nine point nine nine nine…etc. percent of these college protesters have no clue about what is going on over there, just like you don’t. They catch news bites online, and the bloodier the bites the more eyeballs they get. The news just loves a great car crash!

    Standing up for ONE SIDE when you don’t know the history, the region, the people, the conflicts that have been there since the UN decided Israel’s borders, the wars, how they started, or why they started is, well, ignorant. So you were out there with a bunch of ignorant students who are creating more conflict, more hate, more antisemitism with their protest. And it won’t change a thing because the universities will not cut all ties with Israel. Ever. Israel is a collaborative partner in research and development of medicine to tech, the primary function of any university. With all this in mind, do YOU think you should have been out there protesting?

    The energy was so electric with all those people, Mom. It sure felt like we were doing something meaningful.

    Promoting ignorance and hate is never meaningful, baby. Don’t just go along with the crowd and create more conflict like these protests do. Making a real difference takes work, honey. Lots of work, over a long time. Think, research, a LOT, since so much of the internet is lies. Then form your own opinion, and act to be part of the solution.

    The AI in Your Pocket or WHY TO BAN TIKTOK

    by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

    I’m on Facebook, whining to my friend about a fight with my husband through their IM.

    In my typical “melodramatic,” (my husband claims, but I call “passionate”) fashion, I’m furiously typing how much of a jerk he is, how often we fight, basically questioning if the sanctity of marriage is sustainable.

    My friend is empathetic. She reminds me that I am always welcome to visit her in Britain, especially if I decide to leave my husband. She’ll help me kick off my newly single life with a bang!

    I have no intention of leaving my husband. I am sounding off, as women so often do to other women, about our marriages. And my friend knows this. She also knows her offer is giving me ground, a place to land. She is kind in the extreme, and I am honored to know her.

    Unfortunately, Facebook is not so kind. They are collecting the IM exchange between me and my friend. Their data science team then runs Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning algorithms on our text exchange. They categorize and classify our exchange to ‘improve the engagement and response’ of their advertiser’s campaigns. In marketing speak we call it “Personalized Targeting.” They also sell our data to their advertisers, and you agree to let them do this when you download Facebook to your mobile, or sign up on your PC to engage with their platform.

    In simple terms, personalized targeting means collecting as much data on an individual as possible, then correlating that data with people having the same or similar characteristics and online behavior. With enough data, patterns of our personal behavior emerge. Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and every other social network, and most every site we visit puts “cookies” on our devices, essentially tracking where we visit and what we do online. And they use that data against us, manipulating us to buy, try, or subscribe to whatever they’re selling through “Recommendation ‘engines,’” aka algorithms.

    RME, right? Another bullshit conspiracy theory.

    What IS bullshit is you not knowing any of this is happening, and even if it is, you believe it does not affect you. Every call, every text, every place you search on the net, everything you buy, all your contacts, and every location you are IRL at any given time is taken from your cellphone. The data collected is used to convince you to buy a product, service, or into an ideology.

    In fact, “Recommendation” is selling us so much more than business offerings. Rec engines are telling us how to think and what to believe. And we don’t consciously know it. En mass, we are buying into too much of what is being sold to us online, aka “fake news.” The Recommendation algorithms behind Google, Facebook, Insta, X, YouTube…etc., are creating a FEEDBACK LOOP, showing you ONLY what you’ve expressed interest in, or someone like you has engaged with — IMed, emailed, searched, clicked, tried, bought or subscribed. You will rarely, if ever now, get a differing point of view, or opinion other than your own when you engage online. The Recommendation Effect is shifting politics — the global resurgence of right-wing nationalism influencing elections, and the precise reason ex-president Trump was elected in 2016, narrowly lost in 2020, and is projected to win in 2024.

    “Collaborative Filtering” is a form of Machine Learning, aka AI, that correlates your characteristics/behavior with people ‘similar’ to you. With enough correlations (data), computers can now see patterns and beliefs of individuals. In other words, if I buy X, and your data correlates with mine, you will likely buy X too. Advertisers use this data to slam you with ads their algorithms ‘think’ that you’ll respond to.

    So, after whining to my friend I’m off Facebook and on to my day. I social media market in the mornings for my books and entrepreneurial workshops before I start my day gig. I go to Instagram. My feed is filled with dating site ads, and many are, “Here is your second chance at love,” type campaigns targeting divorced women, or women considering divorce. Or women having a rough patch in their marriage. The ads keep flashing images of happy couples and my heart sinks a little. Instagram is owned by Facebook, in case you didn’t already know.

    For the next few weeks, many of the text ads in my feed on Gmail are for divorce lawyers in my area. Sure, I’ve considered divorce. Any couple married for 27 yrs likely has. And with my husband and I still at odds, and I’m feeling lonely, and craving intimacy, these ads present an option to staying married to a man that at the moment I’m not getting along with.

    Over the next month or more, usually way more, I get slammed with ads, essentially recommendations for dating sites and divorce lawyers wherever I go online. The more I whine to my friends through IM, even emailing her or others about my marriage, the longer I’ll get slammed with dating and divorce site ads. The idea of dissolving my marriage, once inconceivable which encouraged me to work it out with my husband, is now not only an option but a promising one at that. Beyond just ads, I get recs for articles and blog posts about divorce, and second chances at intimacy, trying to convince me my life would be better if I divorced because ‘the love of my life’ is out there just waiting for me to swipe right.

    Facebook, Google, all of them justify their use of Recommendation with marketing like, “more relevant and enjoyable ad ‘experiences,’ delivering content YOU want.”

    Seriously? I don’t want to divorce, so why is their Rec engine suggesting I should through the ad content they are continuously serving me?

    Simple answer: so their advertisers — the dating sites and divorce lawyers — SELL more.

    Conspiracy theory? Bullshit! The conspiracy is that you don’t know, or even care this is happening to YOU too.

    Machine Learning and Natural Language algorithms are behind most everything we do online now. They are the gun on the table. But Recommendation engines are picking that gun up, targeting us, and pulling the trigger. Quite literally.

    Psychology 101: “Primers” (like the endless dating and easy divorce ads) and “Triggers” (like finding ‘the love of my life’ when I’m feeling lost and alone) are what motivate us to take any action.

    Conspiracy theory, my ass. The Machiavellian effects of Rec engines are real. And it is dangerous — socially irresponsible — to let social media and search platforms continue to collect our data and misuse it for profit.

    AI is NOT the light at the end of the tunnel to circumvent laborious and repetitive tasks. It really is the freight train comin at us…

    Heads up to all you digital marketers out there: SEO based on relevance, link-backs, or even the number of unique hits, is, well, gone for the most part. Returns on Google are now based on Recommendation — what Google’s algorithms ‘think’ you want to see based on your past behavior and the behavior of others similar to yours. Google’s “organic search” returns are also based on how much money they make from any given advertiser. The more they make from, say, Progressive Insurance Corp, the more likely Progressive will be close to #1 in their search returns, regardless of SEO keywords and phrasing.

    Is WOKE Brain-Dead

    by jcafesin, posted in Uncategorized

    Got feedback for my novella, A Marriage Fable, from a reader.

    Pam L (She/Her) 3:55 PM

    Thanks Jeri! I actually read it and enjoyed it. I just hesitate to review because the husband calls the therapist a muslim I think it was, in a nonflattering way, and never takes it back later in the book. It just didn’t sit right with me.

    A Marriage Fable is a fantasy romance of a typical husband nearing his 20th anniversary, and the powerful genie that inspires him to be a better man. The “muslim” Pam is referring to is the genie. The husband is a sexist, narcissistic asshole in the beginning of this fable, and does indeed refer to the genie, who he thinks is a therapist, as a Muslim because he’s mad with his wife for asking him to participate in her session with Dr. Boggs.

    This fable is a modern twist on the classic Dicken’s novella, A Christmas Carol. I used Arabic words for the opening of each stave, and honored the legends of Marid Djinns throughout the writing. I, Jeri Cafesin, did not slam Muslims. Andrew Wyman did, the MC in A Marriage Fable. To show, (not tell in exposition) that Andrew was a self-absorbed dick, he indeed used ugly language, as he, like most men these days, was not violent. Words were his weapon, and his complete lack of interest in anything but his career.

    Pam deciding not to leave my novella a review is beyond WOKE, it’s brain-dead. She’s so into being politically correct, following the masses, a ‘believer’ she’s being ‘good, respectful, polite,’ she’s stopped actually thinking for herself. She enjoyed my novella, but can’t leave a review because the Woke community, to which she is a card-carrying member, says using the word Muslim derogatorily in all cases is wrong. And she’s bought that crap. She’s so unsure of her own mind, so afraid of her own racism that she has to call out a fable showing an arc of a character to protect her self-image. She must follow the crowd she’s picked — falling off the boat left-wing. Her behavior is equal only to the far right of the Trump coalition, which she likely despises.

    I used to be a Democrat. I am not anymore because of people like Pam who can’t think beyond their rabbis, priests, and the will of the crowd they’ve picked so they can look in the mirror and feel good about themselves. Fuck that. TRUTH changes things, not all this PC bullshit.

    So, let’s get down to some TRUTH, and face some facts about humanity. WE ARE ALL RACISTS. We are all BORN RACISTS! And until we all wrap our heads around that FACT, we are doomed to stay racists!

    At my writing group the other night a guy read 1500 words out of his historical novel about WW2. In his book, he quoted Hitler, and other Nazis using racial slurs. Several group members had “a problem” with this. They found the language offensive and suggested he take out the terms. Instead, he was advised to use the PC version of describing the terms without using the actual slurs. Again, brain dead! Are these people so scared of the TRUTH that they cannot face the FACTS of what the Nazis did/do. Wokes must sugar-coat it to swallow it down? There is nothing sweet about Nazism! It was/is ugly in the extreme, and this writer in my group was showing this. It wasn’t his job to be politically correct as to offend NO ONE EVER. It was meant to offend! Ignoring history, we are doomed to repeat it, and we ARE with Trump and the current Republican party, and the other side, the Woke party.

    Fiction writing is a fine art. Should someone have told Edvard Munch he shouldn’t paint The SCREAM because it may give some kids nightmares? It did me! Should books like Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Color Purple not have been written because they may offend? Of course not. Art is supposed to be controversial, get people feeling first, then thinking about what they feel and why.

    My father used to call me Marco after the MC in And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street because I’ve been a storyteller since I was a little kid. I’ve read it to my kids to spark their imagination because that is what the story is about, not a ‘Chinaman (original wording) who walks with sticks’ (and by the way, the TRUTH is, Chinese in China still use chopsticks), or a ‘Rajah with Rubies.’ The Woke community has robbed children forward of a method to reach and spark their own imaginations.

    New York Times had an article about transgender conversion a couple weeks ago. For once, the left-wing rag, wasn’t. They actually had the balls, in our politically correct version of the world now, to call out therapists who are pushing children, as young as 10 years old, to change their sex. In their extensive research, the article points out that the Woke community is selling kids on medically ‘reconfiguring’ (the PC term) their bodies, a decision that will affect the rest of their lives, and in many cases negatively. Personally, I don’t care if an adult decides to become the opposite sex. It is an adult decision. Blind support of a child wanting to change their sex after seeing some YouTuber trans who is saying how great their life is now, is ugly in the extreme. It doesn’t make you a good therapist to always be ‘supportive.’ It makes you a bad one.

    Oddly, well, maybe not, the same Woke crowd is calling out Trader Joe’s for using Trader José on their Mexican label beer as racial appropriation. I don’t understand why changing sex later in life isn’t sexual appropriation. A man changed to a woman at 18 or later didn’t have to grow up with the slings and arrows I faced as a girl or a woman in the workforce. They have no idea what it means to be constantly hit on from the moment you get tits, groped, assaulted, get pregnant, paid less, and a girl better be pretty, and thin, or she’s lonely. And I was. The damage sexism did to me will be with me for the rest of my life, regardless of the sex I later become.

    And THEY is more than ONE. Unless a human is two people in one, like Siamese twins, what does someone calling themselves THEY even mean? Using ‘THEY’ as your ‘personal pronoun’ WON’T STOP SEXISM! This will — the TRUTH is a good place to start.

    Politically correct doesn’t help humanity become kinder or more equitable. Activist groups like LGBTQ have powerful lobbyists who help change discriminatory laws. The Gay Liberation Movement (GLM) in the 1980s got Congress to invest in AIDS research. Black Lives Matter (BLM) forces us to investigate systemic racism in our police forces across the US. These organized groups send representatives to DC who actually fight for legal change. If you really want to be politically correct, actually do something to help make us a more just society, join one of these organizations, and help end discrimination.

    It’s hip, slick, and trending Woke these days to say “I’m Pro-Palestine.” In fact, my own daughter said this to me the other day.

    Hmm, I thought I taught you better than jumping on the Woke train, I told her. Do you even know what it means to be pro-Palestine? All her friends are. All her friends are Chinese and Indian students at UCSD. Literally. She is White and has no White friends. Many of these friends are on visas and have no voting rights in this country. And they too have no clue what they are talking about when they claim to be pro-Palestine. My daughter’s friends are feeling disenfranchised. They’ve been the target of racism here and are justifiably angry. But instead of dealing with that TRUTH, they’ve lobbed onto a crowd — the PC community — that lets them express their internalized anger by getting behind causes they have no clue about.

    Do you know that Hamas, the government of Gaza, launched an unprovoked attack on Israel from Gaza, killed over 1,200 people, and kidnapped 253 in October of last year?

    No.

    And did you know Hamas was raping 12–48 yr old girls and women they kidnapped, then posting it online to terrorize victim’s loved ones?

    I haven’t heard that. All I heard was Israel was bombing civilians in Palestine and killing mostly women and children.

    Do you know that the government the Palestinians voted in are using their women and children as cover for their terrorist shit, and that is why they were getting killed in Israeli bombings?

    No. But it doesn’t make it right that Israel is killing kids.

    No. It doesn’t. I didn’t say Israel is right. There is no right here, baby. Both sides are wrong. I’m not pro-Israel. They know that Hamas is sacrificing their own children, yet instead of targeted strikes against Hamas, they are wielding an iron fist. Badly. Ugly. For sure. 100%. My beautiful daughter, I told her, siding with one side or the other is divisive in the extreme. It perpetuates the problems there, and creates more here, between us. Call out bad behavior, like Israel knowingly killing civilians regardless of their reasons. Or Palestine voting in a fanatical religious government with an agenda to kill all Israelis. Neither is right. Call out bad behavior. Do not get on the PC train because your friends are and you wanta fit in. Do the research before taking a stand. Blind faith means turning off your brain. And that is never OK.

    I get writing this essay is going to piss off a lot of people. While I understand and support the underlying tenor of being PC is to stop discrimination in all forms, the Woke community has no clue how divisive and ugly they are when they call out everyone who isn’t on their train. They perpetuate racism, sexism, and flat-out stupidity so they can look in the mirror and lie to themselves they are righteous people.

    Let’s all get off the PC train and focus on how to tackle our differences by getting honest with our own feelings — our fears of THE OTHER, of looking stupid, of not fitting in, of being alone and lonely. Let’s start sharing how often we fail, in our careers and our relationships, instead of perpetuating the happy-ending lie. I’m so sick of almost every businessperson I talk to saying they’re doing “just great!” and then their biz failing the next year.

    Want to end discrimination? Then let’s start sharing how it feels to BE HUMAN since we all FEEL THE SAME THINGS.

    The Cost of Convenience

    by jcafesin, posted in saas, social media

    It’s surprising how little I think of my daughter now that she’s living 2,000 miles away at school. We talk on the phone frequently, but since she’s not involved in my daily life anymore, she’s more of an abstraction (when we’re not directly talking), a pleasant thought when she crosses my mind.

    I figured she was having the same experience I was when she went off to college. The thought of me made her feel glad (or angry, or… since I’m her mother and that comes with mixed feelings), but I didn’t consider she thought of me often in her busy life. So, when I recently had exploratory surgery looking for cancer, I did not realize she even remembered me mentioning the appointment on the phone a couple of weeks ago.

    This morning I’m in my office going through my email. I find one from my husband letting me know he and our daughter signed me up for online notifications of my medical records, including test results, last night while I slept. They gave the MyChart app my husband’s phone number and his email because they both know how much I hate putting my data online, never stopping to consider that my husband would be notified of my test results likely before I would by snail mail.

    I’ll be getting my test results by snail mail because I do not want my medical information online. I get that it already is, which my daughter reminded me when I came at her full bore with anger on the phone this morning for signing me up without my permission (after coming unglued on my husband).

    It isn’t just my medical records that shouldn’t be online, sitting in a cloud, accessible to everyone from Walgreens to United Health Care [insurance]. It makes my skin crawl that almost every time I want to access anything on the net now, the site attaches ‘cookies’ to my machine that track my usage. Many sites require I fill out forms for entry, collecting, aggregating and categorizing even more of my personal data to sell and/or exploit with targeted marketing.

    My daughter is on the medical track studying to become a physician. She works as a scribe in a medical practice, and is an intern at Palomar Medical Center and uses MyChart on the job. So do the patients of the practice and the hospital, she assured me. They all love the convenience of being able to look up their medications and/or test results as soon as they’re posted on their e-chart.

    She was trying to sell me on the real world, the one she, and most everyone else lives in daily—perpetually attached to the net via cellphones, laptops and tablets. Banking to paying bills to shopping, my daughter uses these online ‘services’ (which is kind of an oxymoron since these apps make it self-serve), to ‘keep it simple’ while juggling two internships, a job, and a full course load every quarter, including this summer.

    Do you understand there is a cost to convenience? I asked her on the phone, after she apologized for setting up the account without my permission and promised to delete it when we disconnected.

    She did, she assured me. But she really doesn’t. She’s too young, too many generations removed from WWII.

    “The Third Reich was a diagnosis regime, obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, religion, politics, sexuality, criminality and purported biological, mental and behavioral defects. Nazi officials created massive population indexes that compiled individuals’ medical, financial, educational, criminal and welfare records — even sports club files. By 1942, approx. ten million Reich citizens had been indexed. These files, then, established the grounds for sterilization, deportation and extermination.” (https://lnkd.in/d9txaahS)

    Nothing to hide? I rhetorically asked my daughter on the phone, still admonishing her for signing me up for an online account of my medical information and then giving access to her dad via email. She placated my perceived conspiracy theory with, I get it, Mom! I do. It’s likely dangerous to have all our personal information online, but it already is, Mom.

    1942 may as well be 1642 to my daughter, and [ostensibly] most of her gen— too far back to remember or care.

    I didn’t care about using internet-based services either until the ‘cloud.’ It was mid-2000s and we were all on the free and open information highway when Amazon introduced its cloud-based storage service, but I didn’t get its impact until my bank started offering SaaS [self] ‘services,’ like Direct Deposit and online payments ‘for our convenience.’ At first I didn’t care about that either, as I had no intention of banking online since putting my bank account numbers through unsecured servers didn’t, and still doesn’t seem wise to me. Banking security is another oxymoron, and my internet connection through Xfinity isn’t exactly an impenetrable firewall.

    By the mid-2010s cloud computing had scaled, especially with the advent of the ‘smart’ phone. Bank of America started making it hard to come into their branches in-person, cutting its staff in half and forcing customers to wait in long lines to talk to a teller. Many young people adapted quickly to avoid the hassle the banks created, which left a lot of older folks, and holdouts with old tech cellphones like me, having to wait sometimes 45 minutes to deposit a check.

    I had a red slide phone with a real [small] keyboard and no internet connection until 2021 when AT&T switched to 4G and forced me to “upgrade” to a ‘smart’ phone [like the rest of the known universe did a decade earlier]. I’ve yet to enable an internet connection on my new cellphone, and don’t use location SaaS apps, ever. I navigate using printed maps, or use my memory the second visit to anywhere I’ve been. With my phone offline and not accessing any location services, at least it stops communicating with nearby cell towers so Google and State Farm [car insurance] doesn’t know where I am on the planet (GPS), or how fast I’m driving. They also don’t know whether I’m in my car, or on a plane, through the accelormeter sensor now inside our ‘smart’ phones which detects motion—whether we’re still, walking, biking, driving, flying.

    I used to be among the 2+ billion frequent users of Amazon’s marketplace until every bookstore, hardware store, curio, card and gift shop in my neighborhood closed. And while it’s ‘convenient’ to get things delivered to my front door, not so much when it’s snowing out and UPS won’t deliver to our house on the hill and I need a specific tool to fix my irrigation pipe that froze and busted open. I now drive 12 miles, instead of the 3 it used to be before the local hardware store closed. I’m back to buying my tools directly, in-person, as I do for most everything else I shop for now to support the survival of local businesses.

    Intellectually, I know I am fighting Goliath with a slingshot trying to retain even a modicum of my privacy from the Content Monster we call the ‘cloud.’ Stalking us everywhere we go IRL, and visit online on our devices, to everything we buy, to our marital status and genetic offspring, corporations have created and continue to create—unobstructed by laws or ethics—“massive population indexes that compiles individuals’ medical, financial, educational, criminal and welfare records — even sports club files,” or lack thereof since most Americans don’t exercise. Insta, Google, FB, TicTok, ChatGPT and every other big data SaaS app out there is “sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, religion, politics, sexuality, criminality,” including biological and mental characteristics of behavioral and genetic health.

    Many, in fact most large corps these days are marketing us into buying, and believing (religion, politics, social views and values) by targeting their messaging using the very data we give them with every click on a webpage, swipe on a screen, every text or IM, every form we fill out, every poll we take, questionnaire we answer, and every medical exam or procedure we have now is stored on a cloud, and not just one cloud, but many. Redundancy is key in data storage.

    I feel like the Borg is trying to assimilate me into submission of my privacy for the convenience of becoming part of the hive—i.e. ‘cloud’[ed] mind, I tried to explain to my daughter on the phone this morning. And the convenience [of self-service] turns out to be for the corps, killing customer service, tying us up in phone loops, and making their mistakes our problems to fix while continually charging our credit cards their monthly fee. So much for the convenience of AutoPay.

    Mother, my daughter proclaimed in all seriousness, all our information is already online and in the cloud, or separate clouds that are all connected, or whatever, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. I signed you up for MyChart last night because I want you to get your test results as soon as they’re posted and then share them with me so I can stop worrying, or, at least know what is going on with you. I love you, Mom, and I feel really scared about your biopsy results.

    Heavy sigh. She played the Love card.

    Assimilation is hard to resist when delivered by those you love most.

    I apologized for making her worry, and again felt surprised that my daughter remembered and was concerned about my biopsy. I promised to tell her the test results as soon as I get them, which is likely a lie, unless they’re good. I’ll need to privately process bad results before making her worry even more.

    Regardless of whom I choose to share my biopsy results with, they are mine alone to share, or they should be. The fact is, my insurance company will know if I have cancer before I will. If my doctor prescribes me drugs, Wallgreens will know what kind of cancer before I will by snail mail. Under the Affordable Care Act, my insurance can not charge me more, or exclude coverage for pre-existing conditions, but get another Republican president, and that can change. We’ll go back to leaving diabetics to the disabled uninsured.

    My world growing up was much like my parents. In my day, corporations worked for their customers and clients. With the advent of SaaS and the ‘aide’ of apps, we are now all products of these corporations selling us on using technology with the lie of ‘convenience’ while hording our private information to maximize their profits.

    Nothing to hide? Nazi Germany won’t ever happen here?

    • Trump, and his millions of minions.
    • Fox ‘News.’ Newsmax. Breitbart…etc.
    • Conservative Christians
    • Catholic Supreme Court (8 out of 9 justices)
    • Neo-Nazis
    • White Nationalists/Supremacists/Warriors
    • …etc.