I Guess I Use Social Media After All

I just found out that I have a Substack account. 😎

A while back, I got a free subscription to some e-mails sent by Robert Reich; and after a time, I updated to a paid subscription, not because I wanted to use any new features, but because I wanted to support Reich’s work.  The credit card I used at the time needed to be replaced because of some fraud; and this morning, I got an e-mail message saying that the card had been refused and I needed to update my payment details.  OK, that makes sense.

I didn’t recall ever signing in to the account before (although I must have to do the paid upgrade); and it took me a while to remember what I had used as a user ID and password.  After finally logging in and figuring out how to navigate through all the settings, I changed the card info…I hope.  We’ll see whether I did everything correctly.

While I was in there, I added this blog’s URL as my “website”; and I think I figured out how to get a permalink to a particular one of Reich’s posts.  I’ll probably try to use that shortly.

How They Can Think That

I think flex gave a good answer to the question in my previous post.

I’m now leaning toward an idea that I’ve had for quite a while which was reinforced by a recent e-mail message I got from Robert Reich’s Substack.  Here are three of what seem to me to be the important bits:

On Tuesday, according to exit polls, Americans voted mainly on the economy — and their votes reflected their class and level of education.

…

While the economy has improved over the last two years according to standard economic measures, most Americans without college degrees — that’s the majority — have not felt it.

…

While Republicans steadily cut taxes on the wealthy, Democrats abandoned the working class.

Yeah, professional Democrats and Republicans are pretty much united in their support of large corporations and billionaires (although the Republicans crank it up to eleven and the Democrats are much better on “social issues”).  That’s why I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary when he was still a viable candidate (although I wasn’t a “Bernie bro” who stayed home out of spite).

I’d love to just quote the whole thing, but that goes way beyond “fair use”.  I guess the next job for this old fart is to figure out how to link to a particular post on somebody’s Substack.

How Can They Think That‽

I still can’t get my mind around the election results; but there’s something that’s nagging at me:  when I see shots of folks at Trump rallies, it looks to me like they believe, immediately and uncritically, everything he says.  How can they not know that he’s a liar?

flex has a comment on Mano’s blog that lists some things that one of their coworkers has said, including “Trump was never convicted of any crime.”  How can anyone not know that he was?

The only thing I can think of is that they get all their information from Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk (or worse).  Is there anything we can do to get the truth out to these people?  (I’m not doing jack shit by posting this on FtB.  I’m “preaching to the choir” as they say; but I don’t know what else to do.)

Spåromr.?

The Sweedish word, “Spåromr.” (possibly an abbreviation) came up on an e-mail list I subscribe to; and somebody asked for a translation because he couldn’t get a reasonable result from Google.  Can anybody translate?

Update:  2024-11-05 07:55−6:

Thanks to dorfl, comment 2. What prompted the question is:

car falling off platform
Photo by Gary Kazin.  Used by permission.

The wavy lines make me think of water though, not railroad tracks.

Ah, a brief respite from worrying about the election. 😎