🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Need You 🎶
Greenland🥶
Message to Zuck 💔
THE DAILY UPDATE
Three Things I’m Grateful For Today:
- The beginning of the Madness!
- Baseball practice with my team tonight.
- My eyes. I kinda dig them. They change color from blue to green depending on what I’m wearing. I think that’s cool.
Pursuit of Wordle Godhood: Today’s result: Six. I thought I had this one … made … earlier
Wordle 1,006 6/6
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🟩🟨⬜🟨⬜
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Pursuit of Connections Godhood: PERFECTO!
Connections
Puzzle #284
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The song in my head when I woke up: Welcome back to my morning brain “Don’t Let Me Down,” by Joy Williams. Such a lovely song and lovely voice.
Favorite line from the song in my head when I woke up: I call your name but you’re not around/I say your name but you’re not around
Commute Tunes: My typical morning podcast and then my go-to playlist when I need a bit of chill.
- The Daily Stoic podcast, This Choice Can Change Everything
- John’s Ultimate Chill Song Compendium
- Silent Lucidity, Queensryche
- Only Wanna Be With You, Hootie and the Blowfish
- Wanted Dead or Alive, Bon Jovi
- It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye, Boys II Men
- Blue Eyes, Cary Brothers
- Lullabye, Billy Joel
- The Joker, The Steve Miller Band
- New York State of Mind, Billy Joel
Something I’m looking forward to today: My brackets not sucking. (They will.)
Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: Being a two-dog family for a bit as we take care of one of Luna’s cousins.
Something I’m grateful for from yesterday: Quiet time at home petting Luna and reading my book.
What I’m writing: Yesterday’s Two Crappy Pages was a lot more than two pages. I went on a writing binge. One story was about a priest who established a mission in Greenland and survived crashing his plane twice in the process.
What I’ve written: I don’t often write poetry. Because I suck at it. But sometimes I do write poetry. And it sucks. The Significant Things
Today’s STD (Stoic Though of the Day, you perv): “People seek retreats for themselves in the country, by the sea, or in the mountains. You are very much in the habit of yearning for those same things. But this is entirely the trait of a base person, where you can, at any moment, find such a retreat in yourself.” — Marcus Aurelius
John’s translation of Today’s STD: “Yes, it’s awesome to get away and chill. But ya know what? You don’t have to go anywhere to do that. In fact, if you don’t have the inner peace that makes your own damn self a sanctuary, you’re going to have the same damn problems when you get back from your far-away retreat. Remember, wherever you go, there the fuck you are.”
Three weeks ago, I went through a tough breakup. It’s not going well. At least, it’s not going well on the part of the person I broke up with.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t taking my “It’s not me, it’s you” very well. Three weeks ago, I logged off Facebook and Instagram and delete the apps from my phone. Since then, I have not logged into any social media and, to tell you the truth, it feels fucking amazing. Fifteen years was a long time to give to someone so goddamn undeserving, and, Mr. Zuckerberg, you need to just go away.
Now, daily in my inbox, I get emails from Zuck letting me know I’ve missed out on a post from this “friend” or that “friend.” But am I really missing out? Maybe in your world, Marky Mark, but I’m just fine. I find myself, free from your algorithm, reading more, looking up instead of down, enjoying human interactions — real human interactions.
Listen, I’m not saying I’ll never come back to you, Zuck. But I probably won’t. And you shouldn’t get your hopes up. But one thing that definitely won’t lead me to come back is these emails. They’re … desperate. You’re better than that, aren’t you? Well, of course you’re not. The things you created and bought and inspired are pretty much at the core of the downfall not just of our Murican society but global society. Community is dying. People are increasingly unhealthy. I was increasingly unhealthy. And yes, that’s my responsibility. But it’s also yours. Your algorithms are designed to be addictive, and you fucking know it. No matter how many times you go before Congress and utter bullshit apologies to the families of the people whose lives you destroyed, you fucking know what’s happening and you’re too financially and egotistically invested to stop it.
So at least for me, I’m stopping it, and my hope is that your groupthink hold over the masses will one day end. I don’t think it will, but you and I? We’re done.
Would you please help a brutha out? I’ve created a weekly eNewsletter called News-B-Nuts in which I’ll be sending out news nuggets and witty commentary to subscribers. If you can, would you support this endeavor for just $5 a month via Patreon?