E. Writer I am so happy that things calmed down. A shame the most beautiful wooded places on earth can have this happen.

bb santx Glad you're okay!

Frank Hutton Drought/wildfires and in other places '100 yr. floods' a couple times a year are the new normal. I wonder sometimes how long the billionaires figure their wealth will insulate them.

Alex Morton They don't care beyond their own lifespans.

Frank Hutton Maybe. But many also seem to care deeply about legacy, one kind or the other. In any event, when they get flooded out of their supposed safe haven FL., if I'm still alive I'll cheer.

E. Writer Praying for your safety and that your home also remains safe and unharmed.

Alex Morton The evacuation alert has been lifted, but I'll keep my go-bag as it is for the rest of the day, though I have to go out (nearby) for an hour. Getting ready to go back to Greece next Monday, I've purposely used up all the fresh food in the house and now I'm getting hungry! I was going to shop yesterday but I got involved in other projects and the endless paperwork that has been haunting me.

E. Writer If something happens in Canada while you're in Greece with this situation, will family members be available to take care of it and look out for the house? Heaven forbid that is the case?

Alex Morton Everything is organized. Here, in Lions Bay, my kids take care of everything. In Ikaria, I have my pal, Socrates. Can you imagine someone named Socrates keeping an eye on your place? Everything outside will be trimmed by the time I get there, the car cover will be off and the battery re-connected. Another friend, Athena, is setting up a taxi for me from the airport in Ikaria to my house. Plato will probably be my driver. With people from Greek mythology on one end and my kids on the other, I feel well covered.

E. Writer Wonderful! Good.

E. Writer That's a fine thing to do. Growing up, we called it, "throwing rocks then hiding your hands."

I might have let it fly, but I dislike being quoted statements I did not write or say. It's a bit of a pet peeve towards the behavior of people on the internet, that has always stunk of intellectual dishonesty. Twist someone's words into meanings or statements never implied, then write a weird diatribe against it. I find this behavior irksome.

I am plain-spoken and direct. My statements require little interpretation. If a statement is being attributed to me that I did not make, even if it seems harmless on the surface, I'm going to push that back because I prefer to operate in truth at all times. That, and you are always a contrarian, pecking. But you only seem to have a habit of pecking where I leave crumbs, finding a contradiction somewhere or other--that might lend you the opportunity to preach against whatever contemptuous thing you've fabricated in your mind and assigned to my thought process. Preaching "personal responsibility" to me in lieu of a discussion on technology, was a little heavy-handed don't you think? Ugh.

After a 3rd or 4th time it's no longer a coincidence, it's intentional.

Perhaps, giving you the benefit of doubt, you don't intentionally mean to do those things and you are simply a person who is socially clueless. But it keeps happening, and it ends the same. You throw a rock. I throw one back, then you cry foul and play the victim who is being hectored.

I have peace where I go. I have no conflict, where I interact online or in my personal life. That is the life I wish to keep. If you are a contrarian who argues for argument's sake, better to engage people who enjoy conflict and disagreement, not me. We call this a positive social media platform for a reason. No one here argues about anything. Until you arrived.

Frank Hutton Not at all contrarian, because it's not @ all about you. That is not ever, not even a little. I mean who the hell cares about spewed ether shit? Not I, sez I.

Fact is, my obsessively considered rhetorical point/opinion is my point alone and I stick my prose hard to it best I can, lest dissuaded by someone making better argument, which occasion I truly relish. But when some ether wraith fails to do that, it's not on me. And whining about it never helps, either way. You know, speaking of responsibility.

You have a great day now.

E. Writer Unless you are dissuaded by someone making a better argument you say... If that's your aim, then you've missed the plot. Try to join the program.

Frank, no one here argues. No one here had argument until you arrived. Since you are a former Zoe-troper, as we all are, you are still here. The tension that was ever-present on Zoetrope, the rudeness, haughtiness, the years-long disagreements and spite between members, no one here is interested in that. We've existed for an entire year without a single conflict or argument over anything. No one is here to argue. No one is here to "dissuade" you from your point of view or subjective experiences.

We all talk shop. We talk writing. We talk art. We talk sciences. We talk about our work. If people want to argue or dissuade each other of their views, there's a special place for you on Facebook, X, Blusky, Instagram, where conflict and B.S. is the norm.

This site aims to be different. it is for the intelligentsia. The intellectual. The humorist. If that is not a program you can follow, then you've missed the point. Have your views, but try to do so without attacking other people and their subjective experiences and views. That's it. The community rules on Neighbahood are fairly simple. It only requires self-discipline, a bit of self-control. Whatever your opinions or points are, no one wants to dissuade them. That's the point of this site. To each his or her own.

Frank Hutton Holding to my opinion on whatever given subject provided someone more enlightened on the subject doesn't wander along and enlighten me with theirs isn't argument on my part and isn't made argument until someone valuing their opinion far higher than I do chooses to make it so. And truest me, I'm used to folk who's opinion on some given subject I don't value doing exactly that. But next time you choose to respond to some insight of mine with a litany of obviousness like I'm stupid, trust me to not respond.

There 'ya go, problem solved.

E. Writer You used the word argument, not me. "...lest dissuaded by someone making better argument..." Again, no one wants to dissuade anyone of anything. It's up to the individual to decide if someone else's view has greater merit.

I mean, it also goes without say that if someone comes along with a different view and you agree with it. Rebuttling someone else's view, instead of stating one's own is fostering conflict. We all have different perspectives, yet no one argues them. We state them and move on.

In the end, there's a difference between sharing a point of view and badgering other people with an opinion until you feel you've "won" the argument.

I concede that in your first reply about technology, you did exactly that (excepting that you chose to use the word "stupid" to describe what other people think compared to your views).

You only stated your view. My reply that people who create the technology are responsible for what they unleash on the world is where the conversation started to diverge, though my statement was not personal towards you or your view. Just what I felt about big tech. Your comment after that, is where it really went off the rails.

There's a positive way and a negative way to engage instead of going back and forth on what is "is." This conversation is an unfortunate example of that.

Alex Morton In 1973, the Greek people overthrew an authoritarian government by virtue of their spirit alone ... with a bit of help from their artists, musicians and writers. We Are Not Yours is a novel of that time, What could be more relevant, now, when democracy is under such threat?

E. Writer Such a good book!

E. Writer You are excellent at visual writing and creating imagery of various settings.

Eugenio Cappuccio Two knocks for yes, one for no, dear spirit.

E. Writer Alex, if you search for him by last name in the search box at the top, you can message him. Or post on his page. He'll get a notification when he logs in.

Roy Scarbrough I gave an invite to aphorism group where he might enjoy talking about Marshall McLuhan

Alex Morton He might be being shy. I'll send him an email.

E. Writer Big Tech CEOs have been warning that 90% of jobs will be erased due to AI taking those jobs. So I am not surprised. I will say that most of the conversations you have with AI in those private chats are not stored. They are temporary files that disappear so Gemini, for example, doesn't retain any data and none is collected for their database. I am unsure about Chat GPT, and others however. They may be using the data to train users. But isn't that so scary how we don't have any privacy whatsoever?

SJ Blues DOWN WITH THE ALGO!

E. Writer Is that the trending catchphrase?

Alex Morton Look out about movies about music. If you ever saw the film, Round Midnite,' you might become a jazz saxaphonist drug addict in Paris. (Great movie, by the way. The star of the film was one of the jazz greats, Dexter Gordon.

Alex Morton I used to play bassoon and a couple of other woodwinds. Then I picked up guitar and banjo and played those for years. I now have little arthritis in my hands and it's hard to play guitar, but I've been teaching myself piano for the last year.

SJ Blues Any movie recommendations about piano players?

Alex Morton Yep. Ray ... about Ray Charles. But even if I blind myself I'll never play like Ray. It's amazing how many great musicians had something major to overcome. Django Reinhart, one of the most extraordinary guitar players who ever lived, was missing three fingers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQTh3e1B2n8&t=91s

Alex Morton So, if you played baritone, you must have played in a band. It's not like a guitar, nobody sits around a campfire and sings when you play a baritone. What did you think of playing in a band?