Pluvious

Pluvious's Journal

March 28, 2019

Why These Four Presidents ? (inspiring reminder of just WHAT made us great to start with!)

I personally found the linked page below to be a nice, cathartic quick read.
A perfect - if brief - distraction from these gloomy times we're all enduring.

Gutzon Borglum selected these four presidents because from his perspective, they represented the most important events in the history of the United States. Would another artist at that time, or perhaps a modern artist choose differently? As you read more about Borglum's choices, think about what you might have done if the decision was up to you.

"We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self-government."
-Thomas Jefferson

https://www.nps.gov/moru/learn/historyculture/why-these-four-presidents.htm

March 23, 2019

Happy Time Break - Project One Life - 100 Dancing Strangers FTW

I can only take so much of you know what...
I had to take a short happy break, maybe good for you too ?!!

This video is a short (3m) fun watch, from a most
interesting fellow with a most delightful hobby !!

Rejuvenate your joy coffers, with a...

Dancing Around The World With Random Strangers !!!

Hopefully, this will bring a few brief smiles into being this fine weekend

Matt's site: https://www.wheretheheckismatt.com
Project One Life's channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ProjectOneLife

--
To the Jury: This is a video promoting World Peace, please don't delete my post.

March 18, 2019

The Internet has failed - Important warnings regarding social media abuse and our future

Whew !!

This was a hard-hitting read, I'm compelled to share this forward with DU.

I was an early evangelist of the nascent internet back in the 90's, and reading this was a sobering and troubling read. Tho I've been coming to realize of the recent years, something's very wrong been going on, now abundantly clear with the CA/Russian/Trump debacle of 2016.

This presentation from SXSW keynote really breaks it down, but also lays out a plan and path to redemption

This should be required reading for all of us !!

In The New Yorker’s Feb. 25, 2019 report titled “Private Mossad for Hire,” Uzi Shaya, a former senior Israeli intelligence officer, said, “Social media allows you to reach virtually anyone and to play with their minds. You can do whatever you want. You can be whoever you want. It’s a place where wars are fought, elections are won, and terror is promoted. There are no regulations. It is a no man’s land.”

Here is a quote from [Sir] Tim Berners-Lee, who drew the original diagram for the world wide web on a napkin, and who now has Dr. Frankenstein’s remorse.

“We demonstrated that the Web had failed instead of served humanity, as it was supposed to have done, and failed in many places. [The Web] has ended up producing—with no deliberate action of the people who designed the platform — a large-scale emergent phenomenon which is anti-human.”

By now, it is clear that what was begun as a mission to connect and unite mankind has mutated into a pernicious distortion machine that has disconnected mankind and put us at each other’s throats, and in doing so has destroyed and is destroying institutions and knowledge that have taken centuries to develop.

To stay human, to survive as a species, we have to wrest our communications out of the control of the lust for power, the avarice, larceny, hubris, deceit and self-delusion of the heads of Google and Facebook.

SO MUCH MORE at:
http://buzzbands.la/2019/03/13/t-bone-burnetts-keynote-speech-at-sxsw-dire-warnings-vs-the-goal-of-art-to-create-conscience/

March 3, 2019

One evening dining in Avalon, Catalina Island, early 80's ...

I spoke up to defend a verbally harassed waitress at a nearby table.

It escalated quickly, and I wound up demanded the sheriff be called. I'd derisively told the jerk table to "go back to Newport (Beach) where they belong," which really triggered them - as I'd hoped (young troll was I).

Needless to say, the lone officer arrives and quickly diffused the situation (boring I know).

When the inebriated asswipes all left shortly after, one of the women turned to us from the door, and shouted: "For your information, WE'RE FROM SAN FRANCISCO!!"

We all laughed quite heartily at their retreating backs.

The waitress came over and thanked us for trying to help, and we got a free dessert lol.

It was then I learned from my buddy (who was living there at the time), that the sheriff was none other than the man whom famously had crawled under Charles Manson house to make his arrest.

Apparently he'd been given the choice of working in any California precinct of his choice.

And he'd picked the sleepy little tourist town of Avalon.

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