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Burying The Lede And ….Awww!!! Is Anything On The Web Real?

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As part of an innovative regional protection program, AAA is providing a limited number of Premier Roadside Assistance Collections to residents in your area.

Since last May, my life has pretty much revolved around my bladder cancer. Actually, it is more accurate to say that since last August, after two relatively painless surgeries, my physical life has pretty much revolved around the cure for my bladder cancer, not the cancer itself.

My body is still reacting – overreacting in my humble opinion -to past BCG-TICE treatments. In a way that seems almost random, the pain moves around. Yesterday, my shoulder was stiff, and the pain slowly moved up my neck to give me a headache. Today, my right hand is sore and weak. The pain, where and how much, has taken over my life. It seems to always be there.

A side effect of this is that I spend hours scrolling on my computer, waiting for my hands and arms to hurt less so I can pay more attention to something else, anything else. Gemini tells me that this scrolling aimlessly even has a name, Zombie Scrolling Syndrome: This term was coined to describe the effects of cell phone addiction, specifically “mindless scrolling out of habit, with no real destination or benefit.”

All the above is true, but it was written three days ago. Over the weekend, after being off BCG-TICE for three weeks, everything is calming down (relatively speaking, my shoulders and neck still hurt). More importantly, my doctor thinks I am cancer-free. I know I should scream, I”M CANCER-FREE, but it seems too early for that. My next cancer checkup is in three months, and then, maybe, I’ll start yelling.

In the meantime, all that scrolling has changed my opinion of the internet. It no longer seems like the repository of all the world’s information. I have learned that my web portal, and probably everybody’s portal, is stuffed with scams and misinformation.

About three weeks ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I got an email saying I would be getting a gift. All I had to do was go to the AAA website. Well, it wasn’t actually the website; the website was something like AAA.gift, and Google told me that it was a possible scam and to stay away (in slightly more time than it took Michele to yell from across the room, “Don’t go there,” after I commented on our gift).

The next day, I got another email from – allegedly – AAA with the same offer. Since then, I’ve been getting essentially the same offer – allegedly, again – from a variety of companies, many of which I have no relationship with. Today, I got basically the same email that started with Hello valued Tractor Supply member (what are the chances of getting a hit on that in Coastal California?).

Way before I was sent that probable scam, over in YouTube land, I saw a video – my feed is very heavy in cat videos – that showed a hero cat. It sure looked real to me then, and it still does.

Recently, I saw this cute interaction. Although I’ve never had a cat like this, and I’ve had seven, it seems real

Then I saw this.

Then I saw this with the bear sort of running through the fence at the end.

This short clip, clearly marked “AI”, seemed very real.

Now, looking at the first video, I’m far from sure it’s real. First, it starts with a shot of the dog from the other side of the car. How did that happen?

Now I think that trusting the web is a little like trusting a random stranger. They may be telling the truth, but don’t bet on it.

An Interlude

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Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.– Franz Kafka

We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. George Bernard Shaw

I turned Eighty-Five in June of 2025 CE, and it was my roughest birthday yet. For years, I’ve thought of myself as a much younger person than my actual age. If I had a physical problem – and I’ve had a lot of physical problems – I sort of thought about it as something that could be fixed, a repair like a leaking radiator on a car. Fix the leak and zoom away. Even then, when I really think about it, I knew I was getting old, but not really…old.

A couple of months before my birthday, I fell on a wet flight of stairs, breaking a little bone in my hand, from which my hand is still numb. At about the same time as my birthday, I had my first of two cancer surgeries, two cataract surgeries, which made it difficult to read, and a major problem with my jaw that is probably arthritis related. All this over a background of arthritis that is getting worse. It is not the first time that I’ve felt old, but the first time I’ve felt chronically old. I feel like I’ve become obsessed with ageing and its associated degradation of my body and mind.

To add to that, I lost, left really, my phone in a cab in Paris, and it is now tied up in French Customs. I don’t consider myself a big phone user, but I really miss it. Then our house phone battery failed, so I felt completely isolated. I thought I did, that is, until my computer’s hard drive started freezing and I lost my email connection.

I probably will not find out if I’m cancer-free for a while, and even if I am now cancer-free, I will have six weeks of chemotherapy to be sure. On the plus side, I passed my driver’s vision test, and I can now read the New Yorker’s cartoons without glasses. We have a new house phone with the same number but no saved numbers of other people. I now have a new 2-TWO-terabyte hard drive, which is pitched as being faster and more reliable than my old drive.

Meanwhile, back in Paris, we went to a David Hockney show in a museum designed by Frank Gehry.

The Fighting Oligarchy Tour

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A lot of people were ready for this years ago, but it kept getting swept under the rug. More people are listening now than ever before. Rebecca Katz, a Democratic strategist,

I heard that someone was flying a plane with a banner that said This is Trump country… It sure don’t look like it today. I don’t think this is Trump country. This is our country. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez just before her speech in Folsom, California.

I’m gonna be honest: I did not have Bernie Sanders introducing Clairo at Coachella on my 2025 bingo card. Lexi Williams in msn which – according to itself – is a A general-purpose Web portal from Microsoft that includes news, sports and entertainment as well as the Bing search engine.

Out in the West – and more in the red Republican West of Idaho and Bakersfield than the blue West of the Coast – something is happening that I have never seen in my lifetime: two politicians, neither of whom is currently running for office, are drawing huge crowds on a protest tour. The tour is called “Fighting Oligarchy” and, not surprisingly to me, given the name, one of the politicians is Senator Bernie Sanders. Still, I am somewhat surprised that Bernie is not alone; Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is also on the ticket.

Bernie – as he is known to his followers, if followers is the right word – is 83 and clearly will not run again, but AOC as she is known to her followers, is looking at a higher office and just as clearly as Bernie isn’t running, I’m sure AOC is running…for something and this is her introduction to the nation, especially the red parts of it. Running or not, Bernie and AOC are drawing huge crowds in red territory, such as Boise, Salt Lake City, and Bakersfield, but are receiving very little attention in the eastern mainstream media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

And this is the problem, the mainstream media is owned and controlled by people who brought us the oligarchy in the first place. Most of them are rich almost beyond comprehension, and they want to stay that way. The Ochs-Sulzberger family holds a controlling interest in The New York Times worth more than $8 billion, with a significant portion of the remaining shares owned by Carlos Slim, a Mexican billionaire worth about $88 billion. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is worth approximately $5.5 billion.

We – I’m going to go with Democratic Socialists because that’s how Bernie and AOC most identify themselves – Democratic Socialists have a lot of common goals with the Ochs-Sulzberger family, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and even Jeff Bezos, starting with equal rights for everybody, or as the Trump administration has phrased equality, DEI. Still, they differ from them in policies that will cost them money or diminish their power and influence, such as raising the tax rate on the ultra-rich, implementing a minimum wage that people can live on, or expanding Medicare to include everybody. They are not reporting on the Fighting Oligarchy tour because they are The Oligarchy.

I’ve listened to AOC’s speeches at Folsom and Boseman, Montana, and came away energized. Here is a sample of AOC on the stump.

Trump Is Destorying the Country We So Love…But First

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Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do…Go back to your command and try to think what we are going to do ourselves instead of what Lee is going to do. General U. S. Grant (on the second day of The Battle of the Wilderness [I think]).

We want to hear what the plans are — are we just going to be sitting on our behinds, talking a lot? Or are we actually going to be doing something? Leanna Terrell, a 75-year-old retired Navy intelligence officer 

You are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants: to make you feel as if nothing can stop the takeover of your country. Ben Rhodes is a contributing writer for the New York Times Opinion.

Fox News and the right wing would have you believe that these American values are something out of The Communist Manifesto. But let me tell you, Fox News, I don’t believe in healthcare, labor, and human rights because I’m a Marxist. I believe it because I was a waitress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The But First part is my poor, broken hand. I am now wearing a half cast – which I guess is technically called a splint – that was given to me by the hand doctor at PAMF. BTW, PAMF’s real name is Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and it is part of Sutter Health, one of the three major groups that dominate medical care in our area (medicine and eldercare are very profitable). My hand and arm are wrapped in bandages and covered with what we used to call an Ace Bandage. Everything around my left hand, arm, and shoulder hurts, and it is hard for me to do almost anything more than watch TV or my computer monitor. I am not what I would call fine. (When I wrote this, it was true, but it no longer is; I feel much better.)

Still, much of why I’m not fine is because of President Trump. I knew he was going to be disruptive and would do a lot of damage; he has plans, such as eliminating DEI, that I think will hurt our country. What I didn’t expect was for Trump to be so mean to so many people. It didn’t occur to me that hurting random people was his goal. I thought it was only settling old, real or imagined, grievances. I didn’t expect The President of the United States to be such an asshole.

As an aside, what a miserable, petty, human being he must be, even though he won the presidency. And he did win the presidency, which raises a question in my mind: If Trump is so inept, and I think he is, how inept are the Democrats who lost to him? What are we doing wrong? End aside.

I’ve been going through the five stages of grief over the Presidential Election: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, now, acceptance that Trump won. He even won the popular vote this time. I think he won because his understanding of the United States – paradoxically, especially the discontent – is closer to reality than what the Democratic establishment sees as reality. Trump sees that the government clearly doesn’t work for most people. I watched parts of Trump’s rallies, and he doesn’t talk to the crowd; he talks with the crowd, he dances with it, and he listens to it. I don’t want to give the impression that he will actually do anything. He won’t; he probably can’t. But he didn’t get elected for what he is actually going to do; he was elected for what he said he would do.

I think the Democratic establishment is reality-blind. And why shouldn’t it be? Most of its money – and don’t forget that in Washington, money equals influence – comes from well-read, socially concerned people who want to do good without hurting themselves. Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to pass laws like a minimum wage that reflects the cost of living or free medical care. I am still a Democrat; being a Democrat is rooted in my ancestral humus and it’s not my choice. Still, I think that most of the current Democratic lawmakers are not capable of bringing the much-needed change.

To be continued…