Month: June 2023

Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. A quick visit to Google News, and . . . nausea.

Don’t use that pussy word, “misinformation.” Lies. These are lies.

Propaganda is perhaps a more precise description, but flawed. “Propaganda” is a loaded word and evokes Goebbels and Triumph of the Will. Better to avoid the baggage of that word and use a word that everyone, worldwide, since toddlerhood, has understood intimately and viscerally.

Liar. Lies.

I suppose you can infer some reality from the lies: listen not to what is said, as such, but note who is saying these words and the action or attitude they wish to encourage. Look especially for what they are not talking about.

Above all: know that these are lies. And the people writing these stories or blathering away on TV are all liars. And they know it, yet persist.

Chief among the liars? Google. Google News is a deliberately curated and organized firehose of lies.

The truth shall set you free? Equally, lies will enslave you. Refuse to be enslaved. Actively resist the liars.

Pause when agitated or doubtful. (Sad is a variant of this).

“Thy will, not mine, be done.”

Go down the mental checklist. H.A.L.T.? am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

For me, the H and the T are common. I push myself.

A and L are more subtle, and I have to watch for them and I’m not sure how to cope with them.

Especially being L in a crowd. Being around people is not an automatic antidote to L. It is too easy to feel alone amongst people—even people who know me well and love me.

The A. Too often directed at myself. Recriminations mostly. Self-flogging for some perceived insufficiency.

Today is not a good brain day. I believe it’s the T. Mental fatigue to be precise.