Hey Facebook

Hey Facebook! I'm still here. Are you going to delete this from my news feed with no input as to why?

Of course you are. It is, apparently, how you roll.

Just tell me something concrete, will ya? That's all I really ask.

Back to Normal?

We'll see how long this lasts, but as of yesterday evening Facebook appears to accept that my blogs are not spam. They have yet to offer an explanation of what happened, and I want to know. I think I'm owed one. Heck, I'm man enough to accept that if I were doing something wrong I can take it. But tell me what it was.

For those who don't know, Facebook spent all this week taking down my posted blogs as spam. My review requests were going unanswered until I reached the point where my good friend Bugs Bunny would say, "I hope you realize this means war!" I began absolutely pelting them with blogs which they would immediately remove. I would them immediately, ahem, request a review.

Yet if you're going to go to war you have to bring out the big guns. In my case, I got me son Charlie involved. In about ten minutes the problem was resolved. You don't mess with a veteran.

The real test comes in about five minutes, when I post this. But Charlie is in for the weekend. We'll open up fire again if we must.

Rumors of wars

My Facebook feed this morning offered me its usual list of recommended items and articles for my perusal. I wish I understood algorithms better simply to figure out why our Facebook overseers think I like what they think I like. You see, I don't think I worry as much about chaos and disintegration as Mark Zuckerberg apparently believes I do.

One article in this morning's suggestions spoke about the parallels between the current United States and the fall of the Roman Empire. We're going down that road, I'm afraid. Yes, yes indeed. The writing is clearly on the wall.

Maybe so, maybe no. The future is unwritten; we cannot, simply cannot, know exactly where we're headed. And while certain things might be very good conjecture, they're still mere conjecture.

I remember reading articles in the Seventies which purported to alert me then that we were going the way of the Roman Empire. Yet lo, here we still are today.

Republicans thought the Barack Obama Presidency was the end of history as we knew it. Democrats thought it of Donald Trump. We've survived them both. I'm not shocked.

All this worry is brought on by people who thrive on worry, whether it's reporters or the White House or the myriad individual hand wringers among us. We forget that, as the Good Book says, there will be wars and rumors of wars; part of the lesson there is that we should not put too much stock in such nonsense.

I suppose this is my long winded way of saying stop panicking, everybody. It doesn't help us solve the very real problems which exist of which the fear mongers try to take advantage simply to get their way. Don't give them that power over you. You're only helping them get what they want: your fear, because it feeds their hunger.