Funky analytics

Anyone who thinks that inanimate objects don't have souls, or at least a sense of karma-driven malicious humor, never dropped their keys onto a flat surface of a parking lot, nine yards from an open grate, and watched their keys somehow able to locomote on their own inexplicable energy and fall irretrievably down into the muck.

Belief in our Constitution, faith in political leadership and reliance on the collective decency of our schism-asunder nation are metaphorical keys. Getting used to their loss is a patriotic duty refitted for the times.

My brain's been in a funk. I skipped some deadlines and joined a party boat on the Great South Bay. Staring self-hypnotically down into the shallow waters, I looked for some intriguing jellyfish, now that, according to a popularly advertised product that presumably passed muster with the regulatory government agencies charged with protecting us, a link has been established between these brainless creatures and enhanced mental performance.

I thought if I ingest enough of it, it might help me make sense of the election. Nothing doing.

Then I went sky-spotting at the beach, looking heavenward for a motivational message, such as "The present moment always offers an opportunity to heal,” but either all the advertising planes were already hired, or their pilots were unwilling to fly any more discredited and disproved messages from their bannered tails.

On the way home I heard a radio ad in which a property seller says, "Money doesn't motivate me; you do.” I realized that it was pointless to try to escape from the real world, because we are bound by the interchangeability of hope and hopelessness. We have become a sucker audience of sucker truths. 

The comforts of the traditional world have been replaced by the lures and illusions of revolutionary claptrap in which civilization's rust-prone anchor has been corroded beyond repair.

Nobody's going to make the world, including our country, "a better place.” It is suffering from an immune system that has turned against itself like an insidious disease. But that said, we must not cease tackling the issues of the day. It's good to keep busy. The MTA is always fertile ground. Never have to dig deep for potential scandal.

According to a NYU Langone study published three years ago, our subway system is the most polluted in the Northeast. At some stations, it's 15 times (not 15 percent) worse than the safe ceiling recommendation of the World Health Organization. You can practically taste the metallic filings and steel dust from grinding wheels and brakes. 

At the 181st Street station in Washington Heights, it's so bad they should allow passengers to use their OMNY cards to rent hazmat suits.

But don't panic, the MTA is on the case. Its director of communications said they are "totally committed to protecting health" and the morbid data has "long been debunked.” And to demonstrate his masterful recall of template terms of public service assurance, (which should make him eligible for the Christine Todd Whitman Award) and government's voguish social consciousness, he volunteers "NYC is the greenest city around, and an engine of equity for people of all communities.”

This guy would probably expect us to trust him if he assured us that locking our mouths tightly around the tailpipe of an MTA bus would be safe because of their commitment to clean energy. 

What are the MTA and other oversight agencies doing to mitigate the dangers and protect the track workers and other employees from future sickness? If nothing, then they are more culpable than the government in the Camp Lejeune class lawsuit, because at least they were probably unaware of the contaminated drinking water on the Marine base.

Are mandated standards of environmental protection in the workplace observed in the breach and codified in disappearing ink?  

An unrelated recent news story, hardly covered, suggests that even the sacred bedrock of workers' rights is being eroded. It begins as an outlier case but will slowly but surely worm its way into management's bag of retaliatory tricks. 

A retired upstate politician has lost her pension after pleading guilty to corruption charges. This is the first application of the six-year-old forfeiture law. Pensions should be untouchable. Once precedent is set, it won't be long before the criteria are expanded and subjected to the interpretation of biased or self-interested entities. 

That doesn't mean that crime should not be punished. In this instance, the violator must pay full restitution of over a million dollars and serve several years in prison. That's more than many violent felons get. 

But pensions must be sacrosanct.

Among the most significant news developments in recent weeks, perhaps a historical "game-changer,” inquiries into Big Tech. A few hundred people have a monopoly over the burgeoning propaganda industry that is the "information superhighway.” They have the skills, sophistication and ruthlessness to infantilize and reinvent the consciousness of the nation according to doctrine.

They are engines for disinformation, malevolent data mining, exploitation and surveillance. They need to be heavily regulated and busted up in their present form. 

Big Tech algorithms are like the oil fields that fueled the perpetuation of World War II, and they enable the branches and theaters of cultural conflict. And artificial intelligence is the Global Despot.

Responding to Mark Zuckerberg's nervy claim to be an advocate of free speech, CNN observes that "free expression is impossible when one company controls the flow of speech to close to 3 billion people, using individualized, targeted feeds."

The 21st century economy is slave to the Big Tech masters and a new emancipation proclamation is needed. Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are among those who are working collaboratively in this area. That's like the symbiotic relationship between spur-winged plovers and crocodiles that tolerate these birds because they floss the crocodile's teeth.

Progress is slow but a snail's pace is better than stasis. 

A few weeks ago, a federal judge ruled that Google, with 93 percent of market share, is an illegal monopoly. According to The New York Times, the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission began investigating Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, Threads and WhatsApp, during the Trump administration, which passed the baton (watch out that it's not that poison-tipped Bulgarian umbrella from the Cold War) to the Biden administration.

The probe is ongoing. Is there hope? 

What do the analytics say?