Who Doesn’t Love a Bit of Political Discourse?

As a citizen of the United States of America, I must admit that I am somewhat concerned by the state of things. As a citizen of Earth, I must admit to being downright terrified that it seems like everyone is having reactionary issues. None worry me more than the US political scene, though, given that I don’t really have much in the way of options should the worst come to pass.

There’s a lot wrong with the US’ political system. The people I spend most of my time with trust comedians more than newscasters, the older people I know tend to place the blame for all our collective problems on the young, and no one seems willing to do anything constructive about any of it. There’s lots of yelling, posturing, and pedantry. It gets tiring.

I tend more toward the moderate part of the spectrum. Not because of my personal beliefs, I’m very liberal in that regards. But I tend toward the moderate because positive change takes time and the only way forward is if we all work together. “A house divided cannot stand” and all those pithy quotes. In truth, my ideologies and beliefs can probably be best summed as “everyone has the right to do whatever they want so long as it does not infringe upon the rights of anyone else.” It’s the sort of nice simple statement that sounds so easy but truthfully is almost impossibly difficult to broadly apply. There’s a lot of errata that goes along with the statement to help it fit several of the more difficult situation.

Really, though, at the end of the day, I’m against polarization. “Them or us” is exactly the wrong kind of mentality. So many other political systems, each with their own flaws of course, get beyond that by actually representing the whole population, rather than just the largest group. To be honest, though, US voters are pretty lazy and that’s half the reason we have problems. That said, there’s a fair amount of disenfranchisement and ignorance playing a part in the lack of voter participation.

See, nothing is every simple, is it? Nothing every breaks down into nice simple statements that are correct or true. There’s either always some qualifiers or the statement is so long and winding that it makes almost no sense. US politics is always trying to paint issues as black and white when they’re often barely distinguishable shades of grey. Sure, there are two main sides to a lot of issues, but there’s so much shared ground in between that is ignored in favor of snappy one-liners and campaign slogans.

I’d really like to say more, but the entire thought-process is a freaking novel and I’ve got things that are much more fun to write. Let’s just say I’m really dissatisfied with the current system and have few options to make my displeasure known other than shouting into the void or voting in such a way that our reality becomes the worst possible reality. The Darkest Timeline, for you Community fans out there.

So, no matter what country you live in, don’t be a jackass! Prevent the Darkest Timeline! I, for one, know I can’t grow a full goatee to save my life. It’d be really awkward being in the Darkest Timeline without one.

Pokemon Go – The Latest in Fitness Apps

Apparently, all I need to do to make something I post or say wildly popular is mention Pokemon Go. I’ve been tracking the changes in my exercise habits since I started using the application and making a few remarks about it on Facebook. Each remark, and even the few tweets I made, have all been very popular (by my standards at least, since I generally don’t get more than handful of interactions on any kind of post). I almost want to see if I can start planting references to it that will tickle peoples’ subconscious like they do with subliminal advertising.

There’s definitely a lot of health benefits to it. I’ve started walking an average of 6 miles a day, been getting plenty of sunlight and bug bites, actually making use of my evenings for something more than watching TV or playing video games, and really started connecting with my area. I’ve explored parts of Madison I’d normally never visit and walked through neighborhoods I never even knew existed. I’m not even chasing a Pokemon all the time, either. A lot of the time, these past few days, I’m just going out to see what’s out there. Its like I’ve always wanted to do all this walking and exploring but I needed an excuse to do it. So now I have one.[

Pokemon Go is definitely a ton of fun, there’s no denying it. I’ve never been all that outgoing, but seeing a bunch of people walking around on their phones is like having a keyword search to identify the other nerds in my area. It’s the best. Its like, suddenly, everyone is just embracing their inner nerd or child and banding together to enjoy this magnificent application. I’ve met and partially befriended more strangers in this less than one week than in the past few months. I can’t imagine that my life will ever be the same. Never again. Heck, I doubt life as we know it will ever be the same again. This is the start. Going forward, this type of game and this integration of VR/AR is only going to get, obviously, more popular. There will be more games just like this one.

The community already forming up around this has so far been amazing. You meet people wandering through the woods and compare notes on which Pokemon you’re trying to catch, giving each other advice on which paths to take to find which Gyms or Pokestops, and while the competition for Gyms is definitely fierce, no one seems to get so into it that they’re being rude or lying to people on other teams.

I’ve managed to avoid spending any money so far, but part of me just wants to dump money into the application so that the creators, Niantic, can continue to do their amazing work (and, you know, add more servers so they’re not constantly going down).

If you like to meet new people, it seems like Pokemon Go is the way to do it. Just look for people with their phone constantly in their hand who randomly stop walking  for a few moments before continuing forward.