Author: Randy Rydberg

A fairly mellow fellow who likes to read history books.

Finally figured out why Facebook moderated me…

I’ve heard about this, but it didn’t register until now; I used the word “Covid”.

That was my transgression. It was automatically picked up for an admin or moderator to approve.

Facebook censors people with views they don’t like, while they themselves publish whatever they want on the topic of Covid.

So, if I’m not buying into the group-think on this, if I’m not ‘thinking correctly’ on this issue, I’ll be blocked from posting, while they can voice whatever they want.

I have been on Facebook for eleven years, all without a single out-of-the-blue moderation such as this. I never posted anything political. Then this happened when I mentioned the very political and contentious topic of Covid in a joke.

Also, by sheer coincidence, this happened the same week Trump and others were banned from social media outlets, the same week Parlor was shut down.

This is not okay. This is not a good direction for us to be going in.

This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in authoritarianism; control over thoughts and minds, control over all information. No other opinions or data are allowed. Hitler, Stalin, and all of the other regimes did this kind of thing; promote the one, ‘correct’ view; all others are to be suppressed.

If you disagree, by all means let’s have a conversation about it. I’d love to hear how I’m wrong about this. I won’t ‘moderate’ your views.

Covid is something we should all be discussing and looking at from all angles; Facebook only wants one single view with no thought process involved.

Just believe everything they feed you without thinking, and you can post whatever you want.

031127 • Thrift Store Finds

These are actually my buys from April 4th and 11th.

I was in line at the 88th & Sheridan ARC when a mother with her husband and young kid asked me to step back six feet, and informed me about the markings on the floor. That was a total invitation for a nice conversation that wouldn’t go well. I just stepped back, being the peacemaker and also knowing that people being this righteous, bossy and afraid aren’t going to be open to other thoughts on this topic.

It’s a crime movie with narration, like Goodfellas or Casino. Not as good, but a nice watch. A great thing about thrift store Blu-rays is that a lot of them have an unused code for the digital copy, so my digital library grows as a bonus! This Blu-ray was only $2.50!
I got Rambo 4 last week, and now all three of the first ones for only seven bucks! I watched these last year on older DVDs and they were all quite grainy… not as bad as watching on a CRT, but still bad. So this will be a good upgrade.

032027 • Thrift Store • CDs

Now, it’s really easy to get upset and frustrated with some people at thrifts. Well, everybody at a thrift, really. but this guy (in the chair) in particular. If you notice, the first four shelves of discs are nice and neat, he’s gone through those. Someone at a thrift, leaving it in better shape than he found it? Amazing. But, he’s stacking them to where you can’t just pull a disc out, you have to take a few off the top and set them somewhere else. But, usually, they are a mess, anyway. But being a respectful person, one doesn’t want to disrupt what he’s doing, yet at the same time, he’s taken over the entire area. His basket (viewable next to him) is full of his pickings. The sound of someone constantly opening, closing, moving discs is somehow horribly annoying. Don’t get too close to him! But to be objective, he’s doing nothing wrong. He’s buying a lot and supporting the place, leaving the area better than when he found it. the only problem is that he’s taken the area over and anybody coming in feels like an intruder. Anyway. My first instinct is to start something with the guy, but that’s very much the wrong thing to do. Luckily there wasn’t much I wanted to see (the cds are two-deep into the shelves, but I really didn’t feel like searching to much as I have been here every week for a month. Not likely to be much of anything worth fighting over.) Some people come with scanners and annoyingly go through every single book in the entire place like a vulture. They also, are not doing anything wrong. Just horribly annoying, and also buying books for sale somewhere else, for more money. One could say that people like this are the competition, whereas everybody else is just a fellow shopper. Anyway. I got out of there without having to beat this guy up (ha!) so that was a win! Another great reason to just stay at home and shop online.
Thanks to the Eleventh Symphony, I pick up every version of Shostakovichs’ symphonies when I see them!
Thanks to the Anne Gastinel album with pieces by one of the composers on this album, I had to get this. Besides, it’s a fairly recent cd which is not common to find at thrifts.
This was a double-cd that had never been listened to, still had the packing inside of the case. And it’s Chopin. For a dollar!
I like the sixth symphony, so a double-album with two others, for one dollar…
This was an unexpected find, I’d assumed I had if not most, all of the BBC Music Magazine discs. I especially like albums that feature the artist and aren’t some generic release.
Don’t know much about these symphonies, but it’s Haydn.
I have a lot of Alban Berg Quartetts, so why not. And, Brahms.
This was actually in the Chopin album above, but it looks to be a different release of the first album on that one. Why couldn’t it have been something different, if I’m accidentally getting an extra disc?

032027 • Thrift Store Finds

If it has anything about the A-10 Warthog in it, I’m going to pick it up!
Not only is this a first-hand account, but it’s from the perspective of a Soviet pilot. I have no figures to back this up, but I think there are fewer of these accounts, and I’ve read that due to how the common citizen/serf was educated back then, there wasn’t a lot of things written by the common solder. Which is something considering the percentage of the population that fought in this war.
The movie that was done on this, The Way Back, I watched a few years ago, and it was very good. Looking forward to reading the book here, that it was based on!
Like the above book on the Soviet pilot, is this book!
This is a 2018 book with nothing but big photos… of World War II locations. And a steal at three dollars!
Just another good-looking book for my library!
I like how they did the cover after a poster from the time period.
First-person accounts were most of what I found today, which is great!
More first-person accounts!
I watched this movie in the theatre, it was my first Rambo film. Not the best one to start with! It is brutal, and only near the end when John Rambo starts doing his thing does one really find anything to really like about this film. They make the bad guys, very bad, they show how and why they are bad… and then the good guy takes care of business. What is disturbing is how the brutality of this film is probably accurate to actual events in history we can’t comprehend simply by reading books. To an extent, a good thing to not know much about.

032021 • Thrift Store Finds

Liszt: Le Preludes: I bought two 50-CD collections brand-new of Deutsche Grammophon The Originals a few years ago, but this wasn’t in it. Re-mastered works, there’s something about a piece that is worth re-mastering that I find justifies checking it out. However, that doesn’t mean that something re-mastered is good, but still. Gives me a reason.

Schubert – Schumann: Symphonies #3 – Günter Wand: Somewhat of a standard generic buy, however, at the same time, could serve as the introduction to new symphonies I might like. Can’t argue that Schubert and Schumann don’t have a lot of great work.

Michael Douglas: Double Feature: Black Rain / Fatal Attraction: Black Rain is very much the number one movie I look for at thrifts. Pretty much every movie I’ve ever liked, I have at the very least found on DVD, except Black Rain. Its taken more than a decade of looking to find it because I figured that, well, it’s a Ridley Scott movie, that did well at the box office, it stars Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia, etc. If there are endless copies of every other Hollywood movie, this has to be in there with them, right? Nope. Never, ever see it. Until today. I watched it right away, it’s been decades. I actually did try to watch this on On Demand, (or maybe it was Hulu) and halfway through, when I went back to finish it, it was gone. For whatever reason, it just isn’t a movie that is commonly available, regardless of box office numbers and the talent involved. Now the only DVDs I have to look for are odd things I don’t expect, such as the Debussy Preludes by Latsabidze DVD.

Fatal Attraction, I’ll give a shot because it’s Michael Douglas. My favorite movies with him are Black Rain, The Game, Falling Down, Disclosure, and Wall Street. I actually bought and watched him in The Sentinel with Keifer Sutherland a few weeks ago.

The Tudors: I pass on these as I see them often, but this week I finally gave in as I don’t know when I’m going to join up to a streaming service long enough to watch it again. The final season, which I never see, was available last week, before I decided this week to start putting the series together. I’ve seen this before, but it’s been a while. Johnathan Rhys Meyers is absolutely fantastic in his role, so that, along with a great supporting cast including Sam Neill and Henry Cavill, along with others familiar as their careers have progressed, that alone makes it a good watch. Rhys Meyers was just in a season or two of Vikings, which reminded me of how much I like this actor.

The second big reason I am going to watch this again is that this is one of those series or movies that has such a great take on the times, the sets, costumes, etc. Accurate or not, they give a decent idea of what it was like back then.

Latsabidze Plays Debussy Preludes, Book 2: This was still in the shrink-wrap! It’s quite rare to find a classical dvd like this at a thrift, so this was my second-best find of the day!

Jack Higgins: The Eagle Has Landed / The Eagle Has Flown / Night of the Fox: I have a three-books-in-one like this of Tom Clancy’s works. There’s something about a big compilation for two dollars, highly acclaimed on a topic I find so interesting. The first two pages that I read while deciding to buy it were pretty good, so hey. Two bucks.

Breaking Bad: Season Five: I have all of these on either Blu-ray or DVD, it’s one of those situations where if I can make the upgrade from Blu-ray to DVD, I have to do it as I don’t see a lot of Blu-ray at thrifts. That aren’t stolen from the case, that is. What a fantastic series, one of the, if not the best, ever.

The Borne Trilogy: Again, I have this on DVD, and watched it about three years ago, but a Blu-Ray upgrade was right there. The fourth one that didn’t have Matt Damon was good too, but I don’t have either that or the fifth one that came out a few years ago.

Winter Army: This survived the week at the Arvada ARC, it was there last week but at full-price, I couldn’t pull the trigger. Why did nobody buy this?