Sunday Bag o’ Chaos

It’s Sunday, the last day before the contractor starts tearing up our kitchen. The cabinets and cupboards are empty, the contents stacked in plastic storage bins and on planks and card tables in the living and dining rooms. We’re trying to keep the things we’ll need where we can find them. It turns out that’s just about everything. Oh what fun.

I’m happy we got al-Baghdadi, but appalled at Trump’s me-me-me touchdown dance, belittling Obama while trying to be Obama, failing at both.

Wordy bloggage is coming hard this morning, so this’ll be more of an Instagrammy photopost. I’ve been taking lots of photos, and it’s time to share a few of them with you.

Yesterday was a big day for Maxie and Mister B. Our friend Millie, a fellow dachshund person, came over to help Donna trim their nails, express their anal glands (a horrifying necessity), and give them baths. No, I did not take photos of the anal gland business, and you can thank me for that.

The dogs know something’s up, what with all the to-do leading up to the kitchen remodeling. Of course we can’t know what they think it is, but I’m pretty sure they thought we were getting ready for a long road trip in the car. They get to go on those, so they’ve been pretty excited. Then yesterday a contractor came to remove the old kitchen window and put in a new one, and now they’re confused. If not a road trip, then what the hell is going on?

They’ll find out Monday when the serious work on the kitchen starts. It’s going to be every bit as hard on the dogs as it will be on us, but we’ll grit our teeth and get through it, and I can’t wait until we get to the photoblog where I show you our new kitchen!

For now though, I’m going to show you screen grabs of my Twitter profiles.

Facebook friends keep telling me they don’t, or won’t, do Twitter. But I hope they’ll consider signing up and following me on Twitter. These images tell you what you need to know: my Twitter addresses and what each account is about. The main one is the first; the other two are more specialized.

I’ve been on Twitter eleven years. I find it useful and interesting. I learn things there, more so than on Facebook. I like to see what people are saying about events, politics, entertainment, and culture. I’m enough of a news junkie that when something breaks, my first stop is Twitter. Where, for example, I learned within minutes of Trump’s “something big has happened” tweet last night that we’d killed al-Baghdadi. Journalists and military insiders on Twitter were sharing what they knew before the media started telling everyone else. I like getting a heads up on breaking news. OTOH, Twitter users (me included) occasionally get taken in by hoax announcements and news, so there’s that. You have to be careful who you follow.

Why am I sharing this? I’m thinking about dropping out of Facebook. If I do, I’ll still be on Twitter, and I want people to know where they can find me. I haven’t left yet and maybe I won’t be able to cut the cord. People are always threatening to leave Facebook but few ever do. Maybe I’m no exception.

If I remember correctly, back in like 2014 and 2015 Facebook had a separate tab for regular news. The headlines they linked to were curated by human editors whose job was to comb the media and link to legitimate, honestly-reported news stories. Right-wingers began to complain, because their favored news sources … sources like Breitbart, Alex Jones’ Infowars, the Daily Stormer … were consistently rejected by Facebook’s curators. Because those sources don’t report news in any legitimate sense of the word: they’re outlets for opinion and propaganda, usually of the white supremacist variety.

Now Facebook says human curators are coming back, along with a revived news tab. But yesterday they announced Breitbart will be one of its “trusted” news sources, and if Breitbart, than Inforwars and UFO News and Liz Crokin can’t be far behind. Facebook caved to right-wing pressure when they fired the human news curators a few years ago; even though they’re hiring human news curators again, they’re still caving to the right by agreeing to push its fake news racist propaganda.

I know it’s nearly impossible for most of us to give up Facebook. There’s nothing else like it. It’s how we stay in touch with friends and relatives. In my case, it’s a place where I can easily notify hundreds of friends when I have a new blog post up. But if Facebook’s going to become a funnel for socially-destructive misinformation, I don’t know how good people can stay. Maybe adopt the Mormon “bleed the beast” attitude toward taking money and services from a secular society and government they scorn?