Cybermess
Due to the intolerable bulk of spam pouring out of the Book Funnel, the entire Book Funnel archive has been deleted. If you are a Book Funnel writer, I'm sorry. Don't use automated spamming services to market your self-published book. They are so annoying as to do more harm than good. "Newsletters" should be hand-typed, and the ones people look forward to reading and collecting come out every month, or every two or three months.
Economics, Political
Can Republicans win on the slogan "Make America Affordable Again"? I'm sure they can--if they actually do it. That means deflation, to the point where pennies come back because things can actually be bought with pennies. It means giving poor people business licenses instead of handouts. It means that if a corporation continues to outsource work as long as there's an unemployed American, the government actively supports, to the point of even building, different companies that supply the same things. It means that we as a nation, from the 18-year-old renting her first furnished room all the way up to the White House, stop supporting third-party interference in business transactions: everybody pays cash, and nobody makes a profit by selling insurance. It means that making our own clothes and raising our own food becomes not even a trend, but a point of honor, because the Waste Age is over and if your "best" outfit is one you made for yourself fifty years ago, and have worn on special occasions ever since, you rule.
I don't believe Donald Trump has a clue about how much we need to recover in the aftermath of the Waste Age. But he can learn. Unlike Joe Biden at the same age, he is still responding to new information--slowly, perhaps, but competently. We can have a reality-based economy again. Though that will probably put an end to the Internet.
Energy
We need a law: New data collection centers must be 100% self-powered on site, and must not be allowed to overburden the electrical grid.
Gift Ideas, Worst
Chinese toys with Plagiarized Intelligence that helps them tell wee tots where to find matches and how to sharpen knives?
Health News
Even for a rich celebrity patient...this is disgusting. If a patient is constipated, every nurse aide used to learn, and the patient might fall if allowed to go to the bathroom alone but feels unable to use the toilet while watched, you help the patient sit on the toilet, make sure clothing is out of the way, pull the walker frame up around the patient's legs if there's a concern about the patient fainting while sitting on the toilet, and go out to stand outside the door. Duh. If the patient has to sit on the toilet for half an hour and meditate, then you stand there for half an hour. If the patient is too weak to sit up, which seems inapplicable to a patient who is sitting up and vlogging, you bring in a bedpan. There is no excuse for a patient feeling unable to use the toilet in peace and privacy.
And if the patient feels that way, there is every excuse in the world for the patient's relatives to come in. Bleep kind of nurses are youall leaving your relative to depend on? Stay there and crack the whip, or the knotted towel, over them! Of course they're overworked--that's the industrial model in effect. So you take your relative to the bathroom! You bring your relative water, towels, clean sheets!
I hate to say it, but when nurses really are overworked and feel that they can only move so fast to do so much, the patients who get decent care are the ones who can afford to bring in private nurses. Any family member with even an expired NA certificate will do. The private nurse should be extremely polite and deferential to the hospital staff, because per presence is already gravelling their souls. "We can do the bath, Nurse! I know you have such a lot to do! We're soooo grateful for your work!" This should not, logically, lash and spur the nurses to greater efforts--it should give them time to sit down and catch their breath--but it works on them like a whip on a race horse.
Meanwhile, stalling for time while Trump panders to the chemical corporations, Secretary Kennedy wastes time and energy with blather about "processed foods." People can't be healthier by eating more "natural" foods until the suppliers stop poisoning the "natural" foods! Harangues about people's food choices can only do more harm than good as long as the "healthy" food is actually toxic. I know this firsthand from all the information I got about the benefits of eating good plain whole wheat, which neglected to mention that some people, like me, are not built to digest wheat. It'll be the same thing for anyone trying to sell TV watchers on the benefits of preparing and consuming all that raw natural food along the walls in the supermarket. Food-nannying will only destroy the credibility of the nannies. Even with the lower glyphosate content we're seeing today, the raw natural food along the walls is still likely to make people sicker than the processed food in the middle of the supermarket. Not only with Vitamin C shock, either, and nobody is actually allergic to the peas! First things first! When apples and spinach are not more immediately toxic than candy and chips, a few more people might, possibly, choose apples and spinach as snacks. I miss them, myself...but I know that, for health reasons, I have to stick to M&Ms and Fritos. There may not be a lot of vitamins in Fritos but Fritos have never made me sick for nine days.
Meanwhile, Senator Warner wants to salvage Obamacare. Meh. This web site did not originally intend to favor one of our Congressmen over the others. We reran e-mails from Senators Kaine and Warner along with those from Congressman Griffith. Format had a lot to do with that. I can't just pop in a link to Congressman Griffith's E-Newsletters. But I can just pop in a link to Senator Warner's new Substack, which all Virginians are encouraged to follow.
In addition to news on the medical care issue, the Senator also discusses boat strikes. If Americans watch the video for themselves and decide whether our military forces acted legally...I think I'll recuse myself. I've not read enough maritime law (I don't think I've ever read any maritime law) to know whether they were acting legally.
History
Vince Staten shares vintage black-and-white photos from Kingsport's archives:
Holidays
Hanukkah reminds us that light, literal or symbolic, banishes darkness. Relatively few have inherited the right to set up a menorah. All of humankind can celebrate the concept.
Psychology
Do you take naps? What does that say about you? Golly, this description sounds vague, but so cool! Shouldn't everybody take naps?!
Well, no. Actually, everybody should beware of vague but very cool psychological descriptions of a person who answers one or a few questions on a web site.
That said, it's better to take a nap intentionally, at home, than to succumb to sleep needs at work or on the road.
Theology and Feminism
No link for the badly thought and badly written article about the radical priest who wants to stage Nativitiy scenes with girl babies as Jesus, but some thoughts...
Can a girl infant be put in the manger in a Nativity scene? Of course. To be sure about the gender of an infant you have to undress it. Baby Jesus is not traditionally undressed in a Nativity scene; He is "swaddled" so that even His hands and feet are covered, so who's to know or care whether the baby in the manger is a boy or a girl. Everyone knows it's not Jesus and, for practical reasons, it's usually a doll.
Could Jesus have incarnated as a woman? With God all things are possible. God is not bound to a body with a gender, or even a number, and might for all we know have chosen to incarnate in a swarm of bees, but in our world Jesus did have to be male, because all the prophecies about Him specified that He'd be male. The only possible meaning for "seed of a woman," which was foretold in Genesis, is a male descendant.
Why do male Christians cling to antiquated, and not biblically supported, male-supremacist notions when they've been told that "In Christ there is neither male nor female"? Because biology and sociology no longer support the autonomous existence of men. The "husbandry" of our own species could be practiced in the same way the 'husbandry" of cows and horses is. We could easily evolve an all-female social culture. Men who want to participate in society must cling to the idea that a Creator who has some manly and fatherly aspects created men who, in some terribly imperfect way, reflect that Creator, and have individual worth, and, if they don't deserve, at least can contribute something to a society that lets them mingle freely with other human beings. That idea can even be believed...so long as men humble themselves, crucify their own wills, and devote their lives to being more like Jesus than they are like most of the men who have been mentioned in the news lately.
Weather
New Jersey is not exactly known for its mild winters. If you know people in New Jersey, you might want to invite them to visit you now. Limiting the time when propane trucks can be on the highways is probably a valid safety-based regulation and should limit New Jersey residents' access to propane for only a few hours. (This web site can tell what should be from what is.) The whole episode does, however, highlight the need for large as well as small energy consumers to be independent of "the grid."
Meanwhile Washington state is having floods. Looks as if the people got out in time, but if you search you'll see videos of river water sloshing around the second storeys of buildings.
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