Last night, I spent 5 hours installing, securing, converting content, and theming a WordPress rendition of this site. This morning, I rolled back the updates to this Jekyll and markdown furnishings in my home at GitHub. I need to remind myself not to break my #7 New Year's Resolution: "Maintain My Website via GitHub Pages." There's a reason why I felt it was a necessity for this year!

Of course, this leaping between platforms is nothing new for me and I wrote about it considerably during 2020. While I do like the Last.FM live status, there's nothing else that WordPress with its dynamic capability can provide me that I don't already have. In fact, I realized last night that I just import the solutions I use for a static website into WP as opposed to using Just Another Aged Poorly Plugin. And even with a cache solution, WP is a contestant running an obstacle course on The Biggest Loser.

And I gotta admit, there's a little bit of personal pride that the theme is all mine—yes, of course the visual elements have been mine for several years as I've translated it into 3 different themes by other authors. But, this time around, I just made a basic structure that makes it easy for me to know exactly what is going on. Jekyll makes it so that I can use a static layout with how I once used includes with php for templating, leaving an end result that—well, just check out the source code for this page—very readable! Personally, I'd like to rework it a little bit as it relates to indenting, but I suppose it's not a critical thing for me to run down how the files come together as it relates to indents in the code, especially as it's an audience of one! (And...well, considering I'm writing this in markdown, I don't really have to read it...nevertheless...)

All that aside, I did consider sticking with WP, if it could provide me something, ANYTHING, that would make life better beyond letting you know what music that's playing right now (for the record, right now it's Live's All Over You). So I googled...and grew sick to my stomach as I read how certain plugins can meet the needs of blogs to maximize the conversion ratio of its users...SMH. I'm too old school for that. Too human. Why do people suddenly turn into used car salesmen when they are virtualized? Why do they think the endgame is about trying to trick people through "user content generation" to maximize the clickety-clack-clack tap dance? Honestly, we will not notice when these people are replaced in society by Cylon models. I, for one, welcome our new Tricia Helfer overlords.

Admittedly, I didn't like yesterday's post. The thing is, I want to believe that everyone in positions of power has the best of intentions, yet prisons are full of people whom had merely a taste of power—why should I throw an "aw shucks" blanket across everyone? Clearly, politicians are not a higher standard of a person, why assume them to be as such?

I want to believe; I don't want to be so cynical. It's easy to quickly dismiss people, places, things and ideas; it's far harder to take a good, long look in the mirror and recognize our own weaknesses and threats. But, it is critical that we do, for in practice, what else really matters but that which is within the sphere of our control? We may shake our fist at our screens at news media reports, but what does it really matter when we are not in positions to affect the outcome? How much better would it be to use that same energy toward our own situation?

If we are not affecting change to those around us or to ourselves, perhaps, it's time to turn from the jumbotron and walk out of the arena. Perhaps, this is the time to hand in these ill-fitting robes as followers of celebrities and close the doors of our social media accounts. Is the challenge of this age of humanity where instead of taking the leading role in our narrative, we just sit and watch someone else live their lives? Not that I'd adhere to living in a vacuum devoid of any cabling—I like to be inspired! But, at what point does our devotion become a replacement for us? At what point does it become inspired demotivation?

OK, so I think I've pretty much covered all of the beginnings of the new year, whether it's The Eve, The Closure of the First Month or today's Asian holiday. And with all this fanfare, I'd really like to get things moving!

One of the initiatives I need to bring to the forefront is my move away from news media. I don't discuss politics on my website because what we think politics should be about, is not what it is at ALL. I grew up believing politics is about optimized societal management; or to put it in this way: in its basic form, what is the most effective fuel mixture between freedom and management to achieve the greatest outcome for society? In practice, however, while politics takes on the sheepskin of my naiveté, it is the wolf of football; it is only the competition for power with an added layer of complexity involving principal-agent dilemmas. Politics is not about doing the right thing, but making the moves necessary to maximize power. If this lust for power attainment is not true, then politics is about rounding up the most idiots in a suit that can fit underneath a rotunda.

It is FRUSTRATING for me to look in from the outside and see that no one wants to do the right thing. I get it: knowing the right thing to do is difficult, doing it is even harder. But, it's not about the right thing and unfortunately, the news media basically covers this competition ALL THE TIME as no asks the question, "why?" You can count me out.

And at the end of the day, the subject is immaterial and irrelevant to me. Yes, I am a tax payer, but what does that even mean? The value of the currency that comes to me has only the value that politics imparts upon it. It cannot be taken away simply because the value of money does not exist apart from this fragile social agreement of an entity that shapes this particular parameter on our lives. But, we all agree that a dollar is a dollar though it wasn't a dollar a year ago.

We know this; we know that the value of currency changes all the time through societal forces. In fact, the value of money is so volatile that we make trades all the time between different currencies as we game the system. Those who are in power choose to assign whatever value they wish on currency and I find that paying taxes is merely the theater of buy-in imparting a false sense of control. The only true value is what we do with our hands.

While fundamentally, the stock market is the selling of a chance to wear Mr. Monopoly's top hat so that a company can build a larger furnace for people to shove in more cash, can we with any seriousness think that the stock market, in of itself—brand value be damned, creates wealth? Isn't it from a trading perspective, a zero-sum game? For every seller, there is a buyer; for everyone who makes money, someone is going to lose value. Are we collectively reflected accurately as the stock market rises? The DJIA for the past ten years has increased by a factor of 3. Can you say the same for society? Is beef three times better? Are friendships three times better? Is your happiness three times better? So, what's really going on here: is it really wealth creation or wealth concentration? Or, is it even real? Could currency be just a narrative to frame a facade to make us think we have power?

Who cares? Let's get back to wolfball on TV.

Well, enough with that rant...

Physically, I remain in shutdown mode. For whatever reason, my right hamstring has been tight on me today. It's frustrating, especially as I'm amped up on Kerrygold butter coffee! I feel like I'm just in a holding pattern for external events. So many times my younger self lacked the motivation or couldn't jumpstart a dead program. It's easy, of course, to blame younger me, though I suspect his diet was to blame. Like everyone else of the era, I had bought into a low-fat, high-carb approach, that insipid, "Rice is a health food" dogma. If rice was a health food, I would have already turned into one lean, mean fighting machine!