Why don't people

 I was up all night, listed 20 things on Ebay, small things that didn't take a lot of fussing over each one. 

I woke up around 3:30 or 3, packed some things and managed to slice my thumb, fortunately just a small cut where there's a sort of flap that needs to be kept bandaged. 

I rode over to the post office with the post office things, then went over to Dai Thanh for some shopping. They've really stepped up their already excellent game. They've got a lot of made in Japan bowls etc that are beautiful, they had my beloved Penang White Curry Mee and a bunch of other ramens that are really good. And all way less than they cost other places and that's if you can find them. I only spent about $25 for a lot of stuff including a taro "hopia" cake and a bottle of black coffee with a Korean K-pop star on the label. 

I rode back to H Mart and used their loo, then settled down out front to have my coffee and hopia, because I love to sit in front of H Mart and eat things that were bought elsewhere... Then back in for some shopping and spent $20-odd. I also called Ken because he often waits a day or three to check emails, and told him I'd checked in with the jury duty thing and they don't need me tomorrow so he can come by in the evening like he usually does - just as normal. 

I found some veggies out back both for me (a jalapeno pepper, a plaintain, an oyster mushroom) and for Tom (a few of those Korean melons he likes, a kiwi fruit, a small head of Romaine lettuce) and stopped by his place to say Hi and hand it off. He was all involved watching a cop show on TV and you can't pause TV shows so he invited me in, but I said I have things I have to get into the fridge. 

Tom's also leaving next week for a trip to Alaska for two *months* so I'll have to keep in mind to check on his place. He's got one or the other of his pet bums watching the place but it's always good to have a second pair of eyes. 

As always I'm doing lots of thinking, even if most of it if not all is useless. For instance, in the 2020 election, Bloomberg spent $500 million on his campaign. He utterly crashed and burned too. He could have written a check to every American of every age and saved money. Would it have wrecked the economy? I thought about it and it probably would have. He *could*, if he had that kind of money to throw around, give out "Bloomberg grants" for all kinds of things from a house to a college education to starting a small biz or whatever. He could enact Nixon's old plan of "leveling up" all workers where no matter what you did or didn't do, you'd have what would be about $30k a year these days, as income. 

Or would that just fuck things up? For instance when I was a kid and we were on welfare, rents were magically more expensive to the tune of what welfare would allow. Going to college was the same way; it only got really expensive when student loans and grants came in in a big way. 

Maybe there is no way to rain money down onto people without creating more problems than were solved, so what if our world is one where "the rich", "the oligarchs", whatever term is best, really want to help people but they know it could turn to utter shit really quickly so instead they have to be really stealthy about it? And for the most part, just sit back and not get too involved with the crabs in the bucket, so busy tearing each other down. 

Maybe in my retirement one thing I'll do is study the writings of Karl Marx. I believe a lot of his motive was his observation that people in small groups, in little tribes and villages seemed to live pretty well, where it really was from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs. He wanted to figure out what went wrong, when people were no longer in dozens but in millions. 

Tons of people complain about fossil fuels, so why don't people, maybe not in the USA to start, but somewhere, stage something where they don't drive their cars for a week? Why do so few complain about cars but not *their* turbo-charged Volvo, no sirree, their own car is not polluting somehow. 

And lastly, why don't weaboos just move to Hawaii? It's part of the US so there are no visa problems, and you can "dial up or dial down" how much you want to life a Japanese lifestyle. A lot of Japanese companies are there, especially lately. If you speak the language competently you can always get a job at least in retail. It would be far easier to ease into perhaps eventually moving to Japan, to start there in the 50th state. But of course they never seem to think of this because in Hawaii, being white doesn't make you special, rather, very un-special. They think they'll be fawned upon in Japan. 

Due to finding a new Reddit mug for $2.69 at the Goodwill on San Carlos, I dipped into Reddit again last night. The week off had done me good in that the magic is gone. I did find two posts in r/homeless about people's experiences in taking homeless people in. One of them was meh, about 25 posts, but the other one was quite a bit longer and looked like it might grow into one of those epic discussions that happen once in a while. So I went back there today and the first, meh, post was still there but the one that really got into the nitty-gritty was gone. 

I found it interesting reading because I've had people let me live with them to save money, and it's worked out well with myself pulling my weight and more. But this seems to be rare. The guy at the Gilroy place invited me there and after a week or so left for one of his months-long vacations and by the time he was back I'd fixed a number of things and comported myself quite well. But this guy seems to like to leave himself open to being taken advantage of, then when it happens having something to complain about for ever afterward. It seems the norm in American culture is to be a thieving scumbag. 

Google will often lead me to Reddit discussion when I'm looking for something and that's OK with me, but the magic is really gone. It didn't help that on YouTube, I found another new post about the various nefarious doings of "spez", one of the small army of people who claim to have founded Reddit. 

Once I was back from shipping and shopping I put together a thing I'd been planning to for a while but since I found a kind of large plastic strainer bowl at Dai Thanh I saw how I could make it a different way that's a lot easier. Basically it's a bucket set up so I can put my wet laundry in there and let it sit, and the water will run out the strainer underneath the laundry, so rather than have to wring the laundry out, I can do my washing even if I've got a messed up hand and can't wring it. And it works pretty well too. I rate it at better than wringing, but not as good as the spin cycle of a washing machine. That's very good. 

I was able to hang everything up and there was no water left in the bucket I carried the wet laundry upstairs in.