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Social Media

Banned on Facebook

Banned by Facebook

I posted a comment to the Savannah Morning News Facebook page about the COVID virus. A person responded to my comment, saying only the “old and fat” die from the ‘hoax’ virus, and good riddance to them.

I responded that they were an ugly person to have such views. The comment was blocked, and now I’m banned for commenting or posting for 24 hours (I haven’t a clue what the June post was about*).

Facebook is failing. Facebook is failing badly. It looks at words, in isolation, rather than concepts or phrases, because it doesn’t want to hire people who can actually determine what is or is not acceptable. And it bends over backwards to protect the worst of the dregs of society that habituate the pages, because, frankly, they generate the most income for Zuckerberg.

There have been times when I’ve allowed my passion to run away with me, and I’ve been downright nasty to folks. In those cases, I would have understood a ban. But in those cases,  I didn’t use a combination of words that triggered some obviously primitive filters. As someone who has worked with semantics on the web (RDF), and computational linguistics, I assume that the filters use some combination of “you” or “you’re” and then a number of adjectives like “ugly” in that order and that’s sufficient.

But think about the context. I was responding to a person who is saying “good riddance” to over 220,000 dead people** but I’m the one banned. What a profound fail.

The lesson from all of this kiddies is to verbally eviscerate people, but use big words and complex thoughts so you don’t trigger the ban filters. However, just be aware when it comes to people you’re responding to, big words and complex thoughts will most likely sail right over their heads.

So maybe the key takeaway is just to ignore the people. Ultimately, this is the response that will hurt them the most.

* I remembered. I was talking about ‘white racists’ and evidently that was a racist thing to say and the post was banned.

** And I will continue calling people who say good riddance to 220,000 people ‘ugly’. Because they are.

Categories
Places Political

On my way to writing there was a pandemic. And we moved to Georgia. And Trump.

I had such good intentions at the start of the year. I was going to lose weight, get in shape, and most of all, return to writing on a regular basis. And then the rest of 2020 hit.

It started with COVID and it ends with COVID and a parade of masks and hand washes and furtive outdoor trips. We made it worse on ourselves by deciding come hell, high water, or pandemic, we were still going to follow through on our decision to sell our home in Missouri and move to Savannah. And we did make the thousand mile move, though it’s not something I would recommend to anyone else during a pandemic.

 

Moving truck about to leave Missouri

Continue reading “On my way to writing there was a pandemic. And we moved to Georgia. And Trump.”
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Just Shelley outdoors

Our new home’s location

We saw a deer on the nature trail yesterday.

The number one reason we bought our house is the location.

The house is in excellent shape, but the kitchen is small, as are two of the bedrooms and the second bath. In fact, the second bath isn’t even the standard 5 x 8. Our neighbors are 10 feet away on one side, 12 feet on the other. We had hoped for at least 20 feet. We like the house, the price is good, but by itself, we wouldn’t have bought it.

Now, I’ll show you the primary reason why we bought it.

Outside our door is a sidewalk that can take us to the Coastal Botanical Gardens or Chief of Love Rd. The Chief of Love Rd has a Nature trail that parallels it. It’s the one we take daily.

Today, we discovered there’s a nature preserve at the end of it, with a beautiful 1.3 mile nature walk.

All of this, from our front door.

And today I discovered there’s yet another reason why I’m so glad we moved to Savannah.

Look at this Rails to Trails.

“From its trailhead just 15 miles east of town, the trail parallels the South Channel of the Savannah River, a major shipping route and entry point to the Port of Savannah. Short bridges spirit you across saltwater marshes. Cord grass, cabbage palms, yaupon holly and coastal cedars line this beautiful trail, and interpretive signs list the native wildlife, including the eastern box turtle, American alligator, diamond back terrapin, bobcat, osprey, red-tailed hawk and brown pelican. Be on the lookout for these, as well as frolicking dolphins in the river. Conveniently placed benches allow visitors to pause, take in the scenery and enjoy a picnic.”

Gators, bobcats, pelicans, and dolphins! And a little down the road, we can add manatees, too.

It was worth making a major move during a pandemic.

Categories
Places

Old home vs New home

Now that the house purchase is a done deal (I don’t expect problems with loan), time to explore the differences between homes in Savannah, versus homes in Missouri.

TL;DR it’s like they’re on different planets.

Almost every home in Missouri has a basement. You get so used to it that home sizes such as 1270 don’t bug you, because you know you’ll have a basement of almost equal size.

Coastal Georgia homes do not have basements. Ever. Forever and ever. If you go to dig a basement, you’ll strike water.

Because there are no basements, do you know where hot water heaters are frequently located?

In the attic. In the friggen attic. Our home has both heat pump innards and hot water heater in the attic. Well, until we either replace it with a tankless hot water heater, or relocate that puppy to the garage.

In Missouri, every home has gutters and every Missourian constantly frets about their gutters. Why? Missourians live in constant dread of water around the house. The reason for this is Missouri is primarily clay and limestone. And clay. A drop of water is grabbed by the soil and held until next July. And all of it wants your basement.

In Savannah, few homes have gutters. If they have anything, it’s these wing things that direct water away from doors to the side, but no one gives a damn if there’s a swimming pool right next to the house. And the reason for this is the soil here is sand. In Savannah, we’re living on the world’s largest beach. Two inches of rain can fall in three seconds, and five seconds later, it’s all wicked away.
(Or evaporated into the air, so that every time you walk outside, your glasses fog over.)

In Missouri, homes don’t tend to have a lot of geegaws and frufrus, especially middle income homes. What you see, is what you get: typically a ranch, with a porch, and a deck. And maybe a flat lawn.

In Savannah, a significant number of homes have faux gables. These are little roof peaks with fake windows that are supposed to add curb appeal. Our new home actually has one, but thankfully it’s hidden by a good, honest tree.

And all the homes we’ve seen in Georgia have some variation of popcorn ceiling. Every single one. The home we bought is the only one that didn’t have a popcorn ceiling. I don’t know if that was a leading reason why it appealed to me, but it didn’t hurt. I don’t know why homes in this area rarely have smooth drywall. I suspect it must be something to do with the weather. In Missouri, popcorn ceilings will be the death of your home sale.

Trey ceilings. Georgians love their trey ceilings. True, many Missouri homes have trey ceilings, but here in Georgia, I’ve seen rooms that have trey ceilings stacked three levels high. Can you imagine painting the thing?

Lastly, grass. Missourians obsess over their lawns. They’ll stand at their property line and jaw about the mixture of seed making up their lawn until you’re ready to chew your own ear off to get away.

In Savannah, the grass is a tough old bastard that laughs at the sun. And you.

Oh, and azaleas can bloom at Christmas.

Categories
Just Shelley

We came. We saw.

We came, we saw houses.

Jessica Drive was an amazing lot. We loved it. But the house had a lot wrong with it—far more than we wanted to deal with.

The home we’re thinking of making an offer for is linked to this posting. The owners obviously loved the home, and took exceptional care of it.

It is well, and septic tank, but both eventually will end up being public sewer and water. It’s close enough to the city proper.

The big gotcha? It has an encroachment. The home was built on land previously owned by the house next door. They didn’t do a proper survey and the previous owner’s shed does cross the property line.
Now, this can be handled by giving them an easement, on the understanding we would still own the property. But we don’t know how much the shed encroaches. And we don’t know if the loan company will have a cow.

But the house really has been lovingly maintained.

And we saw a big ass turtle cross the yard.

home with blue siding and nice yard we almost bought in Brunswick