@Raggedy Ann These days I am glad to be entering the twilight years. The human strife, migration and conflict, instigated by global warming, is going to be ugly.

So many thoughts are swirling in my head. I am mostly concerned for my grandkids, who are just starting their adult lives. I implore them not to bring new humans to this unstable planet. Let's wait to see what the 2030's bring, because I cannot see a "correction" happening before then. We are living in upside down times. I'm dizzy!

I read the articles, but I have no comment. Without revolution, we are sitting ducks. That said...

Have a beautiful day and weekend, folks!

@HenryAWallace Tuning out is definitely a coping technique. No Internet or 24 hour news this weekend. The main street through town is closing for a BBQ competition, with beer! I already have my drink tokens.

Sometimes I wonder if the only "bottom line" things that have changed might be (1) we hear more about stuff these days, especially with the internet; and (2) since the Industrial Revolution, the earth is less and less able to with the junk we send into the air/atmosphere and water.

Population growth is another factor, though not a change. It's just that we have more human-ish types procreating than we did a few million years ago and more people, especially infants and moms, surviving longer. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-human-familys-earliest...

I think greed and lust for power are timeless; and power was always based on who was strongest by however "strong" was measured, be it physical strength, hunting ability, the currency of the era, social skills/connivance/politics, or whatever. And I think power probably always corrupted and always was abused. It's just that it's one thing to abuse power with your club or rock or whatever amid your clan and another to abuse it with a modern military and WMD all over the planet.

Or not. Maybe I just can't imagine another kind of hominid than the ones with whom I am familiar.

Either way, we are where we are and I have no clue what to do about it. I wish every professional columnist who tells us every day or every week or every month what is wrong with our country and the world would get together with everyone else like him and her and brainstorm for solutions, instead of digging around for more problems to write about. The Bilderburg Group and their ilk do that kind of thing at least annually, but not so much with an eye to fixing things for everyone. But, we don't give people looking out for us an incentive to do that kind of thing.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, maybe you're right. Maybe it's just best not to dwell too long on what is wrong.

When my sister (in NYC) broke up with someone, she could not stop obsessing and talking about him. One day, as she was conversing on the phone with a friend on the West Coast, she began talking about him again. Her friend immediately interrupted her with: "Okay. You can talk about him for the next (X number of) minutes. And that will be it for this conversation."

Maybe, for our own sanity, that's the kind of thing we need to do with every problem to which we don't know solutions. Put a daily limit on the amount of time we learn, think or post about them. And preferably spend at least two or three times as much time doing things that heal/bring joy.

Hope your your walk was beneficial and pleasant. Have an enjoyable weekend.

@mimi I never use Amazon, nor Walmart. Unfortunately, some of my hobby stuff compels me to order online, and use PayPal. I guess that is the price of keeping a 1982 German motorcycle on the road. I got myself immersed in a Siebenrock overbore kit, which will breath new life into my first two wheeled love.

It is always good to hear from you!

was able to get rich with his original first amazon.com booksite and what he had done before as a job and how he got the permission to put 1.2 million book titles on a website from the book distributor. (Bowker's Books in Print and/or Baker&Taylor).

Before 1995 both distributor's databases were sold only as CD and used inside the brick and mortar bookstores, who paid for that usage. When the www came into being, I assume Bezos was the first to think about putting their databases online in his "greatest bookstore on earth".

You had to buy a license to put these data in nicely appealing visual format online on the www for the purpose of online book selling then.

I talked to the book distributor back then to get a license for posting 300 000 titles online and was told I can't buy a license for the whole database, the 1.2 million titles or whatever number of titles it was back then . When I asked why that was not possible, they told me (on the phone) that it is because Mr. Bezos had insisted on exclusive rights for the whole database's titles and they had accepted his terms.

No other online bookseller would ever be able to get the same license. That fact, that he was the only online bookstore in 1995 who could advertise as the biggest bookstore on earth with one million titles, knowing no other online bookstore would get the same license as he had, was in my understanding the basis of his rise to an online site and the wealth of what it is today.

I always asked myself how it was legally possible to get such an exclusive right from the book distributor for their data and regret a lot that I don't know how to find that out. I think that the fact that he could get such a license and prevent any other business from getting the same, was the reason bookstores died out in the thousands across the US. I still think it's a huge shame. BYMMV.

In 1994 he was working on the website and participated at the Bookseller's Association Conference in New Orleans where he talked about the potential of online book selling, but most of the audience and organizers couldn't foresee what happened, when he launched his online site on July 16th, 1995.

[video:https://youtu.be/lM9U6MA_xdQ]
Kudos to Jimmy Dore to get rid of his Amazon.com link. I try to boycott buying from them whenever possible.

Here are some facts back from the 1994 to 1996 times.
15 fascinating facts you probably didn't know about Amazon

In the first month of its launch, Amazon had already sold books to people in all 50 states and in 45 different countries. An obscure book about lichens saved Amazon from going bankrupt.

Book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time, and Amazon didn't need that much inventory yet (or have that much money).

So, the team discovered a loophole. Although the distributors required that Amazon ordered 10 books, the company didn't need to receive that many. So, they would order one book they needed, and nine copies of an obscure lichen book, which was always out of stock.

Nice. But what had Besoz to pay for a license to not only sell but use their database data for it online store? How did he get the the license to post the data of those book distributor's database online on a www website?

Unfortunately I am not capable to understand how he negotiated that license, what he had to pay for it to put the titles and their data online (copyright debate about the data having a copyright for the book distributors). By 1996 it was clear that nobody online would be able to compete against Bezos online bookstore.

Here is another article covering Amazon.com's beginnings:
. When Amazon was young: the early years. Originally known as "Cadabra," Amazon was doing $20k in sales a week two months after launch

And this article in the Washington Post from 1996 is pure poison to my mind as far as I am able to fathom and understand what it means.
Venture Capital Firm Kleiner Perkins Has Long Nurtured Internet Enterprises - By Elizabeth Corcoran - Washington Post Staff Writer - Sunday, October 13 1996; Page H01

For companies, becoming part of the Kleiner keiretsu means gaining entree to a network of corporate contacts and ideas, along with the expertise of the Kleiner partners themselves.

"There are a lot of VC [venture capital] firms that can add value," said Jeff Bezos, founder of Internet bookseller Amazon.com Inc., which recently became a Kleiner investment. But Kleiner and Doerr "are the gravitational center of a huge piece of the Internet world," he said. "It's the equivalent of prime real estate, and we can get a lot of value from that."

Like other VC firms, Kleiner spends considerable time helping fledgling companies develop their management teams. To cite the most remarkable example, Kleiner helped Netscape recruit its widely praised CEO, Barksdale, along with six vice presidents.

Those were the times...

Well, I think I should listen to your music and not get crazy over Amazon.com. Luckily one of the only independent bookstores in Washington DC that survived is: "Politics and Prose". And C99p has also quite a bit of 'politics' and 'prose'. Which is nice.

Here in Germany, I just bought two books from a store and they were stolen from me two hours later. We have lots of pickpocketeers around here these days and for slightly absentminded people like me that is an unwelcome development. So, I thought back of Amazon deliveries of books and it triggered me to write this comment after Jimmy Dore's video.

Thanks for your OT and have a good day, all.

@orlbucfan ... is from y'all's neck of the woods. I think I will head for the hills mountains before it gets too hot. Thanks for stopping by, your funk ->

Sleepy and just enjoying the cool weather. Not. looking forward to hot. hot. and more hot. this summer. Rec'd!!

@randtntx ... was my favorite childhood book. I was intrigued by the places they went, like the planet of blind inhabitants that still abided by the light and dark cycle, due to the temperature fluctuation.

dance, nature walks, or whatever can serve as an antidote to the poison around us. It has to be In reasonable sized increments for me though. All I can think of to do is to keep trying to stay informed and do good work as much as possible.

Your last tune above is sweet. It makes me want to go down to the coast and take long walks on the beach. Right now that would be heaven.

I'm going to see A Wrinkle in Time this weekend. From one of our favorite childhood books.