Hey guys and women! I hope that every one of you are doing well, I am doing well myself aside being a bit cold as it is at 11 degree here in the eastern part of Kentucky and that is darn cold if you ask me. Now that the Christmas has passed by and as well the New Year has passed away so there are several days with no holidays for us except for the students who attend schools because of snow days. I remember that when I was in school, I always roots for several days of snow because it would mean that the school would be closed and this allows me to enjoy the snow days with some of the friends that I used to hang out with a several years ago, when we were in school together. Makes me wonder how some of the people who I used to hang out with, the ones that I used to talk with in school or my old classmates have done lately as most of them I haven’t talked to or seen in more than a decade since I graduated in the year of 2005 so that is twelve years ago, I was wild back then especially when it comes with some girls because I would use to flirts a lot with the girls, I went to prom four times with each different four girls so two prom in middle school and two prom in high school. I almost went for the fifth, this was the year after I have already been graduated as there was a girl who I used to date when I was very young (7-9 years old) asked me to go to the prom with her and I rejected in matter of few seconds after being asked because that I knew the reason which was that she didn’t want to or maybe was embarrassed to take her fiancé to the prom and that guy was almost forty years old while she was eighteen or nineteen years old.
Think I would be used to make herself to look good or at least to have someone to go to the prom with her? I absolutely do not think so. All the four girls that I went to the prom with were the girls that I was dating at these times and I think that prom should be only for the couple who is dating. I know there is a lot of the people who takes others to go the prom with is a friend of their or even a member of their family but that just don’t make sense in my opinion.
Of course, I am not telling anyone who they should take to the prom, whether it be their friends, cousins, siblings or someone who they are in relationship with because they can please take whoever they wish and whatever rows their boat but for me in my opinion I just think that only thing would make sense is that the prom is for a couple who is in relationship. That was the main reasons why I rejected an ex of mine when she asked me to the prom after I graduated and we both weren’t even dating at that time as we haven’t dated for several years after she cheated me with that old man while wearing a ring with diamond that I bought for her which is a promise ring. I am not upset at her or anything but I will say that it did hurt me to find out through my best friend at that time when he overheard her talking about the old man that she hooked up with while she was just only sixteen years old and was pregnant by him. I loved that girl and I thought the world of that girl before but she fooled me so in return when she needed someone to go to the prom with her I rejected and that’s not even as hurtful as it was for me that she did a such thing to me. Why am I even talking about this? I guess some of bad memories or when certain times that you got hurt a lot you can never easily forget what it was like.
1-9-2017 Tidbits
Moving on, shall we? I apologize for starting to murmuring about one of my not-so-good moments in the past and I have a few of things that I would like to share my opinions or thoughts about tonight! I hope that at least one or some of the topics that I will be sharing my opinions or thoughts on will be interesting.
Kentucky’s Future with Republicans
A few days ago, in the house of representatives (lower house) have passed a bill under HB1 and that is called “Right to Work” then it moves up to the senates, they passed the right to work bill yesterday. Not only that, they also have repealed prevailing wages bill and with that HB1 “Right to Work” bill being passed isn’t looking too good for Kentucky’s future. Passing HB1 “Right to Work” bill is to flatline union’s power, giving the corporations more power in deciding how much the minimum wages will be for their workers and how many days will be given to their workers if they are lucky. In that HB1 “Right to Work” says that the minimum wage must be at least above the 30% of poverty line and that isn’t good at all especially for the blue-collar workers. The future of economy in Kentucky is very gloom, thousands of workers will be likely to get a huge lower pay with reduced to no benefits for the worker or worker’s family and for those people who usually get some days off due to holidays will now have to work on some if not most of the holidays. Overtime pay? Forget it. Paternal leave? Forget it. The Union is the one who pushed for the workers to have overtime pay, more paid hours for them (40 hours a week), making sure that the workers can have days off on some of important holidays such as Christmas, New Year, Labor Day, Memorial Day and others. With the Right to Work HB1 passed just unpowered the unions and gave the corporations the same power that the unions had before so now the corporations in the Kentucky, private or public business in the Kentucky can decide what their workers can receive whether it be their minimum wages, their insurance/benefits and others. Kentucky is now in full control of Republicans as the representatives, senates and the governor are Republican so they are doing what they care about the most – the %1.
Repealing prevailing wages and passing the HB1 Right to Work bill is the nail on coffin for the future economy of Kentucky as they are the needles to poke the economy’s bubble. Strangely though, the Republicans have empathized that the repeal of prevailing wages and the HB1 “right to work” bill passed will grow the economy for the state of Kentucky. O-K-A-Y! What does it mean for the people of Kentucky especially the workers who works hard to bring the foods to their table for their children and family at home? Be very worried and scared! But again, many of you who lives in Kentucky voted for them and voted for the Republican governor so when the economy’s bubble burst don’t come crawling for some help! Just remember this when we have an election in the year of 2018!
You can read more about prevailing wages repeal and HB1 Right to Work here:
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/ky-legislature/2017/01/06/prevailing-wage-law-repealed-house/96236510/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kentucky-republicans-right-to-work_us_58701cc6e4b043ad97e38561
Dear Google And Your YouTube
Before I start typing what I need to say, just letting you know that I am a huge fan of YouTube and I watch YouTube every day. I watch several videos daily and this is in particular reason it forces me to call you out. This is a message for the CEO, COO or the administration of Google and I ask that you to read this carefully. The statistic says that we have over 360 million Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in the world so even if we split that number in half it would still be a lot. I am myself Deaf or in medical term I am Hard of Hearing but I look and consider myself as Deaf so I am calling you out is to ask you why in the heck are you NOT making YouTube to be accessible for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing people? What do I mean by that is that, when some of the people who uses YouTube become a big name and this become a brand for these YouTubers so this means business. Now you can look at Americans with Disabilities Act law where it will tell you that any private or public “business” must provide equal access to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing people so my question is why you never enforce a policy that they must provide closed captions? For small YouTubers who with a few hundred subscribers that does not provide closed captions is understandable because they aren’t big enough to become a brand name of a business whether it be public or private business but for YouTubers who have millions of subscribers that earns more than a hundred thousand dollars monthly become a business brand automatically since they pay taxes for the income that they earn through AdSense on YouTube right? So, this should apply to Americans with Disabilities Act, doesn’t it? Then why aren’t you doing something about that to enforce these YouTubers who have million subscribers and getting over a hundred thousand dollars monthly to provide closed captions? Heck, there are some of YouTubers who only have less than fifty thousand subscribers that is willing to provide closed captions when they really don’t have to as they aren’t big enough to become a brand but they do and this is because they have the sense of being fair while at the same time following Americans with Disabilities Act law while the big YouTubers getting a scot-free? That isn’t right.
So, Google or YouTube I am asking you to do something about this and for once of all be fair because we have over 360 million Deaf and Hard of Hearing people in the world so that means there is a good chance that more than few millions of Deaf people use YouTube. No, your generated closed captions do not count because they miss a lot and the only way to make things easier is to add a new ruling to your policy that if YouTubers become a brand they must obey Americans with Disabilities Act by providing closed captions for their videos.
Thank you, Google and YouTube teams.
Why Aren’t You Using E-Mail?
Facebook messenger/message, Twitter DM (direct message) and others are NOT e-mails. I cannot fathom how much people who are misled to think that these are e-mails when they are not even e-mails and there are still a lot of people who uses e-mails that doesn’t have accounts on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. If I am to close my account at Facebook then I expect you to send me e-mail, only good thing about Facebook and Twitter’s message is that if they are being used to have a live conversation but to get a hold of, to plan something or whatever is not. E-mail is cross-platform contact while Facebook, Twitter and other services aren’t. If I am on Twitter and you are on Facebook, then how can we exchange some words? My point exactly. I still use e-mail every day, in fact I use e-mail more than I do Facebook message and Twitter DM because I consider e-mail to be more encrypted. If you think that exchanging words on Facebook message or on Twitter DM, then you thought wrong because anything you says through them will be recorded in their databases on their server and they never will be deleted even if you delete them from your Facebook or Twitter. But for e-mails, once you have deleted the e-mails then the e-mails are deleted permanently and there are a lot of good e-mail clients that encrypt your e-mails such as Outlook from Microsoft Office 365 or others as there are quite few e-mail clients out there that you can use to encrypt the messages. I highly encourage all of you to use e-mails and start sending e-mails to your family or friends to break that habit of using the Facebook message or Twitter DM so that way you can know that all the messages you have sent is safe and confidently.
I Have Joined Medium
I have seen a lot of editors, bloggers and journalists start to join the medium service lately so I decided to check it out the other day. After peeking around at Medium, I would like to let you all to know that I have decided to register an account with Medium and you are more than welcome to follow me there to keep up with my journalism (as blogger or journalist). If you are blogger, journalist or editor then I recommend that you give Medium a look and in case if you don’t know what Medium is. Medium is online publishing platform, founded and owned by Evan Williams who happens to be co-founder of Twitter and is the inventor of a term “blogger”. If it wasn’t for him then we wouldn’t know what to call ourselves especially for those of us who blogs and it is fitting that he founded the Medium service hence it is online publishing platform for the bloggers, journalists or editors. You can use Medium pretty much anywhere, whether it be Medium.com or Medium app and here is my Medium profile for you to follow if you would like to!
My Medium: https://medium.com/@JoshiesWorld
About Medium on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)
Packers Turned the Table!
I am so thrilled to see that my all-time favorite NFL team, Green Bay Packers won the NFC wildcard against New York Giants tonight at Lambeau Field which is Green Bay Packers stadium! The final score is 38 – 13, Green Bay Packers have run them over, making their defense and offense looks like flag football team at some elementary schools! However, I must admit that in the beginning of the game I was somewhat worried, because in the beginning of the game especially in first quarter and some in second quarter the New York Giants was leading in the score with 6 while zero for Green Bay Packers. Then a bit later in the second quarter, Green Bay Packers suddenly energized themselves somehow and be the team that they are known for as Green Bay Packers got in the playoff in several rows for many years. In case some of you wonder why I say “Turned the Table”? At the beginning of the season for NFL football, Green Bay Packers were winning a few games, lose a couple of games then back to winning and then suddenly losing four games in a row which got them to 4-6. The Green Bay Packers fans shared their frustration with the team via social media, telling them that it is time to fire the head coach, time to fire the general manager and time to fire defense coordinator Dom Capers. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers told the interview that he believes that the Green Bay Packers can and will turn the table after their fourth losing streak. After that interview, the fourth losing streak they started winning the games and wins 7 streak including the playoff game against New York Giants tonight. Last year the Green Bay Packers was losing a few games like they were this year, Aaron Rodgers said “relax!” and suddenly winning several games in a row so I don’t know what it is but he obviously can predict that they can come back out to the top.
Nonetheless, I may be biased as I am a huge fan of Green Bay Packers and I am thrilled to see that my all-time favorite NFL team Green Bay Packers is in the playoff. They won their first game in the playoff “NFC wildcard” tonight against New York Giants and they will be playing against Dallas Cowboys next weekend away at Gillette Stadium which is belongs to Cowboys. So, Go Pack Go!
The Regretful Trump Supporters
I am starting to see a lot of people who is starting to regret that they have voted for Donald Trump to become the next President of the United States on social media. The problem is that their regrets is too late because Donald Trump is president-elect and there is nothing else they can do which is unfortunate. If they had regretted voting for Donald Trump a few days before the election day, then in some states they would have the chance to change their votes and vote another presidential candidate. Now that I saw some of the people saying that they have regretted voting for Donald Trump on social media, my problem is that or my question is that how in the heck can they not see it from the beginning like they have seen after the election because Donald Trump is doing the same thing as President-Elect as he did during his campaign. I don’t know why some of the people thinks that once Donald Trump have realized that he is elected to be the next President of the United States that he would change his behavior or whatever and their thought is wrong! That behavior that Donald Trump have shown is how he have behaved for several years now and just now that a lot of the people realize that this is how he is behaving? Unacceptable excuse!
As much as it pains me to say this but there is nothing else they can do something about that now but they can do something about that in four years and I sure hope that they remember that voting a Republican president or any Republicans for the government is bad idea so in four years vote all Democrat! Then just maybe, just maybe they can salvage the mess that Trump administration will be making in the next four years and I just hope that the small numbers of Democrat in the government know how to convince some of the Republicans to do the right thing when it comes to making new bills or whatever until the next election. I must say that in the next four years it won’t look good for the people of America and only question in the next four years is can we try to keep them in a corner just long enough until the next election.
When Trump supporters start regretting is after they find out that Donald Trump lied about Mexico paying for the border wall in south of the United States because Donald Trump is asking the congress for funds to pay to build the border wall and this means that the money that’s building the border wall will be coming out of the American’s pockets instead. Donald Trump says that Mexico will pay them back later, don’t fall for that because the President of Mexico have clearly said that they will not reimburse for the border wall and with that what you think the President of Mexico would change his mind in the future? Slapping them with sanctions and restricts until the President of Mexico agree to reimburse for the border wall? No, because all that will do is to cause the war between Mexico and the United States; remember Mexico have Russian’s missiles on their land aims at us so thread lightly.
They have built a website that is dedicated to sharing a lot of tweets, articles, Facebook posts and others where Trump supporters shows their regrets: http://www.areyousorryyet.com/
Activism on Social Media
In the old days, before the internet booming with search engines and especially social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogs and many of others we would have to act in person to lobby somebody to demand something. Social media are growing fast every day as many of corporations, government and others now have accounts on the social media which this allows many of us to pull up our activism sleeves to lobby others to make sure that the government, corporations or others to do the right thing for the people in the United States or in any other country. Social media is the best advantage for many of us activist to exploit and use to make sure that someone is to be hold accountability for their sins that they have done to some of the people. I am activist myself, for many of things but I do mainly for civil rights and human rights for the Deaf people because I truly believe that we Deaf individuals have it harder than some of other minorities. Yes, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing is considered minority which is same with the people of colors. How can we successfully make sure that they are held accountability for and to get them to do justice for it by doing the right thing? Social media. I have seen a lot of corporations, government and others starts getting account with Twitter because in their mind at the first is under pretense to show us that they are willing to be transparent with us by exchanging words or whatnot without realizing that by them registering an account would make them a target for many of the people who want to see that they do the justice for the things that they have done wrong to them or to others. While protesting or rally in person at front of their building or at a government building can be effective but the question is which being in person or on social media will bring more attention? Several news outlets always out on the look for sources to use for their news and by the source is us. So, if many people on Twitter protest someone using a hashtag, that will catch their attention and we can use that to our advantage because with that we can deliver our message even further with the help of news outlet.
If you see or hear anything that’s wrong, like if a government in your state have a new bill in the house of representatives that will not be good for the people and yourself in your state then gather up as many as people you can using the hashtag on a social networking service like Twitter to voice your thoughts against some of the bills by using your state representatives @username. I did for the HB1 “Right to Work” and prevailing wages repeal on Twitter but the problem is that the Republicans doesn’t truly care about our needs or what we feel about some of the bills that they want to pass, not to pass or to repeal. That does not mean that the next new bills that comes through the house of representatives will pass without hearing your voice because it depends on how vocal you can be and the more people with stronger vocal then sometimes the Republicans will just give up so as for any of you who are activists; Keep it up!
Over to You
I must call it night because it is 4:11AM now, I am supposed to be in bed about a couple of hours ago, and I didn’t even realize that I have went by my bed time because I was so busy typing this article or busy looking up on the search engines for validation on some of the things that I needed to say in this article. Anyway, I think for now I will stop here, but if you have any idea on what you would like for me to share my opinions or thoughts here I would greatly appreciate that if you would send me some topics suggestion by using the submit page here and or find me on social media to suggest some of the topics that you would like to hear my opinions or thoughts! I truly appreciate for all your time reading this article and more importantly I appreciate your decision to subscribe to this blog so that you can be notified for any of the latest articles! If you don’t know how to subscribe so that way you can be notified when I write a new article, you can do so by entering your e-mail address under the subscribe section on right side of this website and your e-mail is confident or look for the “subscribe here” link below. For now, I must bid you good night and please be safe because I think that we are about to start getting serious with the winter as in the middle of January to beginning of the February is when snowstorms usually arrive!
Joshua “Joshie” Sullivan.
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