Beginning with Technology, Proceeding to Energy & Other issues
Excel or LibreOffice Calc. What the hell programmers developed the inconsistency of the function DATEVALUE so that it gives a serial number for a cell with text but gives an error message with the use of DATEVALUE with the TODAY() function? I have tried various approaches by use of DATE function and others. I always receive an error message. What kind of stupidity are we getting with the programmers today, as opposed to Bill Gates who is my age and no longer has control over these young programmers? At least Bill Gates had smarts.
When Bill Gates was developing DOS, I was learning programming. Programming in APL, FORTRAN, and COBOL. I was working with Unix on a DEC PDP-11, including its assembly language. I had to develop from scratch, using APL, a library retrieval system. I also worked with the military Ada Programming language (based on Pascal?). I did it with great success. Why? Because the programming we learned was about being consistent in the coding or else the “apps” (called programs in those days) did not work.
Today, Microsoft and others have some stupid programmers. As my mother would say, “they don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground.” That was my mom (a Republican by the way, but it matters not the party, but how good you are – and my mom was, overall, a very good person).
There was a day when it was easy to solve similar problems experienced in Microsoft. Read a book about it. Today, the Internet run by monopoly powers is a piece of crap. To a degree, I was involved with the system which is now called the Internet. It was called DARPANet. The Internet was not invented by Al Gore, as FALSELY proclaimed by the stupidity of a George W. Bush.
Bill Gates and I were born the same year. We need people like Bill Gates to come out of retirement and fix the shit at Microsoft these days. For it was Bill Gates who said that he liked libraries because it was less expensive than buying the books. Jeff Bezos is a stupid man with his Amazon books.
Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries. Put that one into your pipe and smoke it. Or are you who reading this too stupid to accept the wisdom of age which comes with this statement? It was a WEALTHY retired elderly woman in Florida who introduced me to this statement. I keep it ever close to me. Thank you Emily Nelson of St. Petersburg. FL, who is likely with the LORD today.
Those were the days when the wealthy actually had concern for the common folk and did not lie to the common folk so as to win elections. Today, DeSantis of Florida tries to ban books from libraries and lies to the people of Florida. He does not know his “ass from a hole in the ground,” as I recall what my Florida snowbird mom would say.
As usual, I began with the stupidity of programmers (appers?) today, got on a roll, and ended up calling for the return of people with brains and not a love of money predominating lives of humans. Another person like this was a person in Palm Beach who descended from the Henry Flagler family. Today, we have the lousy Koch brothers, Trump, and the late Rush Limbaugh. What a joke for America – all of them. I’m on a roll, disappointed that we common folk are being treated like manure and some of the stupid ones keep supporting those who hurl manure at us. We support the SOBs like Putin and a lousy Saudi Arabian leader with their hands slick with oil, rather than do what Bill Gates did when he followed the American dream of “inventing a better mousetrap.” Today, those opportunities have been destroyed by the fat pigs at the top who dictate their slick oil to all of us and think job creation is so much better – so whine and cry about Keystone – and such people rev up the crowds in false ideas.
It’s about jobs AND opportunities, stupid. Saying only JOBS makes the common folk nothing but slaves. Opportunities to help budding entrepreneurs build a better mousetrap, whether with oil AND green technologies – moderation in all things – are practically null and void.
And the same thing with technology and “apping” (programming). No opportunities to build a better mousetrap, as the lousy SOBs controlling Microsoft today invoke a monopoly and force us all to buy THEIR product – re-purchase and re-purchase and re-purchase, despite the fact that we already purchased Microsoft Office, at great cost, when we purchased our desktop and/or laptop.
And monopolies like Best Buy, Verizon, and Spectrum (among others) fall right in line. Reagan deregulated AT&T and made Baby Bells. DEREGULATED so as to stop a monopoly. Instead, all these years later, we have monopolies by virtue of the fact that companies like Spectrum agree to divide the territories they provide the services, between AT&T, Comcast, and other weaker ones (like Frontier in my area).
Reagan was nothing but manure in all of this. He claimed he did not want government interference in business. Evidence shows he DID interfere in business rather than let AT&T with its Unix give us a personal computer with a different model from the IBM model. IBM leaders became lazy and slothful. IBM leaders became vicious at the mainframe competition, making sure anyone who supported the mainframe competition by insisting on competitive models from other corporations was to be fired.
We are heading in the same direction with big fat oil of Texas, Saudi Arabia, and Russia (Putin). Same direction. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When will the common folk of America learn from these historical examples and STOP VOTING FOR FASCIST REPUBLICANS? WHEN? OR DO THEY REMAIN TOO STUPID AND UNWILLING TO LISTEN AND LEARN? Instead, such SOBs tell me if I don’t like what they wish to dictate and impose on all of us, then leave this country. Again. They don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground – quoting my mom.
I can point out the capitalism which we SHOULD HAVE and then it is likely there are those who call me an extremist liberal, socialist or communist.
Learn from me by listening. Supply side economics is more closely related to centralized communist control than to what is CLAIMED to be capitalism.
Capitalism. SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Supply side economics negates the DEMAND. The same thing with communist regimes. They negate the demand so badly that if one knew their history well enough, they would remember that the Soviet Union often had lack of supplies, just as we have today with supply side economics and by removing the government control for the sake of supply AND demand.
But, absolutely. Don’t consider and THINK about what I say, at all. Go ahead.
We are inundated with manure about inflation and all the other things so as to portray Democrats as being bad people. Go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks – as quickly as possible.
Interest rates going up? Well. They are going up. No doubt. Historical evidence must be considered, rather than just striking out at one party or the other.
Blame Democrats now? Go to h-e-double-hockey-sticks.
In the 1950s, my parents obtained a mortgage on a home far less than the $200K+ that home sold for more recently. My parents had a mortgage of about 3%.
From the 1950s to the 1980s and more years with Republicans control than Democrats, the mortgage many of us Baby Boomers were FORCED to pay (we had no choice) was 13%. My FIRST mortgage was 13%.
Even after Reagan took control, the rates went up once again when, in 1982, I had to pull out of the purchase of a nice-sized single family home and settle for a tiny attached villa at a lower cost, so as to afford a 12% mortgage.
Bush won the election in 1988. My family had grown. I moved my family into a single family home. At that time, the mortgage rate was still double digits. This after the Republicans had PROMISED to lower the rates.
And Reagan is so beloved to so many people, including Trump.
Single-digit mortgage interest rates did not occur again until Democrat Clinton won the presidency. You know. The man who balanced the Federal budget by giving more tax breaks to the Middle Class than to the corporate welfare state consisting of fat oligarchic pigs like Trump – the people RUNNING (and RUINING) the Republican Party.
How well did Trump do in balancing the budget by giving tax credits to the oligarchic fat pigs? WHAT? The deficit increased? But to listen to some of these false commercials by Republicans, those damn “liberal” Democrats are to blame for everything. Learn from history and you see something different than bloviated opinions from Fox and other sources, which have no evidence SOB Aussie Rupert Murdock running the show here in America. I know many Aussies much better than Murdock. Oh, that’s right. Aussie Murdock is like Ebeneezer Scrooge, putting love of money before human beings of all kinds.
Look at history. Obama was on a track to REDUCE the Federal deficit. Then Trump came along in 2016, it went back up. Following Bill Clinton, Bush came along and the Federal deficit went up once again. And how many people I know who tried to slam Obama in the 2012 election with Mitt Romney for NOT balancing the Federal budget? Many I heard bloviate on Facebook.
In contrast, had Hillary taken office in 2017, rather than the election stolen by Trump and the Electoral College, I would bet we would have a balanced budget before COVID-19 had hit. But due to Trump stealing the election in 2016, we will never know, will we?
What do I mean? Historical evidence once again. We no longer have the FS&Ls because they were destroyed by the vengeful attitudes towards FDR by Bush and Republicans. Instead, we have credit card interest rates.
We don’t have double digits for mortgages or other long-term loans. But has anyone taken the time to examine their credit card interest rates? Double digits of 20% or more. And some stupid idiots who don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground complain about the rise of interest rates in other areas. They blame it all on Biden and the Democrats.
How about putting the blame on Reagan, Bush, and the Republicans who controlled this nation more years than the Democrats have? How about putting the blame on nearly eight years of Tricky Dick Nixon with his CREEP thugs?
And to earn, rather than steal money, those of us who had to deal with higher interest rates when we purchased our homes. Somehow we survived. But I note some of the whiners who own huge pieces of property here in this area, were able to do so because interest rates were lower when they purchased their first property. They have no appreciation for what Democrat Bill Clinton to bring down interest rates and balance the Federal budget. Rather than whining about Democrats, such bastards need to shut up and give appreciation for what they attained as a result of those low single-digit interest rates which I did not have. Such people as that need to be told that if they don’t like what is happening, they need to leave this nation, rather than ignoring what they face with things like donut holes in Medicare which is now adversely impacting Baby Boomers – the ones who were once faced with high mortgage interest rates and we survived. I wish I could own 183 acres of land, as described by the SOB who described such and ignored my talk about what I face with Medicare. No. He probably thinks we should do as Trump wants to do – eliminate Obamacare and Medicare.
Let me do some number crunching. 49 years contributing a “tax” for Medicare. That is about 588 months over (guestimate) of 49 years. Taking a guestimate of a possible average of $100 per month, the figure I spent over time for Medicare is about $59K. A margin of error here, no doubt. Take and add an interest rate on that amount and what do we have, over 49 years? Because it was a tax, people like Rick the Prick Scott, in the U.S. Senate, could steal from this POOLED LOWER RISK fund and then plead the 5th for STEALING OUR MONEY. Perhaps if that POOLED LOW RISK INVESTMENT in healthcare was NOT a tax, but a capitalist INVESTMENT, it could be protected? But otherwise, it became and easy fund to steal from, perhaps use the money to balance budgets in other areas? And it is likely this was done by BOTH political parties, too.
Individual health savings accounts (like individual retirement accounts and the lousy freaking 401(K) or 403(B), are more vulnerable because to this kind of robbery than a pooled resource which is invested by people beholden to others. A pooled investment with TEETH of ethics to control access.
Would the interest I SHOULD have earned on Medicare be enough to help fund the damn donut holes and other things imposed by Bush Republicans and the Medicare system? But. When I try to mention THIS part, a Republican shoots me down. Why? Because he/she knows I am correct and does not wish to hear it. Cowards with a vengeance are very dangerous, especially when considering my own investments.
I witnessed this happening, too, with an iron-fisted wealthy tea-totaler here in my hometown. I hope those days are gone. I wonder how many stupid idiots want to see it return?
We don’t go backwards in life, but learn from the past and move forward for the sake of peace and justice for all. We want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – for ALL, not just those who wish to impose THEIR happiness upon the rest of us, telling us this is how we can be happy.
Such an attitude would include the hope we have trust busters like Teddy Roosevelt and the Progressive Moose Party. Such an attitude would be about taking the blinders off. Blinders. Make people think only inside the box, not consider being lifelong learners who can gain wisdom and learn from the past, not re-live the past. Outside the blinders that the only thing we common folk become are slaves of a system and letting others create the jobs for us. Thus this limits brains to ONLY considering the impact on jobs so as to maintain the status quo imposed by job, job, job — Keystone or offshore drilling or other status quo fossil ideas. Thus, never considering the possibility for OPPORTUNITIES to develop for the future. We knock down China for doing that, but refuse to do it in this nation by clinging to lousy fossil fuels only.
There are methods for creating opportunities and not just job creation. For instance. “Incubating entrepreneurs in methods of simulators of business. We teach our Air Force people how to fly planes in war by using simulators. Why not apply simulator technology to other training in America? Instead, the auto companies rely on robots to REPLACE workers, not develop human beings. If the fat fossil pigs have their way, does one think they will put human beings back to work in coal mines? Not on your life. It will be robotic technology.
Providing simulators to train tool and die makers and other vocations are also used – to train human beings.
In sports, we have the option of using video technology to watch avatars play football. Much cheaper than what NFL players are paid. Yet, we use robots to replace labor which costs far less than NFL players, plus the lousy freaking gambling which goes along with NFL games these days. Disgusting and it does not bring happiness to my life. (What DOES make me happy are being removed).
Simulators. There are possibilities for using simulators to develop working models for electric vehicles and bringing the cost and time of charging such vehicles down, while making the environment better for us all. Instead, we get those who work with the fossil pigs to sabotage such development, proclaiming the “loss of jobs at Keystone.” There are possibilities for creating opportunities for those who can build a “better mousetrap” and in the process, CREATE JOBS.
Simulators. I once knew a professor who ended up divorcing his wife as he never got any sleep by trying to develop the Second Life app for his classroom instruction. The wife evidently thought he was playing around with other women. Second Life is great as a simulator, but it takes huge amounts of time to develop it for a classroom. I attempted to link up with others involved in the development of simulators – in big corporations – and I failed. It would have been nice to have a product which was plug and play and able to be applied in the classroom In this way, my Music Appreciation classes could actually work with a simulation of the music which Gregorian monks used. They could work with simulations of music of the Renaissance, during the actual days of the Renaissance. It went no where and I had none of the time or resources to do it myself. I needed a “little help from my friends… a little help from my friends… a little help from my fre—-nds.” I did not get it.
Simulators are not the end-all, as the lousy freaking ones who defend fossil fuels do – the end-all, the end-all – and you better go along with the groupthink which favors fossil fuels and fossil pigs with money.
I have mentioned opportunities for developing entrepreneurs with the creativity to build a business with a better mousetrap. Incubating entrepreneurs was a practice we saw at the community colleges in Florida. Do not know how much they were accepted and apparently died out(?).
Incubating entrepreneurs. Internships. Simulators. Plus more.
Instead, I only hear the mouths of bloviating idiots with no appreciation for the legacy they have which has given them what they have, trying to protect fossil fuels which are eventually going to dry up. Fossil fuels need to be put in reserve like a savings account. But no. Bloviate your freaking lousy stick in the mud ideas about fossil fuels and jobs and don’t listen to progressives like me.
Alas, we don’t even have long-term money savings accounts anymore because the banks and their love of money moves us to being like Ebeneezer Scrooges. We think we are doing a wonderful job by pushing the happiness of Christmas for some four months of the year. It is a happiness of Christmas only for the wealth fat pigs with a love of money like Scrooge. We think we are doing a wonderful job in watching the story about Scrooge, but never applying the ending in our own lives, especially after the Christmas season ends.
This attitude is stupid and asinine. Beyond that, this attitude will ruin the USA, while giving power to the ones like Putin who are lousy barbaric individuals, as bad as the Roman Emperors who threw the Christians to the lions. This attitude is stupid, insane, and asinine because it is anti-humanitarian. It benefits only about 1% of the population when we could be better at dispelling evil if 99% of the population had benefit from such actions.
And “just you wait, ‘enry ‘iggins… just you wait…” Now, because I say these things, someone out there will think it is humorous to send me Trump email messages for which I DO NOT SUBSCRIBE and I have to spend my time “unsubscribing” to messages I did not ask to receive.
If there is someone out there doing this, they need to reveal themselves rather than hiding, like a sniper and a coward, behind the “walls” of the Internet.
Same thing with the Nancy Pelosi messages and others from Democrats which are moved into my email spam. Thus, ruining the access to my email which I have had for almost 20 years now. Google allows this to continue, along with other travesties in support of Fox, Murdock, and Trump. Increasing my time and resources so as to get elected on the platform of one thing: Putin, Saudi Arabian (and their thugs in the USA – Baptist Americans who are NOT American Baptists), and Trump.
This is a very lengthy message. I don’t apologize for it. Help me stop the lousy email messages I have been receiving (degraded spam filter, too), plus other derogatory happiness-removing manure, and I will stop putting messages similar to this one on Facebook.
With a little help from my friends. If not friends, who needs enemies like this?
“I just wanna live while I’m alive.” (Bon Jovi).
🤓😇😍😇😁😬🎅😀😇🖖🖖🖖
Sadness Rates in the World (and America)
Inbox
Dear Editors:
I have read David Brooks columns for many years. I have listened to David Brooks commentary Friday evenings on PBS. Many times I see eye to eye with Brooks’s somewhat more conservative ideas. Many times I don’t see eye to eye with Brooks. That is what America is about. Considering commentary (sometimes opinion, too), learning and gaining wisdom, and synthesizing into our own thoughts.
There is no way we can always see eye to eye with a person 100% of the time. Whether that person is our spouse or just a friend or acquaintance, we can never be in agreement 100% of the time. That is the way things should be, but they are not, as fascist Republicans use scare tactics to mesmerize the minds with opioid treatment.
With this being said (and extending my message with more words), I now must comment about the commentary, with facts, presented by Mr. Brooks on 2 Nov. 2022. His facts are about a “grim tide of sadness” in the world. He uses facts to demonstrate that the lower portion of society are in the lower sector of society who have seen an increase in sadness. At the same time, those in the upper classes (I shall call the oligarchy) have seen an increase in happiness. In other words, at the expense of the lower classes of people, the upper classes are happier. The lower classes are not as happy. Facts presented as part of his opinion-editorial (op-ed), but I see it more as a commentary with facts, not an opinion. (The media has caused the problems we have by calling these op-eds).
Mr. Brooks discusses such facts from various Asian nations. Communist China is one such nation. The oligarchy in a presumed communist nation (which should NOT have an oligarchy) have experienced this ordeal and an increased wealth among those at the top has been revealed.
This sounds like what has been happening in a presumed capitalist nation like the USA. Reaganomics and supply-side economics, in my humble opinion (I can provide facts, too), are at fault for this happening in the USA. A twisted idea of what capitalism truly is, as we think of capitalism as “supply-side economics,” while Adam Smith (18th Century contemporary to our Founding Fathers) defined capitalism as something to challenge the oligarchy of supposed divine-rights kings and feudal landlord nobles and barons with the idea of SUPPLY AND DEMAND. Balance and not individualism at the top. In this practice, only government can regulate the balance between supply and demand. Reagan claimed “government” is a problem, due to such regulation.
Another side to what Mr. Brooks says harks back to my days of learning from a Christian pastor who embraced the ideas of Deist Thomas Jefferson, that ideas from the Hebrew scriptures regarding creationism do not have to be examples of rejection of evolution and survival of the fittest (Darwinism and atheism). This pastor pointed out that the men who wrote those Hebrew scriptures were merely attempting to come to grips with what God was about in the universe. That seven days in the lives of men could be millions of years in the eyes of God. We cannot be certain about God because human beings did not have the knowledge of God.
Another aspect I learned from this Christian pastor had to do with Darwinism and atheism. This pastor represented survival of the fittest as meaning our human species having dominion over animals, but that Jesus Christ came as the WORD OF GOD (John 1:1) to help dispel such ideas by centering on a love of one another, all human beings.
This means that survival of the fittest is not between “chosen people,” as Israelis contend, or between white and black people, or between Latinx and others, or between straight or gay, or between men and women. It is not a matter of surviving by having control of one human species over another. Rather it is about all human beings having love for one another and working in community, not as selfish and greedy individuals who berate their fellow human beings.
Examples. White supremacists think they are better than black folk. I have heard this crap expressed against former President Obama. On the other hand, black folk who proclaim the election of Obama as being a “first.” White supremacists who have invoked lynch mobs during the era of Jim Crow. They only accept black folks unless they follow the marching orders of white folk (i.e., Thomas or Walker). The males reject females when someone like my mother runs in a Republican primary for a political office and many males say, “they don’t want her to be town supervisor because she is a woman.” The black man who thinks we need to get rid of abortions, for the sake of black folk and no consideration of the entire human race and particular situations where the mother might lose her life (the fetus is more important than the mother, so both must die?) or there is rape or incest involved. In all of these examples, people have thick skulls and don’t allow the elevator to go all the way to the top.
Thus, we get supply-side economics and the development of only the “me, me, me” individualist greedy attitudes which Mr. Brooks addresses in his own way. We are living with the lack of love for one another and no care or consideration for one another, due to individualist “survival of the fittest” attitudes. We don’t think about providing opportunities for all people and many times it’s more about providing handouts instead, although that, too, is objectionable to white supremacists and others.
America HAS been the shining light, compared to Communist China and other sections in the world. For the sake of “survival of the fittest” of the Chinese people, CBS Sixty Minutes report this past Sunday pointed out that the Communist Chinese version of Tik Tok is very controlled so as to EDUCATE their own people. But for the rest of the world, they put it out there in an “anything goes” fashion. It helps the Chinese survive while helping to destroy the education and learning capacities of our Western civilization. The Chinese embrace what Western classical music can do for the brains of people, while our Western people, stupidly, reject it and demonstrate their stupidity and lack of a brain, in the process.
The net result since the Reagan and the birth of supply-side economics, has been several developments in America. (1) we want opinions, not facts; (2) we have big fat pig newspaper publishers who reject good journalism, local investigative reporting, local information and commentary, and do everything by sensationalism; we then wonder why “nobody reads newspapers;” (3) Ronald Reagan, Jr., who identifies himself as being an atheist and one has to wonder whether he supports “survival of the fittest” as being between those in the human species, not between humans and animal species – anything goes, but stop two consenting adults from doing what they wish to do; (4) defense of greed, narcissism, love of money, and lack of caring for one another, due to “survival of the fittest;” (5) love of gladiator-type games and being mesmerized by blood and guts and guns splashed on television screens.
In the 1950s, the character, Perry Mason said just the opposite of what publishers say about newspaper journalism and the facts. Perry Mason: “I don’t want opinions, I want the evidence.”
In the 1980s, the character, J.B. Fletcher said, “I have a theory [not a conspiracy theory] but I need the evidence and facts. All opposite of what is being said today throughout our society when invoking greed and narcissism and validating it with “survival of the fittest.” Then the far left liberals wish to spend all our time protecting the animals with which humans have dominion. That is fine to have such opposition when humans massacre animals for the sake of greed and selfishness. But to protect us from losing our own food stocks, such actions by the far left push the envelope too far. Example.
Killing predators of deer and domestic livestock, we kill off the coyote. Then the deer populate to such a point that they become a nuisance for drivers and for those who maintain gardens for the sake of human needs for consumption. When, in actuality, When in actuality, the “survival” factor could be to have donkeys protect the livestock because they are able to stomp on any coyote which come close to the livestock. Nature working together for the sake of “survival of the fittest” among animal species, but to consider that God does not intend “an eye for an eye” among the human species because Jesus Christ said something contrary to “an eye for an eye….”
Sad to hear the sadness rate increases for “lower class” humans. This should be stopped. An attitude adjustment contrary to survival of the fittest among the human species needs to occur. Balance can be accomplished by regulation of business so as to eliminate the creation of monopolies with the use of supply-side economics. Mr. Brooks only presented the facts, but really did not identify solutions. Thus, I refer to Mr. Brooks and his facts, but also present ideas for solutions, too.
My writing is not a letter to the editor because it is too lengthy. My writing is not an op-ed because it is a commentary with solutions. Really. It is not too lengthy to be an op-ed or a commentary. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for the facts included in your commentary.
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Commentary, Economics, Regulated Capitalism, Commerce, Education, fascism
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