cooking and listening to Bruce to save my sanity

Friday I made the second batch of tomato sauce, then made Ms Moon’s life sustaining cookies, and then made dinner…green beans I grew, corn I put up, and stuffed mushrooms the stuffing of which is finely chopped mushroom stems, finely chopped pecans, bread crumbs, grated parmesan, parsley, minced garlic, and enough melted butter to hold it all together and stuffed and mounded up in the mushroom caps and baked for 25 minutes at 400˚. It was a fine dinner. Cookie for dessert. The tomato sauce got bagged up and frozen on Saturday, 5 cups, 5 packages. I also made some savory roasted pecans. Sunday mornings Marc usually makes our brunch but this morning I made pancakes. I’m just on a roll in the kitchen.

I stopped into the new little indy bookstore here on Thursday to sign the petition against the building of the data center in Boling (tiny town less than 400 residents) 12 miles down FM 1301. Residents were against it but the powers that be allowed it anyway, land is bought. I know the petition and the anti-data center signs won’t stop it but it is essential that we voice our objections anyway. The peace and quiet and dark skies of tiny Boling are going to be destroyed. Their wells may run dry. Why does the US need so many data centers? We don’t but the rich can get richer so who the fuck cares. We don’t need AI, we need water and peace and dark skies at night. AI is the engine of our demise. As if we weren’t getting stupider enough with all the defunding of education and demonization of critical thinking. Why do your own research, write your own papers when AI will do it for you. How does that benefit humanity, what do you learn when you just prompt AI to do the work for you? The proprietor of the book store told me she just learned Barnes and Noble will stock AI written books provided they don’t plagiarize existing work. Seriously? Where do they think AI is going to get the ideas and info to ‘write’ a book if not from every book that’s been written by actual humans. I remember an old Star Trek episode where the people invented AI to run things which resulted in them devolving from capable intelligent people to being little more than adult children incapable of creative thought or actions. And now it’s happening. The other possible future is the more grim version from Terminator or I Robot. When all the jobs are gone because they are being done by AI, when all the decisions are made by an algorithm devoid of empathy and critical thinking, what then? 

So many in this country are already astoundingly stupid. The bookseller (she was on a tear) was also telling me about a young woman she knows who believes the earth is flat, the planets aren’t real, and that space doesn’t exist, that somehow all the images of such are created underwater. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that she doesn’t think space is real. What does she think the stars are? And this woman homeschools her kids. Humanity is fucking doomed. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Give the planet time to regenerate, ecosystems recover, let the other life forms flourish.

And that’s just one of the horrible things happening in this country. Now we have cage fights on the White House lawn so reminiscent of the gladiator days in Rome’s declining years. Keep the people entertained so they forget they’re starving. Not satisfied with defacing the South Lawn, the UFC fighters held a press conference at the Lincoln Memorial and (quoting Heather Cox Richardson) “The fighters walked from Lincoln’s statue down the steps of the memorial through the Armed Forces Full Honor Cordon, a pathway formed between two groups made up of sixteen service members in dress uniforms. This is the U.S. military’s highest ceremonial formation, usually reserved for heads of state, foreign dignitaries, senior officials, and funerals for military heroes.” and then “This morning the weigh-in for the UFC fights at the White House also took place at the Lincoln Memorial. Heavyweight fighter Josh Hokit seemed to pretend to throw up, dribbling colored liquid from his mouth. “So what? Maybe I was drinking last night,” Hokit told the media there.“

Where is the fucking dignity? Is there not one single place or ceremony 47 hasn’t or won’t defile?

So this morning I’m distracting myself with Bruce Springsteen. One of the newsletters I get every day is 1440 at the bottom of which is a list of links to lots of interesting things. Today’s list included a link to some guy’s opinion of Bruce Springsteen’s 100 best songs. Give a listen to the ones with links.

Here’s another little piece of trivia. Did you know there’s a proper order of adjectives? Native English speakers say the adjectives in a specific order but I think people do it without giving it any thought, relying on what sounds ‘right’. I certainly don’t remember being taught that in all the years of English class. Anyway, here’s the pattern called DOSA-SCOMP; determiner, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. Example: My favorite big old square white French cotton gardening hat.

Well, that’s enough.