Meaning of Ruminate

 It's an odd word.  I saw it used in a Twitter explanation.

Basically, you'd use it to say that you've been heavily thinking or calculating about something....usually over an extended or prolonged period, and it suggests that you can't come to a happy solution.  

How you'd use it?  You would say: I spent the entire afternoon....trying to ruminate about the problem.  

A new term?  No.....the word people suggest this goes back to 1533, where some guy needed to explain something....and he likely pulled this word out of thin air to get the problem across to his associate.

The general problem here with ruminate....in most problems, you can throw the mess on a white-board, and in three minutes....draw some kind of conclusion or end-point, with a rational list of solutions.  

The minute you insert a money limit, a manhour issue, a potential failure ending, or a benefit-gained scenario....then you enter the world of ruminate.  That five-minute pause to think will twist and turn into an hour or two.  

To be honest, if you polled folks....a majority of people have never entered the stage of ruminate, and probably have never wasted more than 15 minutes in their life over thinking about a problem.  

Why Do 'BIG' Stories Get Released On A Friday Afternoon?

 Well....because they get turbo-charged up as a topic for Sunday political talk shows, and by Monday....it's value is zero, so it disappears.

Maybe it wasn't this way in the 1970s or 1980s....but with cable and news networks now....it's the way things have developed.  

Is it even worth viewing?  I would suggest that half the material for the various Sunday talk shows....have reached such a marginal level....that you are mostly amused more than you are seriously curious.  

A  prediction: within three months, if someone in your 'circle' brings up Trump's tax returns....at least half the people in the 'circle' will say they are still waiting on Trump's returns to be released.....having not realized it was done already.  

Ten Things You Tend To Notice These Days

 1.  Just an awful lot of people who can't cope or handle any stress or problems in their lives.  It's like we opened up a gate and 10-percent of society is 'breed' to behave like 6-year old kids....even when they are thirty to forty years old. 

2.   As much as we used to be a hefty-drinking society (to the extreme)....we now seem to be a more sedated or medicated society....to the extreme.

3.  We are forever discussing 'who failed who', in that schools failed kids, parents failed on responsibilities, bosses failed on keeping a business afloat, kids failed to grasp realities, TV executives failed viewers, so-and-so actor failed such-and-such series, wife failed husband, husband failed wife, etc.

4. If you asked writers to create a freaky movie about an asylum closing down and the crazies allowed out to terrorize society (like some Batman movie)....the reality is that we'd describe present day America....except without Batman.

5.  Mob rule is more prevalent now....than at any point in the past fifty years.

6.  We've reached a point where you can confess and admit your veganism....over and over, while munching on a burger or eating a steak.  It's just plain OK to be in a bizarro world where nothing can make sense.   As long as you say it.....it's true (even if it's 100-percent false).

7.  A whole society of people in their 70s....probably can remember the test episodes in high school on nouns, pronouns, adjectives, etc....where they asking why the hell any of this was important to remember.  Today, by the time you turn four.....you need to have some vast knowledge level of pronouns.  

8.  Capitalism brought you a million-odd advantages in life....from whiskey and diet-beer.....to Game of Thrones and gender surgical stuff.

9.  There's just not that much compassion for out-of-work politicians.  

10.  There's just not a day that passes that 'Elon' doesn't come up in news hype.  It's like he's become some Jesus-cult figure, Tom Brady, and Batman all rolled up into one.  

The Buffalo 'Storm' Action

 I've followed a good bit of the Buffalo winter storm story.  

It's a curious piece to me.  

People act like this was a mega event, and beyond one's imagination.  

Back in the 1990s, I worked with a guy who grew up just outside of Buffalo, and he could sit for ten minutes each week....describing winter storm action in the 1970s/1980s.  

His stories would be the stuff that Hemmingway or Steinbeck would write.  Intense....dramatic....'threat of death', and so on.  

So I'm kinda wondering....did Buffalo just simmer for the past two decades with marginal winters and people get dopey?  

Something is not right about the dramatic angle that the news folks portrayed the situation, and you are left to believe they went through a long era of 'light' winters.  

Ten Rules of Advice for 2023

 1.  Stop trying to reason with unreasonable people....unless they are buying the drinks.

2.  Anything that Aristotle ever suggested (from 2,000 years ago).....bank on it, and live your life by his 'code'.

3.  If someone seems mentally deranged....keep a good six foot distance.

4.  If people appear in a cult-like state of mind.....then they aren't sane enough to sit on your porch and sip your tea or whisky.  Send them home.

5.  If you reach a point where you think censorship is a good thing.....you might want to find some Jesus-like person to trust.  

6.  If someone comes up to you with a problem, but their statement adds a extra-layer....suggesting they don't want to really fix the problem (they just want to retain/hold it)....maybe you should change the topic of discussion to favorite Beatles tunes, the strategy of poker, or best episodes of Star Trek.

7.  Maintain a balance on 'free' stuff.....other than a handshake, a wink, or a bit of advice....nothing is really free.

8.  In a normal day, you will likely bump into 200 'experts'.  You might want to evaluate things and regard 90-percent as marginal experts, or fake experts.

9.  You need to get used to 'failing-up'.  It means people hired up a marginally educated or capable person.....knowing they were ill-qualified for the job, but the system requires management to hire such people.  Fail-uppers will eventually reach CEO status, and even become President of the United States (this may have already happened).

10.  You don't always need a plan, but in 99-percent of cases....it helps to have 'something'.  

Eight Things I'm Confused About

 1.  If it seems logical that 8-year old kids can be taken into a drag-show.....shouldn't the same logic dictate that a 12-year boy could be sitting in a topless dancer show, and sipping a beer?

2.  Once you explain the XX and XY chromosome 'thing', and that you can't flip/change your 'X's'.....how can any further discussion occur with genders?

3.  Isn't all this gender-talk really a long talk about fetishes?

4.  At the rate that SBF spent crypto 'profits' from his fake-pretender crypto currency....how did he really expect it to survive on?

5.  All this Trump tax stuff....revolves around the idea that he paid a low sum of taxation in some years, and the IRS folks don't seem hyped-up to get into this situation.   Something doesn't make sense....unless his accountant went by the rules and the tax code is fu*ked-up.  Would you really want to admit 80,000 of crappy tax code?

6.  Everyday, Russia loses another dozen-odd tanks and probably around 200 men dead (maybe 20-odd guys who just surrendered and gave-up).  Where's the logic of continuing?

7.  When someone says they 'identify'.....I get confused and start thinking they are in some imaginary state of mind (LSD or something), and that I probably need to find the exit of the room.

8.  I always thought the border....meant THE BORDER.  

Ten Things I Expect in 2023

1.  In the remarkable way that TRANS took off....I expect someone to market trans-stupidity with a pill.  Basically, people will be convinced that smartness and intellectualism ought to be avoided....so a drug is staged to lessen your intelligence level by 25-percent.  

This gimmick will be 'sold' to the public with the belief that regular people are stupid, and you should improve yourself in 'status' by getting more stupid.

News journalists will cover the phenonium and go undercover....getting stupid and demonstrating the transformation.   

2.  Over 3,000 brawls will be reported at Waffle House operations in 2023.  Cops will suggest that between drugs and alcohol, the bulk were triggered. 

3.  Some state authorities will determine that gov't officials signed off unaccompanied trips of kids (under age 18) from state to state.  Charges will be drawn, and actual federal officials will face state jail-time.  

4.  Fake 'drag' shows will start to occur, where women are dressed as men and do stupid things that real guys do....when drunk or on drugs.  

5.  More than 100,000 whites will self-identify as black in 2023.  It'll reach the level that some adapt and change their first name to Duante or Latoya.  

6.  At least one state will criminalize 'political misinformation' in 2023.  You will be unable to reach any level of understanding in this state....until the Supreme Court throws out the act.

7.  A new fake wokeness will arrive....with people proclaiming they want to find a 'balance' between light and dark.  People will spend hours huddled together in groups...discussing 'balance' to some endless extreme.  It'll be referred to as the cult of 'balancists'. 

No one will be able to explain the rational difference between light and darkness....other than people sitting in a room, where the light is continually clicked on and off.  Seminars will be held (at $250 lecture hall situations) where some geeky gal talks about avoiding the darkness, and consuming the light.  

Anti-balancists will soon arrive....claiming that darkness is better than light.

8.  People will begin to realize that they accidentally pronounce 'election' as 'erection' nine times out of ten, and kids start to think politics is mostly about sex.

9.  A shortage of beef will come to exist in the US in 2023....triggering grocery shelves to be empty.  No rational reason can be provided other than trucking/logistical issues.

10.  A test will be accomplished with college students...determining that current graduates are at the 50-percent level of knowledge/competence....as a 1995 graduate.  Colleges will be unable to explain how this developed, or how to repair the problem.