How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m 40, started paying attention to politics in the Clinton years and then really paying attention with Bush v Gore in 2000. America was full on neolib vs neocon bullshit back then, a quarter of a century ago. The 2nd Iraq War was a big moment for me of realizing that the only thing America stands for is corporate hegemony. Project 25 is no different than the Project for a New American Century, and the “opposition” from the “left” isn’t fundamentally against any of it, they just pay a bit more lip service to culture issues (which are of course important if you aren’t a cis white christian male, but they are clearly not enough).

Tl;dr

Colon, Michigan: “Am I a joke to you?”

I’m not a Jain so take this with a grain of salt. Their philosophy of nonviolence believes in two sets of rules - one for ascetics and one for “householders”. The former renounce everything in service of nonviolence (they often wear masks to prevent breathing in any organisms, carry canes that they use to tap the ground when they walk, etc). The latter have more “reasonable” restrictions (but are still pure vegetarians, etc). So maybe for the former group?

Quality/purity of fentanyl in Norcal has gone way down recently apparently. https://sfstandard.com/2024/08/12/fentanyl-soap-purity/ at least here I’m sure that is a major contributing factor

There are varieties of Jainism that won’t pluck fruits (will only eat what has naturally fallen) and many mainstream varieties of Jainism that won’t eat any root vegetables (because digging them up would harm insects), or seeded vegetables (eating it harms the plants ability to reproduce).

Live music archive is still down for example 😞

Number 1 that’s black beans. Number 2 the punchline is “i dunno but I’ve never paid $20 to have a garbanzo bean on my face”. Number 3 I won’t allow my go to joke to be stolen by these fascist goons!

What’s wrong with the tongue test for 9 volts? I know it tickles some but is it actually harmful? I’ve been doing that for over 30 years…

Rand McNally with all the folds <kiss>

I don’t think it’s fair to blame this on cocaine. Obscene wealth, privilege, and lack of consequences for one’s actions are not a recreational drug.

99 in Berkeley right now. My house was built in like 1928 and since we rent obviously there’s been no energy efficient updating of insulation or anything like that since maybe the 60s. It’s like 94 inside right now. Sitting in front of multiple fans just blowing hot air at me this is the life y’all.

People forget this. Also they forget that until the 90s Taiwan was an authoritarian military state. I’ve been to Taiwan, it’s a beautiful country and the people are wonderful, but it was founded by horrific and brutal men who were rightfully chased out of mainland China (not to mention there were already lots of people living there, who like indigenous people the world around have been made second class citizens in their own lands)

Nothing quite like Florida cold springs for sure. I lived in Orlando and definitely took advantage of Rock Springs, Wekiwa, Blue Springs, etc. Truly magical places.

If we stopped growing almonds for the entire freaking world Norcal would have lots and lots of water. 80% of California water goes to agriculture, 20% of that is for tree nuts, and 2/3rds of them are exported overseas.

I do agree (as a Michigan native originally) the best prospects over the next 50 years are Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. But both career prospects and winter make that a hard miss for me.

Leaving Florida was one of the more joyous occasions in my life. I moved somewhere with earthquakes and wildfires, but at least my daughters will have access to reproductive healthcare and if one of my kids turns out gay or trans they won’t be under existential thread. Natural Florida I absolutely love, esp when it used to be weird (a la Carl Hiaasen) but christ almighty is it a failed state.

NARC

Waymo is already operating fully autonomous self driving taxis in SF. Price point is about the same as uber/lyft, a bit cheaper since no tip. And they are all hella nice Jaguars. The difference is Waymo uses lidar and radar to make it work (and also did intensive mapping of city streets). Still needs a lot of work to scale (they do dumb things, but so do human drivers, and are limited to the city so I can’t take one to or from my home in Berkeley yet) but they fully exist and are a viable option today.

I have a friend with a PhD in linguistics, worked for years in the SF tech world in i18n, not quite a PM, not an engineer, not a CX person but somewhere between the three. He got laid off and found it impossible to get another role, I think in large part because he’s super over qualified by education and years of experience, but in such a niche skill set that doesn’t really fit into traditional tech company roles. He ended up taking a job at the airport doing plane loading and such!

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I used to read it while pooping as a perl programmer at one of my first jobs