• “DUMB & DUMBER CONTINUE TO PLAY OUT ACROSS AMERICA, compliments of the Age of Woke…driving down public school education, curricula standards, and elimination of minimum graduation requirements, all in the name of promoting so-called Equity and Inclusion… Reported in the psychology journal Intelligence, the greatest decline in average American I.Q. for the first time in nearly 100 years was highest for those age 18 – 22, with findings indicating that ‘either the caliber of education has decreased and/or been a shift in the perceived value of certain cognitive skills’… In saner times, the soft bigotry of low expectation.” [RED STATE – 3/13/23]
  •  GENERATIVE A.I. PROGRAMS ARE NOW THE RAGE, in development by numerous companies around the globe, enabling users to simply input text which causes the program to compile and compose an image which “allows artists to create countless visual concepts at the click of a button… While making the process of fielding potential design ideas exponentially more efficient, and integrating this technology into artists’ tools has the potential to grant them an edge to a breakthrough, accusations of art ‘theft’ surrounds the use of original creative’s works – prominent artists’ styles – without their consent, to ‘train’ the program models… With Microsoft alone making a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment in Open AI (the company behind ChatGPT and Dall-E2), and after an AI-generated piece recently won first place in an art competition, multiple lawsuits are already unfolding against these programs,” so the landscape will get much stickier.  [CORNELL TECH – 2/20/23] 
  •  “ALL THAT THE LIBERAL WAR ON FOSSIL FUELS IS ACCOMPLISHING is the kneecapping of our own domestic energy industry, while the rest of the world consumes more fossil fuel than ever before, now produced by Russia, Iran and OPEC. China’s pollution levels are three times higher and India will soon surpass the U.S. in carbon emissions… Washington politicians have spent some $100 billion over the last twenty years to fight ‘climate change’ by reducing greenhouse gas emissions to achieve absolutely nothing. 20 billions have lined the pockets of left-wing environmental and ‘social justice’ groups, while the wind & solar products of our ‘green energy’ companies now produce about 7% of U.S. energy – the greatest rip-off in U.S. taxpayer history… Biden and his green allies should be arrested for criminal fraud.”  [WASHINGTON EXAMINER – 3/7/23]
  •  THE RADICAL CHANGES WHICH AMERICA IS NOW UNDERGOING ARE MESSY AND TROUBLESOME. But, “the most impactful forces that define periods in history are cyclical, and counterforces will hopefully result in a rejection of many unpopular changes, calling for more conservative policies and priorities in the critical trends of our times.” Principal tensions will involve ten principal forces: (1) energy scarcity or abundance; (2) technological innovation; (3) virtual reality vs human relationships; (4) socialistic government entitlements vs personal responsibility; (5) crime enforcement; (6) racial identity & bias; (7) school choice & curriculum; (8) immigration control; (9) secular vs sacred authority; (10) wokeism vs common sense. “Thriving in these times requires finding ways to tap and capitalize on the ascending forces impacting society.”  [TOWNHALL – 3/12/23]
  •  THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK:

   Watch this: a positively profound and interesting perspective on  Equality vs Equity, Traditional vs Social Justice battle and dilemma in today’s culture war — the abstract vision that people should be judged with objective of redressing their undeserved inequalities versus their skills & commitment.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WYi-64MejU

Despite all government and telecom provider claims for stopgaps, robot-calls continue to increase, especially ‘spoofing’ – altering the identity of callers. Typically, the caller ID shows either a strange name/ imitation of a respected phone number (such as Apple, Microsoft, Spectrum)/ or will show a local number, followed by a brief delay before a live voice starts the pitch, likely coming from a global call center. Especially if phone # area codes are 268, 284, 473, 649, or 876, it’s best to simply ignore the call.  

California ‘Reparations Task Force’ update: While the San Francisco city-appointed committee has recommended giving $5 million to “every black resident” (some $225 billion), the official state Force is now pushing for only $360,000 to black residents “with at least one ancestor who was a slave.” Based on the 2020 U.S. census, this would cover around 1.8 million people – only $640 billion – on top of the currently projected state deficit next year of $22.5 billion. (Science fiction writers couldn’t dream this stuff up.)

Want to reminisce about what ‘life’ was before the internet?  https://youtu.be/o_nb7LlLGzc