It’s all in the method. Some bots can fuck us. Other bots can go fuck themselves.

Oh bud, are you new here? Welcome. This particular corner bar of the Internet that you’ve stumbled into doesn’t take kindly to technology that severs the person from the job.

Things you can do yourself. Select those that are right for you:

• Most trips are <3 miles. Use a bike or e-bike where it makes sense, or public transportation if it’s built out.
• Take steps to avoid the consumer-for-the sake-of-consuming mindset. Get things secondhand or from buy nothing groups.
• Eat less meat. Vegetarian dishes can be flavorful. Even a grilled cheese and some soup is delicious. Miso also has that essential umami kick. As a reformed “need meat with every meal” type person, it’s doable, you just have to rewire your mind and gut. It’s a thing you can do to both save you and your environment.
• Donate to climate advocacy groups and call your political representatives.
• Recycle - it’s oddly getting a bad rap these days, because we’re the downstream consumer to the folks designing and making crap, but we still also have responsibility in the chain.
• Avoid things like fast fashion - buy things with sustainability built in and leave intense shipping logistics out.
• compost and grow your own food if you have the space and time. Less transport and typically better for you. At the very least, you’ll know what you’re eating.
• purchase personal carbon offsets from reputable organizations
• consider investing in a heat pump and insulated glass windows when it’s time to switch the older ones out if you have a home.
• Avoid buying items that are simply packaged water. Try to buy concentrated items and then add water at the point of use. Soaps, detergents, bottled water, flavored drinks are easy ones.
• Use a smart thermostat and set it between recommended standards for your region. You can always wear slippers / more layers to warm up when slightly cold, or run fans, hydrate and wear light clothes when a little warm.
• Procure preventive maintenance on big ticket items and use your built in paid warranties. So many pieces of equipment fail due to some minor thing that could have been addressed earlier.
• encourage others, evangelize sustainability. Political movements need to meet certain thresholds to turn into action.

One of the wittier guys in the trailer park I grew up in did that trick where it looks like you can pull one of your fingers off from one hand. As an 8 year old, that was fucking cool. Perhaps you could even augment it with some fake blood.

Another time he did the quarter behind your ear trick and then gave us the quarter.

To this day, I still remember him more than any shucker of a Milky Way or Babe Ruth candy bar. So yeah, go for it, make an impression.

She needs therapy to work on her emotional intelligence. That can’t be you acting as therapist, it needs to be professional.

What you need to do is set ground rules. You’re in charge of your own life, no one else is. If you think her throwing a chair is dangerous to you, then you need to go seek safety.

You are not in charge of her. You are not in charge of her emotions. You are only in charge of you and your own actions, and how you react to external stimuli. You have to take care of yourself. It sounds selfish, it does, but often times we are perceiving our own distorted reality; and our responses, while they may help alleviate our pain in the short term, are not actually resolving anything.

That’s what 1.5 years of therapy has taught me. I’m on the other side of a 10 year long toxic relationship and finally feeling like I actually have some sense of self and now know what I want in life. I wish you the same, without the emotional baggage.

You know it’s because they ate it right? That’s the only possible reason.

Your opinion is noted, Russia.

Mamdani is the action verb as he’s the one outfoxing Cuomo.

The terrifying thing is about this, and the tariffs, is that, as with any kind of self induced high, the comedown is terrible. Prices aren’t supposed to come down, especially rapidly, as it wreaks all sorts of chaos on macroeconomics. So I’m afraid, unless orange man decides to just rip off the bandaid and see what happens, that we’re going to be stuck with these things for a long time.

Nothing against her, and by all means, I hope she does throw her hat in the ring, along with a whole slew of other candidates, but I hope she gets Mamdani’d. I hope AOC throws her hat in and we have a real debate about the direction of the party.

Moreover, what a time we are in where two potential candidates for president could be women? Broader forces excluded, that seems like quite a revolutionary time to be alive.

And it burns burns burns. My lung’s on fire.

My lung’s on fire.

Grew up there. Myrtle Beach is the kind of place where everyone has 3 jobs and no money. The place thrives on tricking others into relieving them of theirs.

However, can also confirm it’s an easy place to catch crabs.

Good for Japan I guess? It’s typically the Conservatives who elect women first, because those are usually the ones who so vehemently oppose a woman candidate. It’s a bit of mind fuckery.

Now let’s see if they either set her up for success, or if she’s out sooner than a head of hakusai.

Nero fiddled as Rome burned. The Germans pillaged Europe’s art. Bankers profited off the Great Recession. Orange man builds a monument to himself while shutting down the government.

A reckoning is gonna come.

4/5 - coming of age film about a scrawny, scrappy poor kid. Opening shot is a fight against other kids in a trailer park to level up in status. Or maybe even earlier to my mom standing there pregnant, and then her mom punching her in the stomach upon finding out her teen daughter, though as much as she had tried to shut her away, had somehow gotten herself knocked up. And then following the resulting trail of blood. Regardless, it starts out by getting the shit kicked out of me a few times.

Sprinkle in the multiple times I almost died, slipping on wet cement that had just been coated with muriatic acid, that time a demented kid tightened a noose around my neck, the countless nights I’d wake gasping for air with my chest heaving because we had a cat urine and roach problem and couldn’t afford an inhaler. That one time two girls thought it would be funny to see how long they could hold me underwater, at a pool, of course unsupervised, and only stopping just so as things faded to black and all I heard was this saint of a kid saying to them “Stop! He’s dying!” Nary a parent in sight.

The sex, the drugs the drinking all at 13.

The divorce, the handoffs from family member to family member moving each year. Finally settling into a mountain town in rural Appalachia. Having a town general store purveyor of goods taking me under his wing. Learning a passion for the outdoors and skiing.

Going mudding in a Honda Accord with a bunch of other delinquents. Going streaking after we got stuck. Flash forward to a court house and nearly going to jail for vandalism and other stupid teenage mistakes.

Going back to the area I was raised and finding that everyone had 2 kids and a drinking problem…or worse.

Flash forward to the struggles of leaving my past behind. Failing out of university after 9/11. Constantly watching those two planes smash onto the twin towers in a dark dormitory until it was etched into mind.

And then more struggle to leave my past behind as I sought out a soulmate. Dropping out of the Peace Corps due to it.

Quitting my job and finding a love for cycling. Being given a dog who hated wheels, but even she eventually fell in love with cycling. The smartest, best damn dog in the world.

Nearly dying another handful of times. Motorcycle in the mountain roads of Tennessee, more motorcycle, sliding in the snow with a big rig behind, that time wrecking it the one dumbass time I went for a joyride after drinks. Being on the 3rd floor of a house as it collapsed on a rainy day in high winds and walking out mostly unscathed.

Discovering a love for travel. Still trying to escape my past, but working on it, like really really working on it. I try not to die anymore.

Could call it something like “The dirtbag’s field guide to survival, part one.”

If Daria got a movie and it did pretty well, surely you can.

There are all sorts of classes available at top schools via opencourseware. You can take the highest tier courses that the US has to offer, and become educated. While not degree offering, it still would look great on a CV, if you can somehow prove you did the work.

Free books. A few years ago, I read a free electrical engineering book available on the internet, which I found fascinating. It has been a little helpful in practice as well, but I think it’s just cool to know how capacitors and motors work. Public libraries exist for a reason. Gutenberg is another option.

Many 2 year community colleges are now free tuition if you reside in the state.

And of course, there are still ways to get a degree cheap, if the paper is important to you. I finally landed at WGU 15 years ago and it was very reasonable, and has paid dividends on my original investment.

Greek yogurt, walnuts, craisins, pumpkin seeds, hemp hearts, chia seeds, maybe cinnamon, maybe a dash of honey, possibly some frozen fruit if I feel like waiting for it to thaw a bit. Coffee with a dash of oatmilk.

1. Amendment to get rid of gerrymandering. Districts will be drawn up by statistical models that emphasize culture, values, demographics of the district. Every citizen also gets a vote by mail ballot.
2. Amendment to implement sensible gun control. Not ban guns, as people need some way to fight back against a tyrannical government. And some people truly do need to keep themselves safe from wildlife, crime, etc.
3. Amendment to bring in Puerto Rico and Washington DC as states in the union. If Texas wants to split into East TX and West TX, I’m fine with that too.
4. Law to require 2 years voluntary service. Meals, food, housing, recreational stipend will be provided. Similar to CCC, you’ll learn a trade and build up a camaraderie that will last a lifetime. As a citizen in a country, you should have skin in the game, it gives you a sense of ownership . Bonus is infrastructure gets kept up and senior citizens are cared for. Volunteer groups can be unionized.
5. Gas tax goes up significantly. Seriously, Europe pays $8/gallon. Why the hell do we need to keep it at $3? Tax will pay to build out much needed public transportation and sustainable energy grid infrastructure. We need trains people. If China can do it in a country much more mountainous than ours, we can do it.
6. Wealth tax. Anything over $100 million earnings is taxed progressively at 70% anything above $1B is taxed at 90%. Tax on unrealized gains, but can be balanced by unrealized losses.
7. Abolish tax exempt status for churches. You can be nonprofit, but you will still be taxed. No more slave owning mega-pastors.
8. Amendment to overturn Citizens United. Political contributions will be limited. You want your money to be speech? Sure, do it the old fashioned way and convince enough people to align with your cause.
9. Federal Healthcare for everyone damnit! What the hell is wrong with us!?
10. Give more power back to the states. There will be some cohesive things that we all agree upon that keep the tether of our society together, but New York is not Oklahoma is not Colorado is not Alabama. States should have more power to govern themselves. Think of it like Catalonia in Spain or Scotland in UK. States are the test beds of democracy.

Would I get a second term? Hell no. I’m a change agent technocrat. People like a showman. There’s a reason city planners are divorced from mayors at the municipal level. I come in like a four mile freight train then I go home. Some populist demagogue would probably replace me.

South US, but in the mountains where it is much cooler. SO is vegetarian and I am an omnivore but skew vegetarian, especially at home. I leave heated things out to cool from hot to warm before putting in the fridge. About an hour, maybe 2 when I am being forgetful. Anything over that is taking risk. I’ve had a few nasty bouts of food poisoning before so I skew on the safe side.

My mom on the other hand grew up very differently. Lives by the beach in a much warmer more humid climate. She’ll leave moist dump cakes unrefrigerated for days. She’s more homeopathic than me, says the spices have been used for ages to preserve food. She’s not wrong, but you have to throw in a lot more cinnamon than what our Americanized palate is accustomed to. We are very careful about what we eat when we visit, and even then, small bites to try first.