The World is Messed Up.

  Every now and then, there's going to be horrible things going on with this world. We'll hear about it when we're enjoying our meal at our nearby fast food restaurant and the news channel is playing on the TV there, or when we so happen to come across a post about it on our Twitter feed, really anywhere. Besides that, we'll all go through personal problems ourselves. But sometimes, so much of it just piles up, and things just feel... broken.

  Without a doubt, I've been feeling a bit of that, and I definitely felt that a few weeks ago. What was going on for me weeks ago? Well, there's a lot. Here's some that would come to mind:

• A classmate treating me like crap for absolutely no reason
• A bit of family problems
• Test weeks
• Having to cancel a video

  But out of all of them, there was one that really made life feel way harder-- a heavy one that added a lot more weight to my problems.

  One day on Twitter I quote retweeted a joke someone else made, highlighting how offensive I felt their joke was, for I felt it was disrespecting a certain music artist represented in it. Then after I had school. On my way home, I checked Twitter as I always did, and I had tons of notifications. When I checked, I immediately felt mentally damaged. Several users I didn't know started targeting me, teasing me, liking each others' responses to continue ganging up on me, and just all out being rude to me. I just felt super worried and stressed. When I tried responding, they just continued attacking me. Even when it got to a point where I was feeling so beaten up, I let them know, but they didn't care, they still treated me like a joke. So I just had to go private and started venting for a week and turning off notifications to avoid further disruption. I was seriously feeling so beaten up, wishing I was mentally stronger.

  Now, things have gotten easier, for today was also a day off from school, so I had the whole house to myself. Probably the only personal problem I've been having is not making the music I'm working on sound like what I expected, but it's ok, it's not a big deal. But anyways, later in the day, after I had lunch, I used my computer upstairs. It was all fine and normal, until I checked Discord. Once I checked the general channel of a friend group server I'm in, I heard something super shocking.

  Y'see, the original members that made up the friend group (including me) all met from a friendly server that we all met each other in. Someone worth noting in the friendly server is someone who I'll just call "Astro." Anyways, coming to the present, when I checked the general channel of the private small friend group server, someone let us know that Astro (who we were obviously familiar with) announced in the deep thoughts channel of the friendly server that he's a a member of a political activist group in Canada and still is while Canada's prime minister, who now became the dictator of the country, is taking control of ALL media going to the world right now, which means YouTube videos showing their government doing bad things are now gone.

  Let's rewind back to the political activist group part. So, his group is now planning on peacefully protesting on foot to Parliament. Meanwhile, the police are making sure they will be easily stopped and they couldn't be helped. Because of this, he's getting worried that he may be arrested soon, not being able to talk to us.

  I really don't want to get into anything political. I really don't find political things interesting, and I don't feel like being involved in any of it, but this is really serious. Even more serious, Astro's brother committed suicide due to the government not allowing him to work, making him lose his home and end up taking his life on the floor of a homeless shelter.

  This genuinely has me worried. Years ago, I was just all chill, and I remember talking to Astro in the friendly server, talking about how I record sheet music to memorize songs on piano, since we were both really experienced with piano. It was fun and enjoyable, loved to see someone else that I could form a friendship with because of a rare talent. Now years later, I'm worrying about him and his family due to everything that's been going on with not just them, but everyone in their country.

  The world's messed up folks. Who knows what we'll have left soon.

-Anthony "Salteh" S.

An Idea

  Yesterday, after I had attended church with my family, we went to a diner since we did not have breakfast previously, before attending church. When we got there, we sat at a table, ordered, and waited. We ordered what we usually would order at a diner: I would get chocolate chip pancakes with sausage, my sister got waffles with orange juice (which I drank, for the orange juice came with the waffles, so she ordered chocolate milk), and my parents got pancakes and... I don't know, I was barely paying attention. After all, I was just being chill, sitting back, listening to music that was playing on my phone with my headphones, waiting. But there was one thing I'm aware of about the food that's worth noting: every menu item we ordered came with another thing.

  Once our food was prepared, we enjoyed it as soon as we could when it was brought to us. I certainly enjoyed eating my buttered chocolate chip pancakes with maple syrup, and then switching to eating sausage, and some orange juice sips here and there. After a while of my family and I filling up our stomachs, we eventually reached a point where we were practically full. There was quite a bit of extra food, which is why I mentioned that previously.

  The only leftover piece of food I remember seeing is just a chunk of my chocolate chip pancake and some egg that my sister left on my plate. But instead of having it saved, my parents asked the waitress if it'd be thrown out. So it was, and we just saved some of what they got.

  I looked at the food, and thought, "How often does everyone do this? How many go to diners and end up not finishing the food they order, and instead saving it for later? Will they even finish it after?" I thought about how many visit restaurants each day, and how much of them save their food after being completely filled from it. Well, according to a quick google search I made, around 150,000 pounds of food are wasted every day. WOW, just think about it. That's almost as much as the weight of a space shuttle. That makes me wonder, "Why can't we actually use all that to help something else?"

  I remember scrolling through YouTube Shorts on my iPhone a few weeks back and watching one about how South Korea is making its restaurant customers throw out their waste in a machine when they finish eating. The machine weighs how much food the customer is wasting, and makes them pay a specific amount depending on how much they're throwing out. From that, they're actually doing really well financially. But I have an idea to do that everywhere around the world, just without the waste... and without the money.

  Without a doubt, the food could be decomposed and turned into really anything that contributes positively towards the environment. The world could really use some of that to really help with the environmental problems. Plus, I'm sure we could also use some more green in the world. Besides the decomposition idea, we could also have restaurants save the wasted food and donate it to homeless shelters at the end of the day. I know it's a pretty basic idea, considering that probably all of us have done something like that when we come across someone on the streets begging for money, but it could still be pretty effective.

  I get how it sounds strange that I'm discussing this. Usually, I don't worry about world problems. In fact, I don't often get to hear about them. But god, every time it just gets to me and comes to my mind, I can't just help but to worry. We definitely could use a little help with things like these, so here I am slightly discussing a resolution to it. But yeah, that's about it.

-Anthony "Salteh" S.

What do I do now?

  A few weeks ago, I heard even more news about the Spotify situation. Apparently, Neil Young removed his entire catalog from the streaming platform to boycott against the controversy on the Joe Rogan Podcast, one of the many podcasts hosted on Spotify, assuming he wouldn't want to be affiliated with the podcast. I actually heard about it the day it happened, but it didn't necessarily catch my eye, until one day.

  One day, as I was scrolling through Twitter, I eventually paid attention to the "What's happening" section on the right side of the screen and found a moment (an article made on Twitter, compiling of tweets) from the Los Angeles Times about Joni Mitchell, one of my favorite solo artists, leaving Spotify, joining Neil Young in protest. It was completely shocking.

  As I tweeted several times about the situation, I also looked through hundreds of tweets about the situation that were going trending, including Spotify users deleting their accounts or cancelling their premium subscription, joining the boycott as well. This made me so interested that I typed a video script about it.

  After a while, I typed at least 5 paragraphs on the Notepad application that I use a lot. I was keeping it casual, just ranting about the situation, but I thought that was good and found it entertaining. However, when I was done for the day, I would just leave it on my computer, while it would be on sleep mode. I didn't dare to save anything. That was clearly a problem a while later.

  A few weeks ago, instead of continuing off on my desktop screen, with all applications kept last night still open, I was on the home screen, the screen you would click on to sign in. I was a bit worried, but at the same time thought, "Oh, maybe I'll just sign in and everything will be back the way it was. So I did, and everything was the way it was, same programs open, same positions as I left it at. However, they all restarted. They all acted as if I turned on the computer again, which I obviously did. But that meant one thing, my unsaved video script was gone.

  I couldn't do anything about it, and yes, it's my fault. I definitely should have saved it just in case. So now, it's gone, which means I couldn't record the 5+ other long paragraphs I prepared for the video. This is the point where I ask what I'm asking on the title of this blog: what do I do now?

  Pretty much the only video options I have are reviews, most definitely album reviews because music's my biggest interest and albums are more accessible than any other types of media. But there's also a casual Storytime-like video that I've been wanting to make for a while, and I actually have talked about it to some internet friends, and they seemed interested.

What do you all think?

-Anthony "Salteh" S.

Introduction

  Hello, welcome to my Blogspot! Here, I'll just be blogging about random things, whether it's thoughts, experiences, random topics, etc. 

  I'll definitely use this to update you all on things I'm working on in a less casual way, like I do with my Twitter, or if I want to tweet things that are too long to be a tweet.

But that's it!

-Anthony "Salteh" S.