Smarf!

Green chile is life.

Yup.

Green Chile, and various food items smothered in green chile, with a craft beer from one of the kajillion small breweries we have around here.

I don’t know if it’s still there, but when I visited the town of Ayr in Scotland about 25-ish years ago, they had a playground very similar to that right off of the beach. Everything was large enough to accommodate adults, and I think it may have actually been castle themed. No ball pit though. They did have a thing like a tilted merry-go-round that was at waist height and had no handles. Not sure what it’s called, but it was probably the funnest and most dangerous single piece of playground equipment I think I’ve ever come across. There were about a dozen of us traveling together, and I don’t think a single one of us walked away from that thing without catching a boot to the face at least once.

Weed whackers and weed eaters were used fairly interchangeably where I grew up in the US southwest and mountain west.

The Scottish people I’ve heard say it actually called them “piss-a-beds,” which trips off the tongue a lot easier, but that name comes from the fact that as an herbal medicine they are apparently a pretty effective diuretic.

I could have sworn some billionaire already tried this a few years ago, and it failed miserably.

At this point I’d be genuinely surprised if Elon Musk could successfully build a Lego set.

Behind the Bastards did a four-parter on him last year. It was a pretty wild ride.

That’s actually pretty cool.

I think that pretty much sums up the entire ethos of Silicon Valley these days.

Been listening to The Meffs a lot lately.

Brittany Petterson is the congressional representative for Colorado’s 7th district. Not Utah. It’s literally the first full sentence you’ll read if you google her name, and it says so on the page her name links to in the article, in case you wondered what level of fact checking and editorial oversight we’re dealing with here.

Not even a year. It’s only his first fiscal quarter.

If it’s a person at all, and not one of those shit-disturber bots that get unleashed on non-MAGA spaces to start arguments over innocuous things and just generally sour the vibe. BlueSky was infested with them last month. They tend to swarm around celebrities, and posts about celebrities. Either way, a quick glance at their post history shows they’re only here to start shit with people.

Systematically driving down the wages of the people you expect to catch a bullet for you by gig-ifying their industry seems like a pretty terrible idea if you’re someone who depends on armed security for your continued existence.

I guess I’ll go make some popcorn.

Do you think when he went to the barber he specifically asked to look like a ventriloquist dummy who is also a sex criminal, or was this just the best he could do?

I think a big problem is a lot of the explainers for new users, at least the ones that were around back when I first joined Mastodon, were or are absolute dog shit. They were all existential explanations rather than practical ones. I was trying to figure out which instance to join, and why one might be better for me than another, and every explainer I saw was basically a variation on, “iT’s JuSt LikE EmAiL. wHy Is tHaT hArD? sToP bEiNg So sTuPid, DuMmY.” None of them really explained the user experience, and how different instances might affect it, let alone the existence of the local and global feeds and how your instance choice affects those. It was like asking someone how to use chopsticks and them telling you, “It’s easy. Just put food in your mouth with them. Works just like a fork.”

Technically true, but it omits some pretty crucial information.

Once you’re into it and have the lay of the land, it seems really simple in retrospect. But if you’re coming in cold with no idea how any of it works, and the only help you get is some dickhead shouting, “EmAiL! iT’s LiKe EmAiL!” then the learning curve seems a lot steeper than it actually is.

Got suspended in 8th grade for “smoking on school grounds” because I stood outside the front door finishing my fruit snacks before I walked into the school (we weren’t supposed to have snacks outside designated food areas). Some rocket scientist of a teacher saw me standing by the door with my hand occasionally going up to my mouth (I think it may have been cold enough outside to make my breath steam) and said, “AHA! This child is smoking!”

She literally grabbed me by my collar and dragged me to the assistant principal’s office. Multiple other kids, and an adult who must have been someone’s mom, told her I wasn’t smoking, but she wasn’t having any of it. And the assistant principal just believed her out of hand. Wouldn’t even let me finish a sentence to say something in my own defense.

They had the security guard escort me off school grounds. And I just stood there for a while looking back at the school, still holding my fruit snacks, trying to figure out wtf just happened.

I pretty much checked out mentally after that. That kind of stuff ended up being pretty much par for the course. I hung out with the metal/punk/skater/stoner/goth crowd, and that was some kind of unforgivable sin at that school. My friends and I were constantly being singled out for minor or imagined infractions and never believed or given the benefit of the doubt. I went from a 3.8 gpa to something like 0.6 that year. I’d have to sit through all these meetings about how I was “so smart,” and how “I could go so far if only I would apply myself.” And I’d straight up tell them what was going on, and they’d be like, “It’s just a mystery why you won’t apply yourself.”

It’s been like 30 years and I’m still mad about that shit.