“Totally Under Control”

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This is a dual anecdotal blog-post; one to follow-up my previous post on this new WordPress Gutenberg Block Editor and its immense learning curve for paying subscribers/members like myself, and a blog-post regarding our current political/Presidential and VP campaigns… or rather what I have always considered in election years super hyped-up rhetoric and sensationalizing lip-service by most all elected officials. Therefore, regarding the first anecdote, I began this simple, quick blog-draft at 7:45pm CST. I completely finished this super basic post with no bells and whistles, then published it at 1:05am—over FIVE HOURS LATER—with no interruptions! The bulk of those 5-hours were spent trying to learn and perfect an incredibly sophisticated Editor. That is crazy, stupid, required (wasted?) time with this new Editor for so little catching-presentation and final product! Ridiculous WordPress. Way too complicated for Users who use WordPress as a hobby!

Regarding the second anecdote, our Presidential and VP campaigns and debates would like to tell all Americans that this race between our two parties is about three issues: 1) COVID-19, 2) healthcare, and 3) the consequences of #1 on our economy. No, I say all three combine into ONE: how horribly shitty our nation’s highest leadership had prepared for and managed #1 that directly affected #2 and #3. It is that simple and don’t let political propaganda and typical lip-service rhetoric of our current national leadership deceive you or divert you from that fact! Let’s review.

On January 6, 2020, after many infections, deaths, and signs from Wuhan, China, worldwide and domestic virologists, epidemiologists, scientists, and the CDC informed and forewarned the President of the United States, his administration, and all federal health agencies that the COVID-19 pandemic was coming to America. On January 21, 2020, the very first case of coronavirus arrived near Seattle, WA. This was our President’s reaction:

We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.

— President Trump, interview with CNBC, asked about the first diagnosed U.S. case. He said he was not worried about a lethal pandemic.

Unfortunately for thousands and thousands of At Risk Americans, 210,000 deaths and counting, this egotistical indifference by the President is utterly misleading and a catastrophic mistake. And Dr. Taison Bell, M.D. at University of Virginia Health and Pulmonary Critical Care Medicine, puts all the historical facts in place today and what was not done when warned and warned repeatedly in December 2019, January 2020, again in February 2020, and over and over still from March 2020 to the present day. Watch this excellent 30-second portrayal of factual federal apathy and denial (for political reasons) to protect the American public:

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/tV6w/future-forward-usa-action-taison-bell

Now, back to my first anecdote, this damn new Block Editor. I am essentially done here… at least as far as I am concerned. There is more for me to say that Dr. Taison Bell doesn’t poignantly nail in those 30-seconds. It’s now almost 1:10am CST and I have spent way too much time here just trying to post this! Geeezzz. 🤬

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

33 thoughts on ““Totally Under Control””

    • What irks me the most NtP is that WordPress isn’t taking care of their PAYING subscribers. I want the choice of still using the old Classic Editor. I have mastered it! When I have small (rare?) windows of free-time for my (once?) pleasurable hobby of creative blogging, I want/have to do it in either a matter of 1-2 hours or if an in-depth post/series… a matter of a few days.

      My free-time is way too valuable to spend struggling with a hyper-juiced “Business-prone” ultra complex Editor designed more for a company’s FULL-TIME web-administrators!!! On top of this impractical spot WordPress has forced upon me, I must pay an additional $219 upfront AND upgrade from my Premium subscription ($100/yr) to the Business ($300/yr) Plan to use the Classic Editor Plug-in until 2022… or upgrade to their Mega-jacked-up eCommerce Plan (at only $540/yr)!

      Is it me or is WordPress really REALLY horny obsessed with my wallet, pocket book, and bank accounts and those hard earned dollars going to them!? 🤔😠 Am I dreaming?

      Btw, those are very rhetorical questions.

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      • Personally, I’d stop posting on WordPress before EVER “upgrading” to premium anything demanding yearly subscription. If WordPress fancies itself a player in the business world, let them have at it, but don’t shove it down our throats! I lost it the day I went to write a post and discovered Block Editor had unceremoniously replaced Classic Editor. Sweet mercy. Same as you I searched for fixes, all of which required subscription upgrades. Oh hell no! Ultimately I’ve learned to write and post by completely ignoring block editor jibber-jabber. Once initial outrage subsides it’s not difficult to carry on.
        I’m also active on Quora. Not once in six years has Quora asked me to open my wallet. In fact, Quora pays me for my content based on views for questions and “ad impressions”. The first Monday of every month several hundred U.S. dollars appear in my PayPal account.
        All I can say is WordPress ought to think long and hard about where it stands and what brought users to it in the first place. Sigh.

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        • In complete agreement NtP. These are the sorts of “business, profits, revenues, etc.,” priorities and models that forced me to leave, ban, and protest Facebook; i.e. no total freedom of expression or creativity like MySpace offered and WordPress did originially. 😠

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  2. This administration = massive fail. That is putting it lightly. We need the sweep come Nov. Vote D on the down ballot!

    I read somewhere you can revert back to the old editor. But I don’t remember where I saw that. Nor do I recall how. So I’m batting 1000 in that department lol.

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    • Lest we forget what the D leadership professed when the President shutdown travel from China in January. There’s the massive fail.

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      • So, the D’s reacted to the orange idiot (and I’ve eaten and slept a few times since, so Im not exactly sure what the hell you are referring to) and that means that the D’s were a massive fail in response to the pandemic? Who was actually in power at the time? Did I miss something?

        What kind of freaking moron would say the D’s failed in response to covid? The orange idiot did nothing for a couple of months except proclaim covid was a hoax by the D’s, and that it would magically disappear. Then he finally after literally thousands of flights already flown to/from China, he did a travel ban.

        There is far right propaganda kool aid that dumbasses tend to drink. The rest of us live in reality. The reality is our orange idiot is an idiot. And a con man. And a tax cheat. And a narcissistic sociopath.

        I would not vote for him if his porn star was sucking on my lolipop.

        …now if I have perhaps taken a wrong tack on the subject I’d love to see a clarification on your part.

        Prof, I’m sorry a bit for my tone this AM, I’m still on my 1st cup of Joe and have a headache.

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        • Hey, Shelldigger, here’s some news that might cheer you up! I, along with several other “D” pals of mine just held an “R” baby BBQ in the basement of a pizza parlor in my area. A bunch of “Qanon” idjits broke in trying to stop us in, and I quote, “The name of their lord ‘n master, Donny Boy Trumpski”, but we succeeded in defeating them and, guess what, we ate them, too! So, drop on by your local “D” convention center, or pizza parlor basement, and chow down on some “R” baby meat! It is absolutely DEEEEEELLICIOUS!!! Like Bill Clinton once said, “The only good republican is one ya BBQ and eats up with some salted and buttered collard greens!”

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            • Well, this is what happens when you write ambiguously and not precisely. 😉 Not sure if ‘MH’ will return to clarify and clean-up.

              Many WP commenters who (for whatever personal reasons) register no return link to their own blog identity and a brief bio, About page with their profile name… simply want to troll and leave Spammish-type comments everywhere. Call it lazy, call it poor self time-management, or call it perhaps fear of being scrutinized. Whatever those reasons, like it or not, a no return link to no valid identity undermines and makes the comment-content and Commenter less important, less impressive, and hence, not taken serious. :/

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  3. If you have a Mac computer I’d recommend you look at Marsedit. I used to use that and it was an excellent editor that worked well with WP blogs. I can’t use it any more because I work across 3 different OS platforms these days, OSX, Win10 and Linux, and generally the computer I want to use doesn’t have the software I want at the moment, so sticking with a web based editor works better for me.

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  4. The problem, my friend, is that while you, I and almost all of the readers of your blog all know this, the True Believers only believe what comes from you-know-who and his approved sources. The GOP, right wing radio talkers like Charlie Sykes, etc. worked for twenty or more years to undermine the credibility of mainstream media which didn’t instantly accept their lies and questioned the truth behind what they said, and by and large that tactic worked with a large percentage of the population. Facts, statistics, research – none of that is going to change the minds of any of these people because they actually believe the conspiracy insanity that is being pushed.

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  6. Sorry for any duplication in this comment (I posted same on Ark’s blog), but thought it might be useful to some.

    UPDATE: Medium is not really a blogging device. For those not in the “know,” it reminds me more of Quora in that you post stuff and it goes out to the “group” for reading and/or commenting. Far as I can tell, it doesn’t have the features found in WP.

    So far, I really don’t like WIX either, but plan to play with it a bit more before making a pronouncement. Thing is, it’s a learning curve — just like with Gutenberg — so I may just be prejudiced at the start since I’m so used to WP’s “old” format.

    Something I recently discovered on WP — and this may be my error — I started a post, saved the draft, said I wanted to use the “Classic Editor” when I resumed, but when I wanted to see what it looked like in Gutenberg … nothing was there! Maybe I’m missing a step?

    Oh my … little did we know how much “fun” was in store for us when the WP developers decided to screw things up!!!

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    • I’ve experienced that same ‘disappearing act’ with posts and old, saved posts from previous Editor-versions.

      Not sure if you or I are “missing steps” Nan, but I do know this: you, we, myself are NOT FULL-TIME WEB-ADMINISTRATORS for WordPress or for our employer using WordPress! Period. Time is just as valuable for non-electronic-software engineers (doing other things) as it is for tech-savvy device-obsessed kids that can never put their phones or laptops down or powered off… and live an organic life, for a moment or two. Right? 😉

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  7. Our idiotic President also claimed that COVID-19 was “no worse than the flu.” The flu kills around 60,000 people in the US each year. So far … so far, we have 210,000 dead and we don’t know how many with ongoing health problems and we have almost one quarter of the year to go. I wonder what Mr. Trump’s defintion of “worse” is?

    Mike Pence railed at his Democrat opponent stating that the Dems were going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. Did no one tell Mr. Pence that those tax cuts expire in less than seven years if we do nothing … oh, those are the tax cuts for ordinary Americans that expire. The tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy were made permanent from the get-go. The Pence-Trump duo has already repealed the tax cuts for ordinary Americans … by their design.

    Never has lying and playing dumb been so profitable for the American rich.

    Liked by 4 people

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  8. In general a good service costs always money; for example I am paying 115 USD each year to my European email provider for having real data security and no spam emails. It is worth the money really. In case of WordPress it is obvious that they want to become a mere business maker, no place for private people …

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    • A very accurate assessment Ulli. I agree completely. Over the last 2-3 decades here in the U.S. I have witnessed and become frequently a victim of jet-fueled hyper-Capitalism. We American citizens were at a time long ago considered to be the only primary fuel to this economy. Not anymore. Today, more than ever, we are seen as money-bags to be exploited, hoodwinked, and fattened up for consumption by business owners and their mega-Corporations. Prime example?

      The landmark Supreme Court decision with Citizens United vs. FEC. Each mid-term and every four years we now have heavy corporate influence/control of not only markets and demographics, but the political and legislative arenas that manage or exploit the markets, ESPECIALLY gullible, poorly educated (struggling?) consumers. 😞

      Liked by 1 person

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