Soon To Be Not A Problem Anymore

 Fascebork has been complaining at me for a while now about how my NewsUndies page is ineligible for being suggested to other people.

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing it's because of posts like this:

...to which I say, "Fuck off, Fascebork!"

It's Been A While

Who remembers this guy?!  That was all the way back in 2013!

When I closed down the weekly NewsUndies video show on YouTube back on April 1, 2016, I had no idea the chaos that would result from the first Trump presidency, or that it would even happen... I was thoroughly convinced (as I was by November of 2024) that there aren't enough gullible idiots in The United States of America to think that Donald John Trump had any kind of a hold on actual facts or business sense. Boy was I wrong.

I was right, though, in realizing that the grind of producing a weekly 20-minute show (to say nothing of the thousand Dollars a month I was shoveling into the studio space (and drawing no revenue)) was really unsustainable. It was fine when I was able to do the show from my basement, and I was living off savings... but by 2016, I was back to work, in a job I hated, and trying to conduct a meaningful long term relationship with someone I love. In 2010, I'd gotten it in my head, that I could really make a go of "YouTuber" as a paying job. By 2016, I'd realized that probably wasn't going to happen.

Of course, as you may have heard Donald Trump was elected President in 2016. The following 4 years were a complete shitshow. Remember? Then, he lost the 2020 election, having botched the nation's response to the COVID-91 pandemic (or... maybe... turned an epidemic into a pandemic by his botched response... maybe). And then 1/6/2021 happened. Jesus. ...and then we kinda coasted along with the Biden Presidency, with Trump not shutting up for a fucking femtosecond about how the 2020 election was stolen from him, and he's got the best ideas, and "sleepy Joe Biden" and enough already!

...and now, here we are, right back where we were at this time in 2017, except we know more about Donald John Trump, and now he's a convicted felon 34 times over, and now, he still owes E. Jean Carroll all the money for sexually assaulting her and then defaming her about it. He's been impeached TWICE in his previous term. We still don't know the extent of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We have some idea of what he thinks he's going to accomplish during his next, and Constitutionally FINAL term. Whether the Congress rolls over and gives him whatever he wants is anybody's guess at this point.

With Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg so happily smelling Trump's farts, Twitter and Facebook have become untenable platforms. I have migrated from the NewsUndies page on Facebook to BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/newsundies.bsky.social)

One thing I realized in early 2016, and is about 1000 times more true today, doing a show like what NewsUndies was in 2015/2016 is just not something I can do at this point. I've wanted to do some kind of news/current events thing on a kind-of regular basis, but I have to do it without getting sucked into the vortex of misdirection that surrounds Trump. He really has some kind of reality distortion field around him, and to people susceptible to his "charisma" (or, perhaps, "threats of blackmail"), its influence is (apparently) inescapable. I haven't yet come up with a formula to achieve the kind of content that is fact-checked/verified and entertaining filling all the spaces that I did on the old YouTube show.  Maybe a monthly magazine.  I don't know yet.

In the meantime, I'm establishing this blog as a way to get back in the groove of doing some observations, interpretations, and writing. If a show does become a thing again, It'll likely take the form of an audio podcast with a video companion consisting of the audio from the podcast and the "in-frame graphics" from the old YouTube show (new ones, of course, consistent with the stories being covered).  I'll probably start with the story types I'd used in the old show ("These Headlines", "Whackjob News", "..And Finally", and so on), with occasional visits from old favorites like Pig & Sheep, Moose Weintraub, and Curt Mudgeon

Thanks for your time and attention. Please feel free to comment.