I'm going to go on a rant here, hope y'all don't mind, and take it in the spirit of an old man who's sick of being punked .
I'm not a social media guy so I have nowhere to post my very important, relevant thoughts, and I've never really run across any place (besides here) that values paragraphs, much less when they get strung together, one after another. I can heckle and snark and blurt, but I never feel very good about it later. I don't understand why people do it all day. This place is it, for me. So ...
What started it was this idea that people who stay in school for 4, 5, 6 years after high school are smarter than those who don't. The truth is different. Staying in school instead of leaving the nest and becoming an adult doesn't mean you're smart. And you don't have to be smarter than average to study and pass tests for all those extra years. Any average person can do that, and many sub-average people manage to pass the tests quite well. Smart doesn't equal educated, and educated doesn't equal smart. That should be obvious, but a shocking number of the "smart" people still can't figure it out, decades later. Most of the "uneducated" people I know had no problem figuring it out from the start. All they had to do was listen to what the smart people said, and how they acted about it, all puffy n stuff. But they had that certificate of education, so ...
I'm one of the smart people. It's not my fault, and it has screwed up most of my life, so I've reached the no-fugs-left-in-the-bag point. I'm sick of being punked. I've lost all respect for the people who managed to do what they were told all their lives and have been given positions of significant responsibility that they now hold with pride, as they should. They've had to beat off all the others who wanted that position, and those battles got increasingly corrupt and nasty. Those positions are seldom held by people who won't play the game that way. And then, when they get that wonderful, prideful position, they refuse to accept the burden of the responsibility. It HAS a burden. It's implicit in the position. But they won't accept it. That's a primitive human reaction. It's the reaction of a child. It's a stain on any sense of adulthood. They refused to join the adults after high school, spent their lives "fitting in", were then certified as fitting-inners, and were therefore sure that they would be superior adults as they got older. Not so much really, nu uh. That has not been my lifelong experience. Most of them are ignorant. Because, when they were kids, they passed tests about all that stuff. So now they're smart and don't need to learn anymore. I almost never talk to one of the "smart" people who wanted to learn anything new or unusual or useful. They'll recite what "everyone knows". Sure, that's smart, because if everyone knows, then ... let's back up ... then I know, too, right? Anybody home in there? Can we start over? I was saying that I know something that everyone doesn't know. Interested? No? 'Cause everyone knows the the right stuff already? Got it. Yessiree, you are smart indeed. It's almost always the uneducated that want to learn and teach.
Long prelude, sorry - told you it would be a rant.
The last few years have toasted me. If I had still been in my 30s or 40s, I'd have shrugged it off and just watched and adapted, like always. I'd have been spending most of any free time passing notes to people I knew, watching reels and playing video games like all the other adults around me, assuming it was just life and people who were in positions of responsibility were taking care of things beyond my control. And that's the way humanity lives. It's natural. Twas ever thus. But seriously folks, my fine cyber friends, are we just going to pretend that the last three years didn't happen? Nothing to be ashamed of? Not even a little squeamish?
When the smart people told us, for our own good, that masks would be useful ... what about that? We spent hours every day behind a mask, breathing fresh air from the sides and from the nose whenever it slipped down, and that was ... smart? No it was not. That fresh cool air was a pretty good clue. And the cloth masks from China? That was smart? In an hour on a search engine (back in 2020), I learned everything I needed to know about the various kinds of masks and their effectiveness and under what conditions. I knew they were useless against a virus we had no defenses against. Maybe if you had to dash into an environment and dash back out, the mask would help. Not shopping in a grocery store where everyone in town goes. That place was soaked in virus all the time. But it was smart to leave the groceries open and close the schools? No it was not. Was it smart to ignore the social harms of covering everyone's faces? I will never be able to shake the images of being scowled at by young masked women and their "masked" kids because I was all bare-faced - two furry young brows and squinted eyes glaring at me. Being smart, I knew that I had already had it and lived and had antibodies, etc, but I suppose she had probably graduated from some "university" or borrowed a bunch of money to "study" for a few years before she got pregnant by her current boyfriend who she left after the second one was born, who now stands in from of me with a bare snotty nose drooling down his "mask". Smart? No it was not. Was her primary concern the education of her kids, being out of school and learning how to socialize as a young human from a screen? No no it was not. No, everyone knew that people without masks were killing the ones with the masks. Never mind that said murderer was alive and kicking, having lived through the seriously nasty nasty virus (it was fuggin NASTY) already and was, therefore, wait for it ............. immune and wasn't carrying any infection, cause he was alive as you see, etc. But the smart people on TV were letting everyone know that without a mask, even people who were immune could infect people and therefore EVERYONE had to wear a mask or be called a killer, dirty, dirty person. Was that smart? No it was not. And within a couple months it was clear, had been clear, continued to be clear, that any normal person under 40, without any particular health problems, had no more risk than that of a flu infection. That would include most mommies and all their kids. But that's not what smart people told us. It was all there online. All the States had their websites with daily updates on test and infection rate by age, hospitalization rate by age, death rate by age. Clear. Obvious. No doubt. The smart people hardly ever mentioned it in public or talked to their friends. The doctors didn't utter a peep about it. It was dangerous to the old ones, worse as you got older. It was dangerous to people with pancreas issues, diabetic or obese, and the resulting high blood pressure. I wasn't a life-altering sickness for anyone else. A miniscule percent of under 10 yr olds died or were ever in danger. In my State 98% of the deaths were in those over 40. Those under 40 were 2%. Those under 10 were 0.01%. But the smart people told under 40 mommy that to be a good person she should hide behind a mask and scowl at the old man. Never mind the loss of her kids socialization and education. Who knew that would be a problem later?
And ... the current state of our government and politics? Whew, seriously? Again, these are the smart people? I know that the people we see are just the front people and aren't chosen for their smarts, but there must be smart people telling them what to say and do. Right? The most select PHDs at the most select educational institutions say stupid dumbass, gaslighting stuff and are so smart that they think we're that dumb? A supreme court justice isn't fast enough on her feet to know what a smart answer would sound like? Really? Doesn't she know a smart person she could ask? It's a position that requires clear, concise thinking - not something you'd be prepared to answer with some stupid blurt and a defiant smile.
It's full-on stupid everywhere these days. The pandemic response was fine? The phone addiction is fine? The media gaslighting is fine? The uneducated kids are fine? The obvious anomalies in hormone and sexual development in children are fine? The whole world is coming here and that's fine? African Americans are being stepped on, again!, and that's fine?
I've had it with the smart, educated people. They should do us all a favor and go fuck themselves somewhere out of our sight. They're embarrassments to themselves. And since they're smart enough to know that, one has to wonder ... what sort of person lives that way? Disgusting putzes, spending their lives punking people while they collect their prideful rewards.
There's a fugging entire library online with nearly everything mankind has ever recorded!!!! Do they use it?
Apparently, they do not. They definitely know about the library, because every day they use their portal to make a bee-line to the game section or the porn section or the note-passing section. Libraries are great!
The people who claim that they have their act together should maybe dial back the part where they're so smart and educated. Or maybe explain why they should still be listened to. You know, failure and all? Killing people with their unnecessary bullshit? Depriving an entire generation of kids?
But they just keep up the bullshit.
<rant over>
And the smart plannin' folk aren't with the aliens; their minds are being controlled by them. The technology to penetrate tinfoil hats has been around for a while, so those don't work anymore. 
...cheerz...h00k...
Tomorrow we get presentses! 
(And stoned. Or vice versa) 
"The good stuff".