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| My Movavi Software |
Doing anything outside today is a no, no. It would be okay if one couldn't avoid it, but it's not a day for outside activities.
I just read an article by Jon Rappaport indicating that several once free, democratic countries are now implementing laws and agencies to address what they call "misinformation". So, freedom of speech is on a rapid decline.
When they talk of misinformation, what they really mean is information of which they don't approve. Information that doesn't meet their preferred narrative.
We've seen the insidious creep of this with an ever-increasing number of people and organisations de-platformed, ostracised, banned, had bank accounts cancelled or suspended, and worse - some have been assaulted by the Left because of their unacceptable views.
My view has always been that anyone should be allowed to say or think anything no matter how stupid, ridiculous, childish, or irrational they wish (think of religious dogma) provided it doesn't induce violence or other genuine (not perceived) unlawful activity.
Unless you and I do something about this, it will get worse.
Social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube are now censoring posts and videos they believe give clients the wrong idea about something. Once, we were left to decide what we did and didn't believe, but now we have social media executives telling us what to believe and what is truth.
Have we become a bunch of automatons?
In-house Activities
As I'm not going anywhere today, I'm devoting my time to relearning some graphics manipulation using Movavi Image Editor and Paint.Net software programs and desktop publishing using Scribus.
During my days as a TAFE teacher and staff development and training manager I produced tonnes of instructional media, course notes, computer-aided instruction programs, newsletters, brochures and more.
I mastered Adobe Pagemaker (is anyone old enough to remember that), then moved on to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. In classes at Bundaberg TAFE I taught desktop publishing using a program called "Publish It!", a name poorly chosen, but an excellent basic program that was inexpensive and suitable for most DTP work.
Once, I was an expert in Multimate, Word, and WordPerfect wordprocessing programs and taught each along with proprietary programs on Tandy computers.
The long passage of time and alternative activity, however, dulls one's memory and skills and now I have to relearn much of what I once knew but have forgotten. The good side of course is that much of it comes back much faster than it would had I never have experienced and mastered it.
Now it's time to get to work.
