July 30, 2025
This morning I woke up to rain and a powerful storm. My dismal WhatsApp photo had the following message. Sunrise this morning. But the power of the thunder and lightening is electrifying.
It was absolutely delightful to open the Inbox to discover an email that reassured me that I am not alone. Faithful ( even unfaithful ones) will know that I have an iffy relationship with AI. It is not just me according to Pew Research Center.
“About one-in-five Google searches in March generated an AI summary, according to our analysis of 900 U.S. adults’ web browsing data. We found that Google users who encounter an AI summary are less likely than users who do not to click on links to other websites. They’re also more likely than other users to end their browsing session entirely”
Did read the article and related articles discovering that I am alone – the people surveyed were causal users. I am an extensive, but very ambivalent user. Will continue to use ( and abuse) AI and continue to get back to you with my observations. .
I do admit to loving my new carefree image. The clever blog breakdowns, the Instagram posts, the funny back stage conversations between Shamir, Nesh and myself, all very insular, not paying attention to the world. Definition of Insular describes me these past few days: ignorant of or uninterested in cultures, ideas, or peoples outside one’s own experience: Guilty as charged. My very favorite insular synonyms are blimpish and jerkwater.
This blimpish behavior is about to end, at least for a day or two. Al Jazeera brought me back to reality. I shall place y truth-telling robes upon my shoulders letting others know what is actually going on in the world. It ain’t pretty. .
“Over the last six months, the United States has landed hundreds of airstrikes—some in Somalia, some in Yemen and some in Iran. These military interests reflect a strategy under President Donal Trump that one expert described as “bomb first and ask questions later”, What has been the civil toll of that bombing campaign?”
“Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, the US has carried out 529 military airstrikes. That’s nearly the same number as former President Biden conducted during his entire four-year term. Experts say that increase signals a startling trend.”
The article concludes in this fashion.
The jury also remains out on whether Trump’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities will lead to a diplomatic breakthrough on Iran’s nuclear programme, as the White House has maintained. Little progress has been made since a ceasefire was reached shortly after Tehran launched retaliatory strikes on a US base in Qatar. Crisis Group’s Hanna assessed that Trump has relied on air strikes in part because they have become somewhat “antiseptic” in US society, with their toll “shielded from a lot of public scrutiny”.But, he added: “There are limits in terms of what air power alone can do…That’s just the reality.”
Al Jazeera points the finger at the United States, blaming them. But Qatar, their originator, they is complacent in the whole carnage. Qatar has a US Air Base, as to many, if not most of the Middle East potentates. “What is a potentate?” you may ask. A monarch or ruler, especially an autocratic one.
Another Middle East potentate that immediately comes to my mind is the Ruler of Dubai He comes immediately to my mind because of a comment I made to an Instagram post a few weeks ago. The title of the reel was Why the UAE fears Islam and spoke of the power for Friday mosque prayers which has led to the overthrow of Middle Ease powerful rulers. Friday prayers in the UAE are now written by a central civil authority that is an indication of how much the UAE fears a Free Muslim world. This is the comment I wrote during Trump’s visit to the UAE.
Me: The Ruler of Dubai shall certainly experience the Hellfire. He has been warned repeatedly. He has never listened and now he has Trump in his territory. That comment of mine has received, to date, 77 likes. I am proud of myself, standing up for the truth. I lived in the UAE for six months, my first stop after fleeing California after I was attacked for being a Muslim. I clearly did not know what I was doing. It could be called a stupid stop. I am not blaming myself. Everything about the UAE was being whitewashed (so to speak) because of Expo 2020. Visitors arrived in droves. Would they have come if the extent of autocracy were known? I would have never gone there if I had known, just let ME say that. It was sort of an out of the frying pan and into the fire situation.
This time we get an AI explanation of the idiom.
“Out of the frying pan into the fire” is an idiom that describes a situation where someone moves from a bad or difficult situation to one that is even worse. It implies that in trying to escape one problem, they have encountered an even more challenging predicament.”
If you care (and probably you don’t) Wikipedia tells us:
It was the subject of a 15th-century fable that eventually entered the Aesopic canon.
Wikipedia also discussed uses of the idiom
Another political interpretation was given in 1898 by a cartoon in the American magazine Puck, urging American intervention in Cuba on the eve of the Spanish–American War (illustrated). More recently, a report in The Guardian about the climate crisis stated that a panel session twice had to be moved because of climate-induced bushfires. The ultimate location was Canberra, also at that time under serious threat from bushfires. The author repeated the frying pan/fire proverb without further comment.”
Knowing I had written something about Qatar in a recent blog I typed Qatar into the search engine of the blog. Did not find the blog I was looking for, however, the search engine coughed up 261 blogs. Some are not legitimate but many are. I was planning to go to Qatar for my next visa run. I think I have changed my mind. Too much history, probably best forgotten. Don’t look back is an important admonition.
I will leave you with some quotes about looking back before I move into humor. “Too much looking backwards is bad for progress.”Henry Ward Beecher “You can’t get a good view of the future if you always keep one eye on the past.”Unknown Don’t look into the past; because you’ve already been there. Focus on the future since that’s where you’re going.”Unknown “Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.” James Thurber “Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Despite all the seriousness found in this blog I still continue to have fun with my WhatsApp folk as you shall see. Took a photo, which you shall see, of mismatched slippers.
Me I think I have a pair of mismatched slippers. What do you think?? “
Then another photo saying this: “My slipper found a mate. What do you think?”.
Nash sent this. “Your commentary is hilarious Alexis, dear god. I might be tearing up from laughter. Ahahaha,
But then I received a message from another source, which you shall see. It just may be the answer to mismatched slipper query. Judge for yourself. It is from a man, who shall (thankfully) remain nameless. Not married at the moment. I suppose he might be age-appropriate, most of the men in my life of late are not, by any stretch of the imagination, age-appropriate.
