The unseasonably warm weather drew us out of our cocoons and up the side of my local mountain. At 3500 feet the view is pretty nice, I must say.

Maybe they figured rationality and civic mindedness was too engrained to have to worry about.

​Wow! A pic of Route 1, the gorgeous and windy road that hugs the California coast. They're calling it a landslide, and I suppose that's accurate but ... wow.

Just woke up and decided to waste some time doing a made up painting for a bit.

That's the problem with gardens. They're under constant attack from weeds and pests. Relax your continuous vigilance and care and the entire thing is liable to be overrun.

And here's a tip. When a weed gets started, you need to pull it out immediately. Many of them put down deep tap roots that make removal vastly more difficult once they're established. And if you don't remove the entire weed, it can grow again from just a piece of broken root still buried deep. 

Yank out and eradicate. Never rest. 

We've entered the era of "no news is good news and much news is BS". I can't really say why, but clearly vast swathes of our population are embracing absolutely crazy conspiracy theories and ridiculous accusations about people in "the other party". Truly off the wall stuff.

What I'd propose as a way of warding off the craziness is this. First, NEVER just read a headline. They're designed to mislead. Their entire point of being is to entice you to click, to read more. Sometimes the information given is factual, sometimes not. But ALWAYS in need of verification.

So, let's say you're tempted to click. Then read the article and look for the quotes. Everything else is just the opinion and bias of the writer. 

Next, find the FULL quote and the surrounding context. It's trivially easy to mislead by using quotes judiciously. A simple example. "I have to say that I find the existance of people who eat babies completely abhorrent." There's the full quote. Here's an edited one: "I have to say that I" ... "eat babies"

Or how about "Don't ever shoot policemen!". Easily shorted to "shoot policement!"

It's just too simple to change the entire message by being careful about what you prune out. So get the entire thing and read it. 

But what about articles in which nothing is quoted? What then? Well, that's one I'll be pondering in the near future. 

Relive the thrill of being a Roman slave building the Colosseum! Have a friend whip you as you work and shout at you to go faster for extra realism!

Who's up for a late morning funny?