PowerPoint + Pollution + Procrastination

= Feeling Grumpy, Sleepy, and Dopey

Usually I’m the happy dwarf in the middle, but today I’m supposed to finishing up a presentation on color analysis for an international group of people who sew, and I’m Grumpy and Sleepy and Dopey.

My eyes are burning—sensations I interpret as tired, but I suspect the problem is the smoky air pollution due to forest fires. And because I haven’t taught a class over Zoom in several years, I’m having to remember how to use PowerPoint. And because I have only 40 minutes to convey what normally I teach in four hours, I’m having to be super selective in what I choose to cover. And because I should have started on this two weeks ago instead of two days ago, I decided that rather than finishing it I’ll complain to y’all instead.

And since I’m already complaining, let me just continue:

• WTF: mass shootings! Again. And again. And again. Earlier this week another school slaughter. A few minutes ago a guy shooting on a Kentucky highway. Thoughts and prayers are not cutting it. A majority of Americans want sensible gun control legislation, but …
  USA! USA! WE ARE NUMBER ONE in gun deaths.

• Russian disinformation infecting social media, lots of it. For reals. It was going on in 2016 too. Putin really wants his idiot puppet Trump to win.

Yesterday, the DOJ brought this right back to the forefront, unveiling charges and sanctions against Kremlin-backed operatives.

The indictment outlines a widespread campaign to interfere in the 2024 presidential election, where US conservative influencers were paid by a Russian-backed company while churning out pro-Putin propaganda.

• Elon Musk. GAHHH. The richest man in the world bought Twitter to spread his racist, anti-semitic, autocratic views. And now he’s bought Trump. DJT once pooh-poohed electric vehicles as being woke machines for the liberal elite, but all it took was for Elon to throw money at Trump... Per WaPo Musk will be appointed to head up this commission and ravage it for parts, just like he’s done at Twitter/X:

“At the suggestion of Elon Musk,” [Trump] began, then hopping into a little aside about how smart Musk was for endorsing him, “I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government and making recommendations for drastic reforms.”

• Trump once again gets his felonious ass saved by another legal postponement. If he were not GUILTY AS FUCK, he would have wanted to get these trials and sentencings over and done with, but he knows that prison awaits him unless he can postpone until the election, which he is desperate to win so that his own bought and paid for DOJ can dismiss them all.

  Reading Judge Merchan’s order is like being in a room with a middle-aged man on his first day in a yoga class, pain leaching from every corpuscle of his body as he contorts himself into making a decision he clearly believes not in the interest of either justice or the wellbeing of the country. 

I could go on for pages, but I’ll depress myself even further. However, if you’d like to respond to this post with your own complaints, send them on. Turnabout is fair play. You deserve an ear too.

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PUT YOURSELF IN THE WAY OF BEAUTY

Palette cleanser time. I’ll give you a couple.

Hydrangea in late summer mode

I was procrastinating yesterday as well, and got lost on a Facebook page Art Deco 1920. This doorway from a bank somewhere in Paris completely mesmerized me.

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