Here is another post with five Best of Web links I have found deemed worthy to share with you: a must read article about the global mass psychosis going on, an amazing list of all US National Parks rankings, warn you about MLM schemes going online selling you BS and false dreams, an amazing story about a real life Indiana Jones in Indiana and some amazing photography in the COLORS competition.
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The Best of Web posts are much shorter in length with material that is a notch or two above what you see in the regular TBB posts.
Sometimes you can pull up the pay-walled article using Archive.is site.
Click on the headline for the link!
Mass Psychosis
Too many Americans are losing their mind.
Well, having just returned from Greece I would like to point out that this is a global phenomenon!
I do not mean that these are people whose politics are different from mine. I mean that these are people who took off from Spaceport Earth and then ripped up their return visa. It’s bad enough to support a coup against the U.S. government. It’s even worse to do it because you believe (as Powell did) that the CIA director is being held in secret custody in Germany or because you think (as Flynn did) that so many ballots were falsified that the military should impound them. Remember, for a hot minute Flynn was the national security adviser, the guy who wakes up the president if there’s a sign of an incoming nuclear attack. You probably should worry if a person in that position is a member of a whacked-out cult and thinks maybe the government is sneaking vaccines into your salad dressing. Next to Flynn, Curtis LeMay seems like a Zen master.
We’ve become a nation… in which millions of us have embraced a toxic combination of fantasy and stupidity. This is more than just the revival of conspiracy theories, which always lurk just beneath the surface of every society. This is far worse. From “microchips in the vaccines” to QAnon, from Venezuelan voting machines to Russian-hacked voting machines, from faked moon landings to “January 6 was antifa or the FBI or maybe both,” too many of our fellow citizens are adrift, lost, freaked-out, and willing to believe almost anything, especially if it helps to support their preexisting political narratives and tribal loyalties.
Sure, some of this can be written off to ignorance. (When a quarter of us believe the sun revolves around the Earth, that’s just depleted-uranium dumbness.) But there’s a huge difference between being confused about which way the Earth turns and going to Dallas because you think a resurrected John F. Kennedy Jr. is going to lead you to a new era of government by revenant.
This is a social sickness, a chronic and growing problem in a society that is searching for meaning and connection. This search once led us to family or faith or community involvement. But that was before we chose a life of narcissistic, consumer-driven isolation. Even before the pandemic, modern humans spent way too much time inside our own heads, inside our own homes, and away from our fellow citizens.
We’re now a nation of paranoid shut-ins by our own choice, and our tabloid excitement comes in far greater volume from the internet and cable. Lonely, bored, desperate for anything that will make our lives interesting, and convinced that we should all be at the center of great dramas, we feed on trash strewn before us by clever entrepreneurs who can monetize the movement of our eyeballs and the twitch of our mousing hand.
Turning to someone you know and telling them that the Earth is round, that vaccines work, that JFK Jr. is as dead as Julius Caesar—and that you are not willing to argue about it for three hours—is not an act of hostility. It’s an act of civic virtue, of friendship, even of love. And we need to do more of it.
All US National Parks Ranked from Best to Worst in 2021
This is a great list of all 63 national parks. I bookmarked it for reference and you should too.
#1 was Olympic National Park. Dead last at #63 is Gateway Arch National Park in St. Louis, Missouri.
When Multilevel Marketing Met Gen Z
Amelia Whelan used social media as an accelerant for her sales community. Then things blew up.
Beware of MLM schemes out there! And now of course beware of them online; this article captures the mega BS in this industry selling a “lifestyle” and promises of bigly income streams to gullible unsuspecting readers who fall for this crap.
A client once called me his BS antenna…and I was proud of it!
Maybe, because this video is “your invitation to experience lasting abundance” and “financial freedom” and the opportunity to travel the world, ethically, while eschewing plastic water bottles. Amelia Whelan, founder of the Breakaway Movement, shared it to Facebook on her company’s launch day, in the summer of 2019, when she was 25 years old. “I’ve dedicated the last 12 months of my life to this project, so I know you’ll love it,” she wrote at the time. “I invite you to join me and breakaway …”
Doing so would cost just $33.33 a month, in exchange for access to a private Facebook group, invitations to weekly group calls, an assigned mentor, and dozens of hours of video-course materials about how to create a social-media brand, how to form an LLC, how to maintain a “money mindset,” and, sort of, how to sell $5,000 K8 water-ionizing machines to your friends and followers on commission for a Japanese tech company called Enagic. (Enagic says it does not have a formal relationship with the Breakaway Movement or Whelan, beyond her being an independent distributor for the company.)
And it just goes off from there…I had to stop midway to relieve my neck pain from so much head shaking. When I returned to finish reading the article…the head shaking also returned. I managed to get to the end with my head intact! #winning.
How the FBI Discovered a Real-Life Indiana Jones in, of All Places, Rural Indiana
This is one of those rare gems.
A 90-year-old amateur archaeologist who claimed to have detonated the first atomic bomb was also one of the most prolific grave robbers in modern American history.
Lost count how many times I said ‘Wow!”
Enjoy it before I ruin the suspense here…
Winners of 2021 COLORS Photography Contest
These are amazing.
Back in the USA…hopefully without Omicron inside me!
And I leave you with this…
TBB
travelbloggerbuzz@gmail.com
Hey Buzz-
Welcome back to the US, back to the US, back to the USA.
Speaking of the Beatles, I saw a comment that said the new documentary is pretty great for the most part, but some of it is like watching your parents fight.
That Tom Nichols article really rings the bell-glad I read TBB so I didn’t miss it.
I wrote UA about the guy across the aisle from me who nursed a drink for two hours with no mask on while the flight attendants walked by him over and over, saying nothing. I’ll post when I hear back but don’t hold space for that.
We cancelled our Christmas trip to Taos and Santa Fe since the new daily infections per 100k pop is about 2-3x Colorado. I guess we’re headed back into the take-out-food shadows again.
A good friend called COVID nothing but a bad flu. Now his anti-vax wife tested positive and he’s got double morbidity. He sounds scared and I know I am. I’m planning to drop some food on their porch with my fingers crossed.
Have a good weekend, Buzz. Somehow.
The Lufthansa FAs were going up and down the aisles telling everyone who dared take mask off/wear it wrong to mask up right, I was impressed.
Not going to Tuscon either over Christmas. At this point, I am keeping my Kauai late January trip…at this point.
A lot of the antivax types are Trump voters/fans. I would like to see what the death of so many of them will actually…do in the ballot box in the next two elections. I guess no pollster has the guts to research this one…
Now if I can convince my dear 22 year old niece to get the shots and she can still have a healthy baby down the road….She comes back with “Well, we don’t know for sure, tthey have long enough!”…which is true.
It will be two full years living with Covid shortly…
First PCR test tomorrow for me…
Thanks for National Park rankings! Those make a lot of sense in terms what I remember.
Glad you’re back.
Yellowstone gets a lot of hype, and it is indeed an amazing place, but I just loved Grand Teton and wasn’t surprised to see it at #2. I really want to see the Utah parks though.
I saved that list. Needless to say, Olympic is now a definite target.
Not debating for three hours that these people s minds are twisted, amen to that. I’m done with trying to rationalize with wacked out people. As a matter of fact, I don’t care if anti-vaxers die from Covid. They chose self destruction and get what they deserve. The anti-vaxers should be denied medical treatment.
Yes, I think we should make every effort to kill off people who make bad decisions. I also favor withholding medical treatment from people who overdose on drugs or who are injured after drunk driving.
Maybe we nee d to Lock Them Up…
Yeah, I am done arguing with them too. I just tell them “I hope you don’t regret. Maybe you don’t care about yourselves but do you really hate your loved ones by endangering them this way?….
Good morning Buzz,
Congrats once again on the marathon and welcome back.
I almost dread reading the “Mass Psychosis” article. And I too am finding it more difficult by the day to have any sympathy for the anti-vax groupies.
On the bright side, another sunny day in the Sonoran Desert, and only about 10 degrees warmer than what used to be considered normal…
We need to look on the bright side.
But after going to my local Starbucks and asked “Are you here for Uber Eats” I am having existential doubts about myself 🙂
Good to be back, that was a really weird time to be visiting Greece.
Hello David. I, too, abide in the Sonoran desert and am getting tired of the “above normal” business. All the media should phrase it as you did.
Christmas presents from my sister to her family this year are Mike Lindell MyPillows. She wants to support the work he does!
If I get one from her (better than something embroidered with jesus slogans, i guess), what should I do with it? Please advise.
Also, Washington State for the Gold and Bronze. Here here!
Donate it to a shelter or something.
I would lose it if I was gifted that 🙂 I am sorry! Bill’s idea sounds good…way too kind actually!