no internet access, no power, no retail.

Does this actually sound like a utopia to anyone else or just me?

But Mexico has 63 more miles of coastline on the Gulf than the USA does.

He’ll solve that too.

Yes they do and I do add my own tech but my experience with some of these devices has not been great.

I have LG TVs which I connected to the network and have been updated over the years to have really bad UX and are now polluted with ads.

I had an LG sound bar that was great for a while until it completely stopped working. Powers on, all functions seem to work, just no sound. Originally it worked as a Chromecast device too, but they stopped doing updates and Google stopped working with the old API.

My fear is that eventually there will be an update that bricks a device. Now I’ve taken them off the network, but how long before we have TVs that require Internet to even function.

These smart TVs have a lot more hardware and software than they need which means a lot more to break.

Miss the days when you could buy a dumb TV and add the tech you wanted.

Add to it that they evacuate their bowels and are alive long enough to suffer embarrassment.

I also suck at this. There is a lazy way though you’ll have to accept a certain look. My great grandmother had doilies everywhere. Every surface was covered. Most nearly completely, a few of the bigger tables just had a small one. Once a week she would collect them all and wash them. I didn’t realize till much later in life that the purpose they served was to collect dust to keep it off your surfaces.

I wonder if something more aesthetically passing to the modern eye would be as effective or if the intricate lace is important to the function.

The first Halo

I’ve been going to metal and adjacent shows and festivals for decades.

Metal fans are everything and everyone. There exists no stereotype that any one fan could fully fit.

• The lawyer with more money than sense.
• The family of 3 with their toddler wearing ear protection.
• The guy who looks like he just got done mucking a horse stall.
• The boomers who will tell you about the first time they saw Ozzy without it even being brought up.
• The smokers and the tokers.
• The guy who just escaped the office and doesn’t care what people think of his clothes.
• The visitors who are not really into the music but they love an opener or swore they would see the headliner if they ever got the chance.

For the most part, people are accepting of everyone. There are a few people who are less hospitable. Usually kids who have an idea of the culture that is not instep with reality. Typically they learn, one way or another.

And even those who legitimately are not have been convinced by those who are that talking about sex and the body is bad and leads to evil things.

All of these things will protect kids from the radical left. Now remember, conservatives project to confess, and read what you wrote again.

But what the actual fuck can anyone say to defend removing any discussion about consent‽

Because women are property. They belong to their father until they are married and then they belong to their husbands. Men and boys have no reason to give consent.

Yeah, if this were a problem with teens they would likely threaten to trespass them.

I heard a really good explanation of this on NPR. Homeless is a label put on a person, similar to saying a person is a redhead. The implication of saying that someone is homeless is that it defines who they are, that it cannot be easily changed.

Unhoused is more descriptive of the situation that a person is in. This is a condition that can be changed, it isn’t who the person is.

As I revisit this and think it through though, it seems like another way of pushing the goal. There are absolutely negative connotations with the word homeless, but the same venom will eventually attach to unhoused as well.

Ruby Bridges is alive and well.

I vaped for quite a while. Got a bit addicted to the tinkering and the juice hunting. It can be a fun hobby which probably makes it a bad way to quit if you’re anything like me.

I worked myself down on the nicotine levels until I was at zero.

Relapsed back to cigarettes after not having vaped for a few months due to stress.

Finally stopped cold turkey. Didn’t go back to vaping just decided it was time.

Things that ultimately helped:

• Having a reason to quit that I could remind myself of daily as an affirmation.
• My partner was also quitting, I needed her to stop and needed to be there to support her efforts.

If I was going to do it again, I’d probably look into Fum or something similar. Probably add some nicotine gum at the start to ease the chemical addiction.

My grandfather worked in a lab at a brewery. His job was to sample grain coming in. Rejected grain cars were sent to the cereal factories.

This is why I prefer “smart” controls for dumb things. If the control gets bricked I can replace it or the thing will still work without it.

You are a monster.

For anyone like this to be a good thing there needs to be a system of checks and balances. There should be an appeal process that is low effort and low or zero cost. There should also be a verification process by a third party before anything can be added.

I do, but I do it on my terms when I know it is stable. I don’t allow anyone to push updates to my system.