This. I’ve watched too many people I care about suffer horribly and die prematurely from largely preventable illnesses. My own health went to hell from some genetic predispositions until I worked out I could absolutely not tolerate a standard American diet. Obviously some people can get away with it more than others for longer. But that’s not me. Found I wanted more life and a better quality of life. Fortunately I had the resources to change my diet and lifestyle. I realize that is a luxury not available to everyone.

My reaction on seeing this was to wonder about the Wendy’s Nasty Patty ™.

Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o’clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

Seriously. I spent 2 days in the hospital last week with bilateral pulmonary embolisms after having COVID the middle of last month. I was NOT otherwise at risk for clots. A terrible surprise that I’ll no doubt be recovering from for some time. I’m on a blood thinner for 6 months.

Robert Loggia and David Lynch have something to say about this:

https://youtu.be/nDilD3wAxt8?feature=shared

Yeah. Feel this is a slippery slope. First it’s supposedly luxury extras like heated seats and remote starts. Next something more critical when folks are habituated to the practice? Enpoopification all around.

When Vita-mixes are criminalized, only criminals will have Vita-mixes.

1. The degree of health I’ve been able to reclaim

2. The perspective going through awful stuff has gifted me

3. The knowledge that there are decent, clearheaded folks in this trainwreck of a world and some of them are my friends

Yeah. But the bar was set low, being Sunday. Took a hike, poisoned some awful yellowjackets for the second day running -hoping to destroy the colony wherever that might be.

Since pizza was classed a vegetable, all bets are off.

Growing up, for a time my folks were way into the evangelical thing and I attended a totally batshit religious school where we recited 3 pledges back-to-back every morning. To the U.S. flag, the Christian flag and the Bible. Then had to recite entire chapters of the Bible we had per force committed to memory that week. Failure to do so was grounds for savage corporal punishment. No other experience in life so inoculated me against authoritarianism and organized religion. It also let me know at that tender age that sadists existed.

My first realization about this problem with reddit came about a decade ago when it became undeniable that shills flooded the discourse the moment Monsanto was mentioned.

One web LLM I was screwing around with had Job Interview as a preset. Ok. Played it totally straight the first time and had a totally positive outcome. Thought the interviewer way too agreeable. The next time I said the most inappropriate stuff I could imagine and still the interviewer agreed to come home with me to check out the rock collection I keep under my bed and listen to Captain Beefheart albums.

It’s shocking to see the assault on libraries across Appalachia. Sad to see it’s a broader problem. For as little finding as they require they provide critical services. So many nasty politicos trying to win some points with the lowest common denominators of humanity must see them as an easy target.

Needs more grapefruit.

That sounds very cool. I’m totally ignorant of the hardware requirements. What sort of minimum setup would such an install take?

To me, it felt like there was some cultural turning point with the absurd denials of the GWB administration. It set some nasty precedents that have only escalated the scale of bad faith in politics and discourse. Now there seems to be positively no shame in having no shame at all.

Normally pretty much an anarchist in my policy predilections. But there are folks I went to school with that I wouldn’t trust with a power drill, much less a rifle. Seems they’re just the ones that make the biggest deal over having guns -and least likely to use them in any responsible way. The role these sorts of badass-looking firearms play now is to make powerless Americans feel like they have some agency. Likely dangerous when these misinformed, utterly propagandized serfs feel extra pressed and attribute their low quality of life to all the wrong reasons/people.

Maybe everyone should listen to the Jonestown tape at some point. It’s truly horrible, but may provide some inoculation against demagoguery.

“The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed sub-category. He’s got esprit up to here…”