Well, it’s the first of April, so‒April Fools!  Except that, given that it is April Fools’ (Fool’s?) Day, to say April Fools about the fact that it is April 1st would be contradictory.  It’s rather like the self-paradoxical statement:  “This sentence is a lie”.  Because if that sentence is a lie, then it is not a lie, but that would mean that it is a lie, but that would mean that it isn’t, and so on.

Of course, one can write paradoxical things down any time one wishes.  That doesn’t constrain or harm actual reality in any way whatsoever.  Words‒and written language especially‒are the single greatest human invention, but they are not literally magical.  No matter how much hatred you try to put behind it, or what manner of “wand” you use, shouting Avada kedavra will never kill anyone or anything*.

And while we can imagine that the world would be much more polite if words could directly cause things to manifest‒including paradoxes‒I think we can all feel pretty glad that people can’t kill us just by telling us to drop dead.

So, make up all the paradoxical sentences that you might like; no actual paradoxes can exist.  If you come to a point of cognitive dissonance, you should probably focus on the fact of that discomfort and try to sort it out.  People can “believe” two or more contradictory things (sometimes before breakfast) but they cannot be right about more than one (though they can be wrong about all of them).

Anyway, enough of that nonsense.  It’s mildly engaging, but not terribly durable as a topic, or so it seems to me at this moment.

I am still (as far as I know) unable to use any of Fuckerberg’s apps, and to be honest, I haven’t even tried since before the last time I wrote about it.  It’s annoying, to some degree, to lose access to some entertainment, but it’s not as though I had any right to their use.  I was not the customer, I was the product, as is the case with all of you, too, if you use your social media for free.  Facebook et al sell advertisers access to and information about you.

Now, if I had been kicked off some service for which I had paid and for which I was paying, then I would have a beef**.

Speaking of paid services, what I really should do‒what I want to crave doing‒is to spend those moments that I would spend looking at funny reels on Instagram or whatever doing stuff on Brilliant dot org.  I pay for that service, and it is very good.  I also have a lifetime subscription to Babbel, which I obtained to try to encourage myself to learn more languages (duh!).

So, at some level, at the frontal lobe level, I want to use those sites and their services, to hone and increase my skills.  Otherwise I wouldn’t have contracted the services.  But in any given moment, the activation energy required to begin using them is higher than that for doing other, less beneficial things.

But maybe now that will be a bit different.  Maybe now that differential, that equilibrium, will shift.  I mean, it’s almost certain that it has shifted, or has begun to shift.  It’s all but impossible for one to remove a large factor from a situation that is in dynamic near-equilibrium and to have that near-equilibrium remain unchanged.

I hope that I shall be able to make use of this to improve my mind‒at least to improve my abilities, if not the overall nature of the thing.  At least it would be good if I get some more such use in.

I will miss the sort-of-social-circles one can have and the connection with old friends and distant family members on social media, however tenuous and removed and even occasionally illusory it might be.

I don’t socialize in real life, other than at work during the working day, and that’s a limited thing.  So I feel a little worried about being more disconnected from larger society.  We all know what happened to Melkor when he spent too much time in the Void, away from his brethren, and started to develop thoughts…unlike theirs.

Well, maybe we don’t all know, but read The Silmarillion if you wish to learn more.  It’s really good.

I guess I always have this blog and those who follow it, at least (and that’s no small thing).  I am concerned that some people who only see the blog via Facebook or Threads might not get to interact with it now.  But they are all hereby encouraged to leave a comment or two below.  I welcome them.  Seriously.

That’s all I have to say about that for right now.  I hope you all have an excellent day.

*Unless maybe you swallow a small insect or similar when you open your mouth.  I don’t think that’s how people imagine “the killing curse” working however.

**I’ve been aware of and have occasionally used this expression for as long as I can remember, but it does sound very weird if you listen to it as if from an outsider’s perspective.  “Wait.  You have a…beef?  You have a beef?  What the hell are you talking about?”