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Why I Believe Kindness Still Matters

~ John ~ 2 Comments

These days it feels like negativity surrounds us everywhere. Turn on the television, open social media, or listen to public conversations, and it often seems like anger and division dominate everything. Many people have become convinced that society is growing colder and more selfish with every passing year.

I understand why people feel that way, but I personally do not believe it tells the whole story.

In my opinion, kindness is still one of the strongest forces in everyday life. The problem is that good behavior rarely receives attention. Bad news spreads quickly because conflict attracts curiosity, while ordinary acts of decency usually happen quietly in the background.

Most kindness never becomes visible to the public.

A neighbor helping someone carry groceries, a worker staying late to help a customer, or a stranger showing patience to an elderly person will never become major headlines. Yet these small moments happen constantly. If people slow down and truly pay attention, they will notice that millions of ordinary individuals are still trying to treat others with respect and compassion.

I see examples of this all the time.

I see parents working hard to provide for their children even when they are exhausted. I see nurses comforting frightened patients. I see people volunteering their time during emergencies or helping neighbors after storms. These actions may seem small individually, but together they create the foundation that keeps communities functioning.

One thing I have learned is that kindness is not weakness. In fact, I think it takes far more strength to remain patient and respectful during stressful situations than it does to become angry and bitter. Anybody can lose control of their temper. Anybody can criticize others or spread negativity. Choosing self-control and understanding requires real character.

I also believe people often underestimate the impact they have on each other. A simple conversation or small act of consideration can stay with somebody for years. Many people are carrying struggles that nobody else can see. Someone smiling in public may still be dealing with grief, fear, financial pressure, or loneliness behind closed doors.

Because of that, I think compassion matters more than ever.

We never fully know what another person is facing in life. Sometimes a little patience or encouragement can completely change the direction of somebody’s day. Small positive actions may appear insignificant at first, but they often create ripple effects that continue far beyond the original moment.

I am not saying the world is perfect. Serious problems clearly exist, and there is no shortage of cruelty or division. However, I still believe most people want peaceful lives and genuinely care about those around them. During difficult times, communities repeatedly come together to help complete strangers. That alone says something important about human nature.

Personally, I refuse to believe the world is hopeless.

Despite all the negativity people focus on, I still see goodness every single day. I see it in families, neighborhoods, workplaces, and random interactions between strangers. In my opinion, society continues moving forward because millions of ordinary people quietly choose decency every day without expecting praise for it.

That is exactly why I believe kindness still matters so much.

Saturday June 13, 2026

~ John ~ 2 Comments

Hot outside today but the nights are cool and I love a good cool night in which to sleep, don’t you? But I am not complaining about the heat because even though it is inconvenient, it is not all that oppressive as yet– but I am expecting some awful hot weather coming down the road this year— I am looking for temperatures at or in excess of 120 degrees Fahrenheit in places like Biloxi, Mississippi and Joshua, Texas. This is not too far off the mark because my good friend, Lobotero, already reported that local temperatures where he lives have exceeded 100 degrees already and it is still early in the season. —-https://lobotero.com/

It is 7:42 in the evening here at the mansion and I am sitting here in my air conditioned bedroom , typing my blog post on my two almost thousand dollar computer … a Dell Optiplex A10-2470 all in one desk top computer ….which I dearly love because it is a business machine and is built strong as a tank. (I am not being compensated in any way,shape or form for mentioning the Dell computer brand… I am just sharing something that I dearly love.

I am assuming that my friend, Jim, has already selected a movie cd disk for us to watch this evening…. a movie is our normal routine …that is what we do now because we are mostly too old to get out and about the way we used to do — but it is still good … and we both enjoy a quiet evening at home … regardless of the crank calls that keep popping up on our new phone system….but the good thing with the new system is that it allows us to block any call we want to block the instant we receive a call from it or at anytime afterward …and I do love blocking calls from assholes. The movie we watched last night was called “Bonneville” and it was a rip roaring adventure, to be sure. — More Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZsozEYmflg

My dinner this evening was a gourmet peanut butter sandwich made with “Ezekiel” bread. This is a bread with a recipe that is almost as old as the original bread eaten in the time Jesus Christ walked the earth. There is no flour in it. It is all sprouts and seeds and grains. It needs refrigeration but I dearly love the enticing nut-like flavor.

I have to take a break right now and get ready for the movie but I will come back sometime around 10:00 this evening to finish up this post so do not despair, I am still here for you….because…. well, because I love all those who take their precious time to drop by and visit me here on the blog. Call that “Eccentric” if you want to , but it is me and that is the way I am. Before I go, I want to mention that I have been toying with the idea of investing in bitcoin because I hear it is booming now– but I am a little bit hesitant because somebody told me that the big rich guys are making a killing with bitcoin and the little guys like me are not

Watched a movie tonight called “The Lake House” and found it interesting as possible science fiction — some kind of supernatural love story — kind of slow but I was intrigued enough to watch it through without going to sleep …I do like Kenau (Canoe) Reeves and Sandra Bullock a lot— Read More: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ5lPbssHS8

Jimmy is talking about doing yard work again….I think we are too damned old to do yard work and I hate yard work — would rather hire it done …but Jimmy insists on getting out there in the hot sun ….the good part is that we both get tired easily so we won’t be out there too long at one time. That is the good part.


AI and Me For Now

~ John ~ 3 Comments

Everybody who reads this blog knows by this time that I am never consistent with anything– “Change” is my middle name and I am a first cousin to “Experiment” and “Explore.” So you will never see this blog in the same format for very long at a time. (I think i smell pizza cooking in the kitchen….my friend, Jimmy, is out there cooking up something…I am guessing that whatever it is, it will include left overs from my more-than-magnificient culinary achievement of yesterday: “Swamp Potatoes with Smoked Sausage.”

Right now I am thinking that I am kind of grateful for the advance of artificial intelligence since my own intelligence is not what it once was …..the AI is good at suggesting things for me to write about when I get brain fog which is a far more than occasional happening at my new age of 88 years. (I am an official New Age Guy now. LOL.).

For the time being, I am controlling the AI and it is not yet controlling me although it is becoming a habit and I think I might get hooked after all. The thing is awfully smart and lightning quick with answers when I need answers which is not all that often because I have an unusually high intellectual level ….higher than most ordinaries, i would venture to say ….but it is always nice to get someone else’s opinion even if the “Someone Else” is only a string of electronic impulses separating millions of micro-second renditions of anomalies of algorithmic zeros and ones. I am told that the AI thing does little more than scrape the web for information and then parse that to individual order when asked by a user such as myself. I have no idea if that is true or not, but the damned thing is fascinating and i am loving it.

Like I said before, “I am now 88 years old” and I do not feel all that much different than i did when I was 40, 50, 60 and 70 — but I did notice some minor indicators of some kind of decline once I hit the 70 mark but they were so minor that I never paid much attention to them. One big change that I did notice was that all my friends are either dead or moved to climes unknown (as far as I can tell) — I do know that I am going to a lot more funerals these days than I had ever gone to before. In fact, I just went to a funeral yesterday for a friend of Jimmy’s. It was a somber affair. She was cremated so there was no open urn service. That was disappointing to me.

My birthday passed without much hoo-dee-do — it was just me and my partner/friend/companion/landlord/soul mate, Jimmy….. Graeter’s ice cream and cake, coffee and my afternoon nap … that was about it …. I did win One Hundred dollars from a Lottery scratch off ticket ….which I loved but which I do not need ….but it did remind me of a hobby that used to have ….I used to go around digging in garbage cans at convenience stores to find already-used lottery scratch off tickets. The reason? A lot of people either only half scratch their tickets or they miss seeing that they have a winner so they just throw them away. I have found hundreds of dollars in winners on these tickets that dumb asses have disposed of. I might start doing that again sometime … depending on how my wealth manager does with my little portfolio with the big insurance company’s private investment and banking system.

I think I just wrote something that some people might be able to use. I hope so.

Well, I am a father of three sons … two of which are now dead ….and one who rarely ever communicates with me because he is busy taking care of a family of his own …. an adopted family ….several kids … a houseful of permanent guests who are relatives of his wife….guests who just moved in on my son and his wife and never left …but he is fine with the situation because, as he claims, everybody pitches in to help. But, as nature would have it, he has very little time to devote to old dad here and so my investment in this relationship is very minimal except for me being the go-to source when money is needed for something or the other.

I decided to go out and buy a loaf of Ezekiel bread this morning because I wanted to find a bread that is closer to the 3.000-year-old recipe that people ate regularly in the times of Jesus. This one comes as close as any of the others that I have tried and I like it….and I am going to keep on using it as long as I can find it. It comes frozen because there is no flour in it; only “Spouts” of one kind of grain or another. No chemicals or preservatives either, I am told. I toasted two slices of it in my computer-driven bread toasting machine — a mechanical and technical marvel … a computer with a case around it and a heater and timer in it … makes perfect toast every time …any shade of toast a person could ever desire… I think the choices of shades on this toaster are totally and really unlimited.

I am so glad that I finally decided to downsize a couple of years ago now….all those rooms in that other place became challenging to me after retirement… I would walk around the place thinking to myself, “What in the hell do I need all this room for….it is just me and Jimmy and the houseboy and Mr. Butler…..and it started to feel like living inside of a luxurious cavern … the smell of old leather and polished oak beams and fresh paint….dry cleaner fluid scent from the massive drapes …everything just so…. everything with a place and everything in its place ….damn! I love to scatter shit and leave it — and in those days I had people to pick up after me ….and I used to delight in making their jobs hard on them …. but they never complained …. nobody who ever worked for me ever complained …. I was good to everybody except the ones i fired after they would get tired of my eccentric ways and tell me about it …..I would never tolerate insolence …even though I, myself, was often insolent as all hell. But I could afford it. Amazing the things you can do when you can afford it.

There are some things that never change though: I am still infatuated with Christian Dior’s fragrance called “Savauge Elixir.” I always buy the 5-ounce bottle. In fact, this month I bought two of them because they are relatively inexpensive at just a little over three hundred dollars each. But they are grand indeed and get me many compliments and, they make a statement whenever I enter a room …. which I do not do all that often anymore….except here at the downsized abode.

I Almost Cannot Believe. . .

~ John ~ 2 Comments

It is so strange to me that my post about personal ruminations is the one that got the most views on this blog in the last few hours — just irrelevant nonsense and a lot of talk about happenings and non-happenings and almost happenings in my mundane life — This is evidence to me that there are a lot of good hearted people out there…. good enough to listen to my rants and ravings…..and that is a treasure to my heart and soul …..so thank each and everyone of you from the bottom of my grateful heart.

I made a kind of soup/stew today with my Insta Pot pressure cooker and I will share the recipe with you because my friend Jimmy and I both thought it was good. I call it swamp potato stew/soup.

Into the crock pot pressure cooking throw all the following ingredients in at once:

4 peeled potatoes that you have diced to about one-inch cubes/pieces.

1 can cut green beans

2 can navy beans

1 well diced cooking onion

1 pound smoked sausage which you have sliced into 1/4-inch bite-sized round pieces.

1 teaspoon or more garlic powder (to taste) — I ended up using a tablespoon.

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

1/4 teaspoon ground thyme

Save the salt for each individual to use on his or her own portion once the recipe is served.

Use enough beef broth to just cover the entirety of this mess in the pressure cooker.

Make sure you follow all the safety instructions for your pressure cooker to the letter:

Stir it all up in the pressure cooker cooking pan.

seal the lid as directed on the pressure cooker.

Turn the pressure cooker on.

Set the cooking time for Ten (10) minutes.

When the stew/soup has cooked for 10 minutes allow the pressure cooker to release its pressure naturally… this adds more subtle cooking time to the stew and insures that everything is very palatable.

Once the pressure has all left the cooker, take the lid off according to manufacturer instructions and stir the soul/stew again before ladeling it out in at least one-cup servings (Or cup-and-a-half servings as you desire.)

Let eat diner add any more salt or pepper or garlic to their portion if they desire.

I think the next time out I am going to do my award-winning chili-con-carne recipe in the pressure cooker. I have always done this one on a stove top ….but I am open to experimentation.

The weather here is hot today — (What did you expect, dummy … it is summertime after all) (Remember when you were bitching and moaning about the ice and snow?) — I am predicting 120-degree temperatures in parts of the South and the West for the period July/August this year and the worst fire and storm season on record. For anyone who likes to argue, let me remind you that I am usually pretty “Spot-On” with my predictions about everything….so make notes and keep them around for the day I say “I told you…I told you..!”

Tell me my friends…. what is the difference between a snowman and a snow woman?
The difference is snowballs.

What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo?
One is really heavy, the other is a little lighter.

What’s the difference between a cat and a comma?
A cat has claws at the end of paws; a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.

What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?
I don’t know, and I don’t care.

What’s the difference between a guitar and a fish?
You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.

What’s the difference between a bad golfer and a bad skydiver?
A bad golfer goes whack, darn. A bad skydiver goes darn, whack.

What’s the difference between a lawyer and a herd of buffalo?
The lawyer charges more.

What’s the difference between a mosquito and a politician?
One stops sucking when you slap it.

What’s the difference between a park bench and a lobster with breast implants?
One is a crusty bus station, the other is a busty crustacean.

What’s the difference between coffee and your opinion?
I asked for coffee.

What’s the difference between a train conductor and a teacher?
One says, “Spit out your gum,” the other says, “Choo choo choo!”

It’s getting pretty close to my afternoon nap time.

Alright now, so my friend Jimmy and I watched a movie tonight called “Water World” with Kevin Costner and I thought, “Well, it isn’t bad… but not too good either…..I am sure a lot of people liked it ….. It was a big deal at one time as I recall.

The state of Alabama reportedly has asked the courts for more nitrogen gas executions and my problem with that is “Why would anybody want to put nitrogen gas on trial for anything, much less execute it. I hope your genius minds can figure this one our so I don’t have to explain it.

QUOTATION — “….The Trump Justice Department is doubling down on an argument that, if accepted, could open the door for the administration — and anti-voting groups — to create lists of voters and send them to states for removal right before elections…..END OF QUOTATION. — Source of Quote: https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-doj-doubles-down-on-claim-that-states-can-purge-voters-right-before-elections/

My question about that is this: “How in the hell does anybody expect somebody to manipulate an election if they do not have the power to remove voters before the election?”

I read where the Trump administration has detained at least 500 babies and toddlers:

QUOTE –“mmigration and Customs Enforcement has detained at least five hundred babies and toddlers since President Donald Trump began his second term, according to a new report.” ….END QUOTE. —- So my answer to that is this: Why not detain the brats because the brats will grow into adults sooner or later and if you are going to detain them, you might as well just do it now and get it over with.” — Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-administration-detained-more-500-234652208.html

Has anybody besides me ever noticed that when President Trump announces that he is close to getting an agreement with Iran to end the war that the stock markets go crazy gaining value like gang busters? Has anybody remembered how many times this has happened? It is definitely more than once. This seems to me to be an ideal way to keep that stock market jumping …just announce being close to a deal to end a war and watch the markets dance….excellent economic tactics if you want my opinion about it.

A flesh-eating parasite has reportedly been found in a dog in the United States so my advice is “Don’t eat dogs.” — Source of story: https://www.newsweek.com/screwworm-texas-new-world-outbreak-cattle-12044870

They tell me that the biggest threat to higher education isn’t making headlines, so I want to know if headlines are not the biggest threat to higher education then what the hell is the biggest threat? — Read More: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5912132-trump-administration-assault-on-higher-education/

They say that Cruel and Crazy have been defeated in South Carolina and I didn’t even know that they were running for anything…..See Story Here: https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/cruel-and-crazy-defeated-in-south

Soylent Green, Not So Much Fiction Anymore — Maybe!

~ John ~ 3 Comments
Image

Soylent Green is a dystopian science-fiction movie set in the year 2022, directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston.

The film takes place in an overcrowded, polluted future where:

  • climate change and environmental collapse have devastated the planet,
  • food shortages are extreme,
  • most people survive on processed food wafers made by the Soylent Corporation,
  • the rich still live comfortably while the poor suffer in packed city slums.

Heston plays detective Robert Thorn, who investigates the murder of a wealthy businessman connected to the Soylent Corporation. As he digs deeper, he uncovers corruption, social decay, and eventually the movie’s famous secret.

The film is most remembered for its ending revelation:

“Soylent Green is people!”

That line refers to the discovery that the newest food product, Soylent Green, is secretly made from processed human remains because natural food resources have nearly disappeared.

The movie was based loosely on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, though the shocking cannibalism twist was created for the film and is not in the original book.

Why the movie became influential:

  • It was one of the first major films to popularize fears about overpopulation and environmental collapse.
  • Many themes — heat waves, inequality, corporate control, ecological disaster — still feel modern.
  • The ending became a major pop-culture reference and meme.

Some of the strongest scenes involve Thorn’s elderly friend Sol, played by Edward G. Robinson, especially a quiet sequence reflecting on the loss of nature and civilization. It was Robinson’s final film role.