As a former radio guy I have a focused interest on what I hear on media. I’m hyper critical of podcasts (more on that in a future blog post) and I enjoy detecting trends in obvious use of automation on today’s radio airwaves.
In the Midwest, Chicagoland in particular, advertisers really LOVE their jingles. Jingles were fading out of favor when I left radio in 2004 but they’re still very prevalent on the radio stations I listen to throughout the Midwest.
This video from TikTok made me laugh out loud (I really LOL’d) today because it is very, very true. You just can’t escape the “Midwest National Anthem”.
The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma showed an “enhanced” threat of convective activity for the northern half of Illinois today. It seemed like the perfect day to take the afternoon off from work to do some storm chasing.
We were out the door by 12:30 PM.
Now, I’m not a professional storm chaser by any means. As a private pilot I have a good idea of what weather is trying to do, so usually I can find something interesting that Mother Nature is up to while out and about on one of these missions. It took us a few hours to get to the northwest corner of the state. My husband asked where all these storms were, as the sky was clear, the sun was bright, and the temperature was hot. To the northwest I could see a smattering of clouds building on the horizon. I remarked, “we’ll see something soon”.
Within the hour, in Wisconsin, about 20 miles north of Galena, Illinois, the sky started getting very dark.
I decided we needed to keep heading northwest, so I started following back roads as displayed by the Jeep Cherokee’s GPS. It took us over some beautiful southern Wisconsin farmland. We were right where Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa come together.
As we reached the top of a hill, I could see the clouds rolling in. We parked the car with a wonderful view of a shelf cloud forming.
The storm felt so close it was like we could almost reach out and touch it.
The wind started picking up and pretty soon small hail briefly made an appearance before being replaced by crazy amounts of rain and much higher winds. I decided it was time to follow the storm from behind, and we back tracked along our route. If I had continued further in our original direction, where it was still raining very hard, I’d be going in and out of valleys along the Mississippi River. The weather radio was warning about flash flooding. I didn’t want to be part of that.
Unfortunately (in case terms), no tornado activity was to be part of this storm. Earl took some video of the rain and wind while I drove us along the back roads.
Overall, it was a great storm chasing experience and we had a fun time together. We meandered across the prairie to get back home. All in all, our little adventure was 10 1/2 hours in the car.
Here’s a video of a family’s dash cam as they navigated through the derecho that whipped through Cedar Rapids, Iowa (and later Chicago) earlier this month. I’m very impressed with Mom’s calm reactions and her co-pilot in the front seat. Both kept very calm in a wild situation.
There’s a two-part story in my favorite Star Trek series, “Voyager”, where the crew goes back in time to Earth in 1996. I’m often reminded of a bit of dialog in the script; a tech company CEO has gotten his hands on future technology and is introducing it to the 20th century United States, and the Voyager crew comments that society isn’t ready for this technology yet and that social norms haven’t caught up to the technology they have. This is creating problems for the populace.
It makes me think of today’s approach to Social Media.
When Facebook and Twitter first came around, a year or two before the mass introduction of the ‘smart phone’, it was a nifty playground for those that were technologically savvy. Even though we had moved onto “Web 2.0” earlier in the decade, there was still a bit of the tech street cred present for the earlier era, where the idea was the Internet would provide valuable, coherent information. Yes, we were babbling on blogs (just like this one!) but people weren’t purposely throwing out ridiculous conspiracy theories for the entire world to consume in 140 character bites.
Then Twitter and Facebook became a major part of the national conversation, the technology became readily available to everyone, and bad actors purposely started skewing and distorting facts into fiction and suddenly everyone had an opinion.
I know. I’ve been sharing my opinion on things via this blog since 2001. But I’ve always tried to stick to the facts and despite how it may seem from time to time, I do filter my emotions a bit here. I don’t want to be known as an Internet troll. I don’t want to damage society through social media or other Internet based information channels.
The issue is that technology has cleared outpaced society’s ability for everyone to handle the capabilities responsibly. Now, I know this may make me sound a bit elitist, but I don’t think EVERYONE needs to have the entire Internet at their disposal. Not only does it invite bad people to anonymously write damaging things for the entire world to consume, but it puts many people in danger. How many folks do you know that have been scammed out of maybe thousands and thousands of dollars through an email or a ransomware attack or even a dire sounding text message sent through one of the many messaging services?
If we’re going to use the Internet it’s important that we do so intelligently and that we know what we’re doing and where we’re doing it. We can’t let technology outpace us, not in our national dialog, not in our homes, and not with our bank accounts. (You should see how many “smart doorbells” I’ve had the opportunity to hack as I walk through the neighborhood. Did I hack them? No. But not everyone wears a white hat like I do).
I don’t have the solution for fixing this problem. License computer users? It’ll never happen. Slow down the digital economy? Never happen. The best we can do is educate, share concerns, and try to steer people in the right direction.
Social media is never going away. If anything, it’s just going to get worse. Any effort to try to keep it in some sort of credible space is all we have.
I am desperately trying to not become numb to the violence gripping this country. I know the Republicans like to point fingers at everything but the problem, and top their finger pointing with a bunch of Yankee Doodle Yackey, but the truth of the matter is, this country still has a systemic racism issue and it’s only gotten worse since the last presidential election.
The words and actions of Trump have emboldened the racists.
I fly over or around Kenosha, Wisconsin on almost every flight I take these days. I’ve driven through Kenosha countless times. I’ve flown in and out of their airport several times. I don’t know a lot about Kenosha, but I know it’s in the news way too much this week because of an inhuman, normally unspeakable act of police shooting a defenseless man seven times in the back. In front of his kids.
What is this country coming to? Is this really who we want to be? I’ve often quipped that we’re in the midst of the “Second Dark Ages”. Too often the actions of too many American prove my right.
We can do better. We must do better. We will do better.
Vote in November. Vote for sanity. Vote for compassion. Vote for equality.
Apparently HairWeave and BadDyeJob, the two lawyers from somewhere in Missouri that pointed guns at protestors in broad daylight, spoke at the Republican National Convention last night to let people know that Joe Biden will abolish suburbs and let the non-whites cross the moat.
I can’t even type that last sentence without vomiting.
What does that even mean? Abolishing suburbs? I’m pretty sure the President of the United States doesn’t have the power to do that anymore than Hillary Clinton as President has the power to come in and personally take your penis substitute gun away from you right in the middle of your living room.
My god I’m really tired of stupid people.
My husband is watching the RNC as “an informed citizen”. I’m sitting out on the balcony weighing my options of pitching myself off the fifth story balcony or going in and sitting next to him on the couch while I strongly ponder Illinois’ legalized pot.
Flicking through the chaos last night, the bright bulb in the photo above spoke passionately about defunded police, death panels, and billions of dollars in new taxes if Biden is elected president. And with Kamala Harris as Vice-President, all the white folks will go to jail while immigrants run free drinking all the milk driving stolen Land Rovers from the suburbs.
Maybe she didn’t say those words, but her babbling was equally ridiculous and since it was Monday night I figured I shouldn’t get blasted drunk with 4/5ths of the work week still ahead of me.
I’m going to walk inside in a few moments and either throw a sledgehammer through the television or convince my husband to watch a rerun of “Sports Night”.
It’s not that I’m an all-in, no holds barred Democrat. I’m a middle of the road kind of guy and like the last several presidential election cycles, the Democrat is the most sane choice who actually has a chance of winning the damn thing. When someone mentions on social media that they’re still undecided it takes all my might not to drive to their location and not kick them squarely in the teeth.
It’s rather doubtful that I’ll be sharing potato salad at a family reunion anytime soon (at least for a couple of parts of my family).
All I ask is that we stop being so scared of those that are different from us, so scared of idiotic conspiracy theories, and so stupid all the time. Please strive to achieve an IQ higher than the speed limit. That’s all I ask.
They say we could have a close fly-by of an asteroid right before Election Day. There’s a part of me that’s hoping the Mayans were just off a few years.
We shouldn’t disparage Rita Repulsa in this manner. Anyone that buys the crap being spewed at the Republican National Convention is a lost cause. Move on. Watch Power Rangers.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
