Old Memory

Something that came up a lot when I used to deal with college age people when I was far older than college age myself while living in a university town...

Seeing the bias in something but not being able to articulate it to someone who was lacking the perspective to see it.

I had noticed that NPR had a bias and I couldn't cite specific examples because I'd stopped listening when the bias became apparent.

To prove my point to their satisfaction I needed to have recent and blatant examples.

To get them, I would have had to subject myself to listening to that garbage again, so I declined to do so.

The advent of the internet made it worse.

Because after the internet I could find examples of the bias and cite them, but counters to those examples were provided by the places who were biased and since they fully vetted media with layers upon layers of fact checkers...  Fuck my lying eyes.

I do notice that the places that were making money pointing out the bias were taking screen shots.  I prolly should have done that instead of copying links.  Either the link would be dead or what I was complaining about would be edited.

Now that Trump is going through things like a scythe, I am feeling more and more vindicated about my observations from 10 plus years ago.  I say ten years because that about when I last talked to one of them.  The last of them... 

I'm No Good At This

Often times among my friends I am just the MOST socialized.

That doesn't mean I'm well socialized.

I routinely get the signals wrong.

With depressing regularity, I will end up depressed about how someone said something and take days or weeks to come to grips that it was just an offhanded remark.

You'd think I would be better at this by now.

It's Important To Have Goals

It has been three years since I have driven a car into a tree.

Places That No Longer Exist For 600

The Biscayne SS was, originally, the chief of police of Carlisle, Iowa's car.

He got the department to get him a cushy Caprice Classic instead of a spartan 9C1.

Wright Chevrolet was the dealer the department bought the cars through, logically enough.

I stumbled across the badge I removed years ago.

There is no longer a Wright Chevrolet in Carlisle, Iowa.

There is no Chevy dealer at all in Carlisle, Iowa.

That is a bummer and I have the sads.

David Freiburger loves pictures of this kind of thing.  I think he mourns for the loss as well.

The Difference Between Florida And California Car Culture

 

Dammit

Some pictures from the Pacific Palisades fire have been posted.

Burned and melted hot rods.

That hit me harder than I would have expected.

Especially after reading David Freiburger talking about how he's lived in the area his whole life and his reading about how California deserved it.

I replied to that thread telling him that we got the same shit after Helene and Milton and to keep his chin up.

I don't feel California had it coming any more than Sarasota or North Carolina did.

But there's definitely things California could have done that would have mitigated the fires, or even made them a non-event.

You have to cut fire breaks.

You have to make the roads that let people escape.

You have to maintain the infrastructure that keeps the hydrants flowing.

California failed to do that.

The people of California voted for the people who would neglect those things.

Did I say, "neglect?"

I meant to say actively destroyed and worked against policies that would have kept this from getting out of hand.

At one time California had the water thing figured out.

Environmentalists made sure that was undone.

Fire breaks are fundamental in keeping wildfires under control.

Environmentalists made sure none were cut.

Expanding roads to make sure gridlock doesn't trap people on the roads and prevent first responders from responding is part and parcel of an increasing population.

Environmentalists and NIMBYist combined to make sure roads weren't widened.

California voters didn't vote to stop or even slow environmentalists and have, thus, reaped the whirlwind.

Florida is about to enter its wildfire season.  Wanna bet we don't make the national news.  Again...

Wanna Don't Wanna

My tank of deal with it energy is a bit low.

I have my choice of three events that friends have invited me to and it means choosing between friends and...

I'm feeling all or nothing about it.

First event will be, essentially, hanging out by myself because those friends are super social and will be flitting around like butterflies chatting with everyone else the whole time because this socialization shit is easy for them.

Second event is a bit of a haul and although I've been invited, I'm an outsider to this group now.  I put myself there, and it's been difficult to summon the energy to get back inside.

Third is a celebration of a business friends put back together after a partnership exploded.  It's got much the same trouble as the first event for me.

Normally things don't line up like this and two of the friend groups attend the same event and that means not either being alone or feeling like I'm intruding.

And I can never quite shake the feeling that I'm intruding and unwelcome.

That follows naturally from watching group after group continuing on as if I'd never existed when I depart.

You want to really feel like you don't matter?  Check up on a social group you left behind and see if they were more than mildly affected.

Better not.  You may discover that they were relieved and happy you finally stopped showing up.

At least I know I did one thing good for them.

Dunno Why

I keep goofing around with GURPS shit and I never get to play.

If I am very lucky, I get one or two sessions when FuzzyGeff makes his annual pilgrimage to Florida to visit Marv and I.

I loved tabletop role playing games once.

It was my main social activity at one time.

Now?

I do some reality checks and make characters that will never be played.

I polish the cannonball of converting Twilight: 2000 to GURPS 4e.

And...?

It's a little depressing.

Especially when I learn how woke and TDS the people who make and sell the games I still love are.

Anxious

Well, the anxiety is not getting better.

It's affecting my enjoyment of going out for a beer and that, in turn, is affecting the enjoyment of the people I'm out with.

The depressing solution is two birds with one stone and remove myself from the situation before I ram into it.

I'll prolly be missed... at least I hope I am... but it might be best for everyone.

I'm not quite to agoraphobia levels.  I feel like I'm a long ways from THAT.

But I'm unhappy about it and very worried it's dragging friends down with me.

They deserve better.

Out Of It

I tried watching a video describing all the changes in the new version of the D&D Player's handbook from the 5th edition.

Yeah.

So many of the things he was talking about were unfamiliar from the last version of AD&D I actually played.

I kind of know what some of the new races species are.

A lot of what he described, though, sounded a lot like things that came with GURPS as far back as 1988.

Once again, there's hardly a thing you can do in your favorite system you cannot do in GURPS!

But I am a GURPS specialist, I don't really do other games because I don't play ANY RPG's any more.

So I don't really read the rules of other games I won't play.

It might be time to admit that I'm no longer part of this hobby and stop doing anything with it at all.

That Person

I've realized that I am THAT person.

I think I shall, henceforth, avoid the place where I made the realization.

I will miss it, but they will be fine without my patronage.

A Plane Plan

 If I were to win one of those massive lottery jackpots, it would be far simpler and cheaper for me to just eat a .30-06 round than to buy an airplane.

Despite a lifelong fascination with aviation and airplanes, I lack the nature to be a pilot for reals.

I'm the person you read about in the aviation magazines who made a series of simple errors that individually would be fine, but collectively lead to a smouldering crater.

What sets me apart from those people is the realization that I am one of them long before even talking to a flight school.

It made me very sad to realize this about myself, I am fascinated with planes still.

Fuck You 2022

The Precious died.

The Lovely Harvey broke her shoulder and got a near fatal infection.

Derpy Dingus McGee died.  He was a great cat.

Numerous home disasters ruined all the finances.

The red wave never materialized.

2023 shouldn't be worse, but I will not say it cannot.

I said that about 2020 and 2022 sure proved my dumb ass wrong.

Memory Holed More Than A decade

While they're gone from the sidebar for being overtly racist, there were a couple of links to worthy articles.

Nevermind.

All gone.

Everything they wrote before 2020 is gone.

Pity that.

Before they succumbed to hate, they had a lot worth reading.

Well That Sucks

I just found out...

Atlanta Dragway in Commerce, Georgia closed in May 2021 and they're tearing it down.

Marv used to head up there every November to do the Southern Super Heavy Shootout.

Alas, it is no more!

Avoidance

I have not been posting much because I have not been reading the news or other blogs much.

I have enough in my life to be mad and depressed about that I don't need to be finding other sources of it.

Maybe it was from growing up in a hyper-liberal college town that clued me in early to things that other people are just now talking about.

Welcome to the party.

I was Cassandra.

When I was right, I was not believed.

The level of utter stupidity that a hyper-liberal college down generated was epic.

And it spread.

Nobody believed it could, but...

Here we are.

You want to know why science died?

Because the morons in charge of grants didn't care for the advancement of knowledge unless it supported their preconceived conclusions.

No money for research outside an ever narrowing topic of discussion and no experiments which would cause the cash-tap to shut off.

It isn't scientists who make the decisions about where the money goes.  It's politicians, and they've no use for science if it doesn't advance their careers.  The same can be said for many businessmen.  Science doesn't sell.

It's why there's no Bell Labs.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on poverty.

It's why we cannot discuss the war on drugs.

It's why we cannot discuss immigration and the effects of not assimilating the people who move here from other nations.

It's why we cannot discuss the wisdom of letting subcultures hostile to the main culture exist and thrive, despite the constant evidence that allowing it is damaging our culture, nation and economy every day.

I tried to write to get my thoughts out and be informative and, perhaps, guide someone to knowledge if they were open to seeing it.

I tried.

But my little 1,000 hit a day blog doesn't reach many people.

But I get the most hate back from people who'd nominally agree with me, but since I took the wrong route to agreement, my concurrence was invalid.

It doesn't help much to see them cited as experts when they showed they didn't know what they fuck they were talking about several times when they ventured outside their narrow expertise.

Being an expert at one thing doesn't even imply expertise outside that field.

Murry-Gellman-Amnesia is so fucking real it hurts.

There Is No Worse Feeling

Nothing sucks quite so much as watching a loved one be in pain and being unable to do anything to make it better.

Harvey spoke to the ortho doc about her shoulder today.

The options are:

1. Physical therapy and see what we get for lost motion and strength.

2. Plates and screws.  Because she smokes, bone necropathy is a thing?

3. Complete replacement of the joint.

For both surgeries, her diabetes comes into play and she has to get her A1C down to an amazingly low level.

This got her to burst into tears because after the insurance pays, the meds that actually work to keep her glucose levels in check comes to $700 a month.

Metformin, which is essentially free, doesn't do a good job with her blood sugar.

We're super pissed that the attending at the emergency room didn't do more than an x-ray and send her home with a sling.  We're convinced that had they done a CT scan that night they'd have done surgery immediately and emergency surgery doesn't demand a low A1C.  Emergency surgery is also covered by our insurance better. 

To say that she is bummed out is a gargantuan understatement.

Can I borrow someone's "make it all better" magic wand?

Never Mind

I've just realized that I will not convince anyone they might be mistaken because this is an emotional conclusion for them and not a rational one.

That they've retroactively applied a rationale to their emotional conclusion is irrelevant; emotion cannot be overcome with logic.

C'est la vie.

Sounds Of Silence

This is a nice summation of how frequency deafness behaves.

I have other fun things going on with my hearing.  Tinnitus and misophonia make it extra fun.

"It's quiet.  Too quiet." is something that I encounter.

Often times the goal is to hit that "noise soup" point so the discrete sounds that are triggering the misophonia are lost in the cacophony.

It's why I can often handle eating in a restaurant with friends and being utterly unable to stand the experience of their mastication at home.  It's especially bad when I'm not eating at the same time.

I've tried to explain it, over and over, but nobody seems to listen.

That leads me to think that they're doing it on purpose, just to torment me.

Or they just don't care.

Even more fun is realizing that it can make me hard to be around because the people who are making an effort to not set off the problem have to MAKE that extra effort with me and nobody else they know.

I tend to withdraw.

Somewhere along the line, some connection in my little pea-brain got fried and I started getting anxiety attacks.  It took forever to identify them.

I already trended down the introvert spectrum before I caught aversion to settings where I would be subject to eating noises and now I also get anxiety when I anticipate facing those noises in settings where I know there will be no covering white or pink noise.

If you really want to see me freak out: Remove my ability to escape by controlling the transportation THEN ignore my desperate pleas to leave.  Triple word score if you order lunch and eat it in front of me while I'm in the "must remove myself" panic attack.

Avoidance

There was once a time when I used to go to car shows.  At least twice a week and I met with friends and we grabbed a bite to eat.

Then I had a disagreement with one and stopped being friends and I started to avoid car shows so as to not bump into them.

I am finding myself in a similar situation with a couple of the local breweries.

I've had the conflict with a friend on Facebook, I don't want to discuss it further and that leads to me to avoid places where I think I might encounter them.