Yep. Epistemology is enjoying/enduring a meltdown. There seems to be no way to tell whether any bit, dot, “fact,” theory, hypotheses, data point, etc. is “true” or “false.” What does Truth even mean in a world of human pretending? Or the new favorite word, “performative”?

Elon Musk, in his advice for young people, urges them to learn as much as they can about as much as they can in order to set a direction for their lives.

Well, that’s one obvious cleavage between Elon and me. As a kid, I also started to read the encyclopedia, figuring that if I did I’d know everything. (As a double Sagittarian, I sure did want to know everything!)

But I failed. Didn’t get beyond “C.” That “failure,” can you believe? — still haunts me.

Elon, apparently, can focus intensely, one step at a time, on each of his massive, wide-ranging projects, one after another, for all of his waking hours, which some people say, is why he is so unlike all the rest of us. Or maybe: all the rest of us except nearly 80-year-old Trump, who also seems to be able to direct intensely focused and seemingly multidimensional energy for as long as it takes to get whatever he wants done, done.

The rest of us? Or at least, me?

I’m no Elon, and I’m no Trump. My morning hours are the best, at this point in my 83 years. After a long wonderful walk, I can squeeze two hours of intense focus into pouring energy through my fingers onto the keyboard, and then, the entire rest of the day, slip into a muffled, dreamy, mostly enjoyable state of consciousness — eating, napping, cleaning, erranding — getting stuff done, moving stuff around, all required in 3D embodiment.

Yes, muffled and dreamy with however, exceptions. Like scheduled events with others that I’ve signed up for, a few of them going back two decades. Like, for example, our Green Acres Village Community Dinners. Twice monthly, on Thursdays, pitch-in, friends, family, neighbors all invited. Tonight we hope to have it again on the patio, if the weather holds. Otherwise, it’s in my house this time. Email this AM to those who live here in this three-home urban village: “Come out at 6:00 to clean up patio and put out tablecloths, silverware, plates, cups.” Then, we gather again at 7:00 to meet, greet, and eat with whoever shows up! Sometimes it’s 8 people, other times it’s 15; once, 25!  You never know. What you DO know, is that our Community Dinner will happen, no matter what.

The only interruption and/or weirdness we’ve had, except for holiday season and weather events: the covid con years. In fact for the first year we hardly met at all, and when we did, most of those who dared to leave home and come were masked, muffled, filled with F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real).

So now, will the hantavirus prove to be another covid con? Can “they” actually pull it off again? Five years later? Celia Farber, for one, is alarmed. And I’ve seen so many posts in the past few days, on X, and in my substack emails, that all say the same thing. Yep! Another rollout of F.E.A.R.!

Yuck! Don’t want to give it energy here.

What I do want to give energy, is how I think we’re being technologically bamboozled by twitter/X at this point. Bamboozled into staying within the algorithmic lane that X has so “kindly” provided for each of us. I mean: geez! Every post I see there at this point I want to either like or repost! And I know for damn sure that’s not because the world is waking up. Or maybe it is waking up, but certainly not via any algorithm.

Am I about to let go of twitter/X?

Wow? What would I do? There goes my encyclopedia, my primary news source. Oh wait. Not! Remember Ann, you’re captured by the definition of yourself you’ve given to X by the types of posts you either like or repost. No wonder at this point everything I see there I basically agree with!

BORING.

And if there’s one thing that turns me off, it’s being consciously or algorithmically corralled, or groomed, allowed to see only what’s streaming (or screaming) across an Overton Window I myself, inadvertently constructed!

All because of the internet yes. That’s why there are no longer any facts. Plus, the encyclopedia itself can be scarfed up by an LLM.  The intuitive assertion I made in my 1972 PhD dissertation, that “There’s a fine line between fiction and fact,” is no longer mysterious, it’s obvious. In fact, the line has basically disappeared. We’re here, with Neptune in Aries for the first time in 165 years, starting over again, inside a mysterious fog. Saturn in Aries too, but moving ahead (Neptune at 3°, Saturn at 9°), trying, and failing, to direct or corral the fog with its inevitably porous walls, its rules that mean nothing, it’s laughable attempts to control.

Yes. How to actually direct one’s attention in a fog of unknowing?

We’re here for awhile folks. Get used to it.