iGtab Start Page and more

 Hey, all.

All five of you. All you beautiful readers. All of you who care.

Yes, I'm doing fine.

Autum is engaged in becoming real this year, dancing in and out from summer to winter and stumbling into itself with a rye vengeance, then slipping into one or another again. I'm painting, as evidenced in my work displays at scottmerrickdotme and in my new Second Life gallery at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kerlingarfjoll/178/118/48.

I'm walking my beautiful Great Pyr mix, Lemon, and cheerfully taking her pictures on my iPhone 13, an endeavor which I once would have characterized as "wasting a lot of film," but which now seems just another minor obsession of an old man. There is a sizeable gallery of such pictures at my Google Photos storage site. Here's one I took yesterday morning: 

 so you can see why.

Mainly I popped into Blogger today to share the "Notes" section of my iGoogle start page. I found this feature of Google when I retired, yielding subscription to an online start page service I had used for teaching for years whose name not unnaturally (for today) escapes me. I'll paste it in here when it does re-enter my dusty old memory bank. 

Anyway, as you'll see if you investigate its link above, "Gtab" has one of the various optional sections called "Notes." I really like this and it's turned into a little staging ground for smippets from my readings and living. I looke at it as a place to retain  and celebrate for oneself (for oneself is precisely why one might have such a page--look into it for your own "oneself".)  It's totally revisable, inside a simple text box iframe. Here're my current Notes:

   "Twain rarely found any experience, be it gay or gruesome, that did not make him laugh." --Mason Curry, Daily Rituals, How Artists Work
"Time is our perception of change. Each individual perceives change uniquely. Therefore, there is no common time, no time that is "the" time. Or is there?"-- moi
"Rather than being a mysterious limitation, uncertainty appears to be the essential feature that makes everything else possible, if indeed energy and uncertainty are inseparable." --Rocky Alvey

     “Every moment of our existence is linked by a peculiar triple thread to our past—the most recent and the most distant—by memory. Our present swarms with traces of our past. We are histories of ourselves, narratives. I am not this momentary mass of flesh reclined on the sofa typing the letter a on my laptop; I am my thoughts full of the traces of the phrases that I am writing; I am my mother’s caresses, and the serene kindness with which my father calmly guided me; I am my adolescent travels; I am what my reading has deposited in layers in my mind; I am my loves, my moments of despair, my friendships, what I’ve written, what I’ve heard; the faces engraved on my memory. I am, above all, the one who a minute ago made a cup of tea for himself. The one who a moment ago typed the word “memory” into his computer. The one who just composed the sentence that I am now completing. If all this disappeared, would I still exist? I am this long, ongoing novel. My life consists of it.”― Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time
     "Sunny day today. And I'm inside myself again. My body just walking or standing on top of its shadow and I'm way up in my head, crouched panting in some far corner crying God please let me be. Please let. Me be. And from my corner I can gaze out through two gaping holes and then through two round windows paned with dusty glass. And finally over that hill of flesh in the lower center of my view I watch the images play.

Once had a dog, when I was six,

I taught her how to fetch me sticks.

I loved that dog, she read my mind,

since she once died I ain't

stopped

crying.

     That I am at times unable to hold the images to forms is not really worth mentioning. I mention it anyway. So that we might mutally come to better grips with the situation. Which is, he said with quiet desperation. I do not exist after you close this magazine and cease to think about me." -- Scott Merrick, Druid, an Humanities Magazine, Fall, 1970

"I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere." -- Leonard Cohen

"Relentless maximization is the strategy of a cancerous tumor, not of health."--Kelly Clancy, Playing with Reality, epilogue (in the context of gamification and game theory as applied to economics)

From Mary Jane Harvill: Wise and important words from sociologist Jennifer Walter about what is happening in this country right now and what to do about it:

"As a sociologist, I need to tell you: Your overwhelm is the goal. The flood of 200+ executive orders in Trump's first days exemplifies Naomi Klein's "shock doctrine"—using chaos and crisis to push through radical changes while people are too disoriented to effectively resist. This isn't just politics as usual; it's a strategic exploitation of cognitive limits.

Media theorist McLuhan predicted this: When humans face information overload, they become passive and disengaged. The rapid-fire executive orders create a cognitive bottleneck, making it nearly impossible for citizens and media to thoroughly analyze any single policy.

Agenda-setting theory explains the strategy: When multiple major policies compete for attention simultaneously, it fragments public discourse. Traditional media can't keep up with the pace, leading to superficial coverage.
The result? Weakened democratic oversight and reduced public engagement."
What now?
1. Set boundaries: Pick 2-3 key issues you deeply care about and focus your attention there. You can't track everything - that's by design. Impact comes from sustained focus, not scattered awareness.
2. Use aggregators and experts. Find trusted analysts who do the heavy lifting of synthesis. Look for those explaining patterns, not just events.
3. Remember: Feeling overwhelmed is the point. When you recognize this, you regain some power. Take breaks. Process. This is a marathon.
4. Practice going slow: Wait 48hrs before reacting to new policies. The urgent clouds the important. Initial reporting often misses context.
5. Build community. Share the cognitive load. Different people track different issues. Network intelligence beats individual overload.
Remember: They want you scattered. Your focus is resistance."

You, my friend, are welcome. Some fun now.