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cyberbarf VOLUME 19 No 2 EXAMINE THE NET WAY OF LIFE SEPTEMBER, 2020
WHAT IS OLD IS NEW AGAIN BARF BAGS iTOONS POLITICAL THEATER WHETHER REPORT
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cyberbarf WHAT IS OLD IS NEW AGAIN PANDEMIC TRENDS You cannot reinvent the wheel. You may call it something else, but it is still a wheel. The global pandemic has taught us that certain things do not change. Or, at the very lease, come back into fashion. Here is a list of things that are new again: DRIVE-INS: We are all familiar with the fast food drive-in. You do not have to get out of your car to be served your food. More than three-quarters of all fast food business is done through that little cashier window. But before the fast food delivery lane, there were Drive In movie theaters.
A large screen was set up in the back of a large parking lot. People drove into the lot, paid a fee for the occupants (which many times did not count the teens hiding in the trunk) then drove to a parking space that had a pole that had a sound speaker. Since most local governments shut down crowds in bars, restaurants, ball parks and theaters, a few large malls decided that it would be a good idea to keep traffic coming to their businesses by hosting drive in movie nights. They would repaint the parking lot to have the cars facing the large screen. A few minor league baseball teams, whose seasons were wiped out by MLB, have had their scoreboards used as movies in the park settings for families. Before the pandemic, Drive In theaters were all but extinct. In 1958, the drive in movie theater peaked with 4,000 across America. By the early 2000s, they had faded to less than 300. The advent of movie rentals, DVDs and cable led to people wanting to stay at home to watch movies. HOUSE CALLS: At the beginning of the pandemic, only essential services were allowed to be open. Government taxing authorities extended the filing of tax returns from April to July because some taxpayers with pre-existing conditions never wanted to leave their houses. This led to some professionals making house calls.
In the 1930s, 40 percent of doctor-patient appointments were house calls, where the physician travel to the patient's home for an examination. By 1980, it had dropped to 0.6 percent. The house call was a convenience to the patient-customer, who may have been too sick to travel to the doctor's office (which at the time was probably the front room in his personal residence). Today, home health care is provided by caregivers and medical techs. But some other professionals, including attorneys and accountants, made accommodations to go to their clients homes to review and sign documents. CHAT ROOMS/TEXT GROUPS: The largest means of friend banter is social media platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. But with the isolation of home, many people cooped up wanted to have some real time conversations with friends and relatives. The chat room or text groups have made a comeback. It seems retro but one can have a real time conversation while watching something together, like a baseball game. COOKING AT HOME: When people are working or going to school for most of the day, by the time they get home their is either a fast food sack in their hand or a frozen meal being plopped into the microwave. But since office workers were told NOT to come to the office but work remotely at home, many have wandered into their kitchens to explore the strange metal boxes (oven and stove). One of the most popular YouTube genres are eating and cooking videos. Kitchen novices suddenly got the confidence (to get rid of the boredom) to start cooking things for the first time such as the chemistry of baking. Or suddenly learning that fresh fruits and vegetables can be cut up and combined into healthy and tasty meals. This has caused a sudden flurry of social media meal pictures and recipe exchanges. HOME IMPROVEMENT: Since people were stuck at home, after sitting on the sofa looking at the state of condition of the homestead, brought some people to the local hardware store. Instead of hiring contractors, people began to fix things themselves such as running toilets, loose tiles, dinged walls and worn window treatments. Homeowners began to actually become home owners, taking the responsibility for maintenance and upkeep on themselves. Some really enjoy the new means of expression working with tools. ARTS & CRAFTS: As a corollary of home improvement projects, many homeowners also got into home decoration and crafts. The local craft store ran out of paint canvass. Garden shops noted a surge of new home gardeners. The pandemic has created new free time for most people. Instead of going out to a bar after work, you are left alone in your home with nothing to do except finding a new hobby for your sanity. Some went back to their childhood with their young kids with painting, story telling and planting flowers or using them to make centerpieces. INTEREST IN SCIENCE: The pandemic has created a renewed interest in science news stories. Because the coronavirus is new and unique, people want to know more about it. Since its symptoms are widespread, people are concerned about being infected by it. People also worry about its quick mutations into new strains as being a hindrance to finding a vaccine. New concepts such as herd immunity have become common place in the minds of an average person who had forgotten all of their high school biology. HOMEWORK: Many parents often complained that their children did not receive enough home work from their teachers. Extracurricular activities such as sports take up a student's after school hours. But with the pandemic on-line remote learning, very few elementary and high school students actually attend a virtual class. Most are given a large set of daily homework assignments to complete by the end of each day. In some respects, the students are self-teaching themselves, to the ire of their parents who are still paying for teacher salaries.
There is a distinct difference between learning in a classroom where the teacher explains textbook concepts so students can understand the lesson than a student trying to figure it out on their own. By default, the home parent becomes a substitute teacher for their own children which can create a huge burden if they are also working remotely from home. Many are re-thinking the nature and scope of public education as it manifests itself in technology over brick and mortar collective group learning. STAYCATIONS: In lean times, the staycation was a means of having a family vacation without living one's home. You put up a portal pool, the BBQ grill, outdoor games like corn hole and let the kids run around splashing each other. During the pandemic, most family vacation places such as theme parks, zoos and even beaches were closed. Families had to learn to entertain themselves with new activities. But there is a blurry line between extended staycations and parents workcations, the ability to be on call 24/7 since remote technology is at everyone's finger tips (especially your supervisor's). But not everything is a slight deviation from the normal. The pandemic has re-kindled many intrusive elements from history. VIOLENT PROTESTS from the 1960s civil rights movement have exploded into the headlines after alleged police brutality and killings of black Americans. The federal government has brought back LARGE ANTI-TRUST actions once used to break up the telephone company and IBM against Big Tech giants such as Amazon, Google and Apple. There is also a growing epidemic of modern McCARTHYISM but instead of communist outrageous witch hunts it is politically correct police mandating certain thought and behavioral patterns on everyone. |
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cyberbarf BARF BAGS COMMENTARY
Kevin Mayer, the new CEO of TikTok, resigned after only a few months on the job. The reason was simple: the politics between the U.S. and China over trade, spying, alleged election manipulation and unfair trade has made his job untenable. President Trump has threatened to ban the platform from the US under the guise that the program is gathering data on America's youth. TikTok will probably fold under the political pressure unless it is sold to a non-Chinese enterprise. This story shows the abusive power that governments can wield against seemingly tame businesses like a 15 second video channel.
We have become a world of complainers. The biggest target in the past year have been editorial cartoonists. Readers are constantly offended by cartoons that they do not like. Some find everything racist, insensitive or offensive. But readers and now most editors do not understand the function of political cartoons; it is to invoke a response through commentary on an important political, cultural or societal issue through the means of art, humor and yes, offensive imagery. Many editorial cartoonists have lost their jobs or income because of a few complaints about their personal opinions on matters of public interest.
There are so many conspiracy theories today that it has spawned its own entertainment business model. Historical documentaries are turned into docudramas with a mystery angle that seems never to get solved. The Lost Colony of Roanoke Virginia was one example. The Virginia Pilot recently reported that a researcher concluded that the colony was never lost, but the settlers who landed in North Carolina in 1587 without sufficient supplies, merged with a friendly band of Croatan indians to move to Hatteras Island where they assimilated into a one clan. The researchers found both English and Indian artifacts at the site which disproves the conspiracy theories that they were captured by hostile Indians, kidnapped by pirates or explorers, or wiped out by a natural disaster. A good mystery can make good television but the truth is what should the keynote.
.. cyberbarf POLITICAL THEATER OBSERVATIONS What is you held an election and no one came? Since mid-March, the American presidential race has been a tumbleweed blowing randomly down the open plains. The primaries were not covered by the national media because their were little interest during the pandemic. Voters did not care about debates or targeted advertisements on their social media accounts. Trump was running unopposed and he had the platform of the Presidency to make daily rants against everyone and everything. The Democrats slogged through their nomination process in near silence with only Sanders and Biden making pebble waves in the sea of pandemic news. The primaries were done quietly and mostly remote from the mainstream. In the end, Biden, an old guard Democratic figure, won the nomination. Both the Democratic and Republican conventions were TV-only events which most Americans refused to watch. It was such an underwhelming process that some pundits fear that will constrict the interest in actual voting in November. The push and pull about having an election with mail-in ballots and the potential for fraud is such a kindergarten shoving match that it is insane that it gets so much speculative attention. States like Washington have had mail in elections for years. Every state has had an option for a mail in ballot. This is not new. But everything in American society needs to be supercharged through the prism of politics and fairness. But fairness itself is a loaded word. It is only fair if it benefits yourself. Politics has become the most selfish form of self-indulgence since the Fall of Rome. Technology will not save the election. Mail in ballots mean hand counting votes which will take weeks to finish. The canvas of voters after the initial count will take more time because of the increase in mail voters. We may not know the official electoral vote count until late December, 2020, a mere few weeks before the inauguration. The consensus is that both major parties are being controlled by extreme nutjobs. But both parties are united in not allowing third parties from getting ballot access. The Democrats have made extreme arguments to get the Green Party tossed from the ballot while Republicans have kept Libertarians off. Both see third parties are parasites that can tip a close election to their opponent. But in reality, most Americans, the silent majority, do not like either major party or their candidates. They would actually like to have a third choice, but in modern political media coverage, third party candidates do not have access to get their positions well known. It is done by design. The cable nightly opinion shows are Dem-GOP based talking point based gibberish. National, state and local media outlets do not give time to third parties. The only way to be heard is to self-promote - - - buy access through advertising --- which most third parties do not have. In a year that sees the streets on fire, businesses being looted and politicians yelling at each other like little school children, people should demand change. But change is not coming because the American politics is still one big rusty machine.
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cyberbarf THE WHETHER REPORT |
cyberbarf STATUS |
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Question: Whether on-line political conventions made any difference to voters? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
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Question: Whether there will be a huge economic boom after COVID lockdown restrictions are eliminated? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
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Question: Whether all major professional sports will crown a champion by the end of this year? |
* Educated Guess * Possible * Probable * Beyond a Reasonable Doubt * Doubtful * Vapor Dream |
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