A free pass? He’s got enough punches on his “free pass” card for 10 more free passes.

Which is a great rationale for how a 3-year-old doesn’t know how the window got broken. The bar should be set a bit higher for the Axis Cheeto.

I know some of the names on that list. But honestly … favourite celebrities? Like, I’ve got a favourite bartender, but people I’ll never meet? Seems a waste of time to rank them.

Not to mention, what people in the entertainment industry have to say about politics is moot. It’s bad enough that politicians want to curb creative output in a certain mould. Do you look to your local favourite meteorologist for dog-grooming tips? If not, perhaps celebrity political thoughts are equally useless.

Just going off my experience with stepsons a decade ago – so, before the manosphere bullshit had hit its stride – teens will look things up specifically because it disagrees with their upbringing. This isn’t all bad, as it exposes them to new ideas (something the boys desperately needed after a decade of praise for agreeing with anything mom said), and it’s a logical progression from earlier methods of being rebellious.

To me, the larger issue is the amount of demand for such content moreso than its existence. People have been saying ignorant shit online since BBSs and likely earlier. The issue is parents aren’t pushing back. Being grounded but retaining one’s phone is just a vacation from parental intrusion.

We aren’t talking about kids who need phones for 2FA to conduct banking. “But then how will my friends reach me?” “Doesn’t really matter since you’re grounded.” Any parent who relies on their kids having a cell phone to keep tabs on them is a rather lousy parent. Engage with them in person to steer them in the right direction.

We’d still have Patrick, though.

All these damn website changes. Last week, the camera spex were in Ohms.

Whatever new name comes to pass, it needs to get abbreviated to SHIT.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Such is, sadly, the way of most things. AA was ahead of the curve in embracing enshittification.

That has no bearing on how meetings are conducted, though. Most are held in Protestant churches, and while AA claims to be agnostic, “Let go and let god” is shockingly frequent advice. The whole premise of the 12 Steps is that you can’t get out the other end without finding religion.

Sure, they say “higher power” is individually defined, which looks great on paper. How it plays out is another story. Sponsors frequently insist on church attendance as a prerequisite for their assistance. AA plays a good game of pretending to be something it isn’t, which is easy enough to believe if you’ve never seen what the organization actually encourages on the ground.

Then there’s the effectiveness … longitudinal studies have been all over the map on this for decades. AA itself and the for-profit treatment community that needs relapses to stay profitable cherry-pick the flattering ones (and from there, one needs to drill down to find out where funding for the study came from to ascertain bias), while those are far from the only ones.

Given the current state of web search, those float to the top (even on DDG – I just did a search, and while one cited the 5%-12% success rate after a few years from a mid-aughts NIH study I remember, most cite somewhere on the order of 50%) while burying conflicting evidence.

It is straight out a cult. I was told by several people that the only way to stay sober was to go to a meeting at least once a day, seven days a week. So now you have a meeting addiction instead of an alcohol one and immerse yourself in the belief that one missed meeting will find you dead in a ditch. “Do as told or die” isn’t a support network.

The TSA in and of itself has always been a make-work security-theatre project. Just as we did just fine without creating the Department of FatherHomeland Security, it’s not like there’d been a whole bunch of hijackings under the previous airport-screening scheme.

Sure, you’ve got 9/11, but that was far more of a failure on the part of the national-security apparatus writ large than the folks at security at any given airport.

At this point, the biggest danger in air travel is boarding a Boeing. It’s a shame Airbus hasn’t hired Tom Bodett for a “we’ll keep the doors on for you” ad campaign.

But back to the shoes. I have lived exclusively in Birkenstocks – the generic two-strap Arizonas at that – since 1993, with a minor excursion for my first job (“Men at the DN-R wear ties”). I have no idea what I could hide in those, especially in sufficient quantity to blow up a plane, without ripping the soles off, carving out some space in the cork and then attempting to reaffix the sole in a stable enough manner that I could even get to the airport, let alone to security.

This was a stupid rule from the get-go. That it took nearly 20 years to admit that tells you pretty much all you need to know about airport security.

I would be apoplectic if if took five days for a number port with a constantly changing website and clueless customer service. Not to mention data simply being completely shut off after hitting the “high speed” limit.

Except for being assigned a completely new number instead of porting, with the old carrier having released it. The impacts here on 2FA and having to tell everyone you have a new number when most of your contacts don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. Except you can’t for days anyway, and who knows what calls and texts you’ve missed in that time.

I was fully expecting this to be a categorically terrible vanity project, but the grift exceeds expectations.

I saw the second in “5D” … which is to say the rollercoaster chairs watching a 2D movie while water occasionally spritzes (ironic, given the setting) and scent bursts pop out, not smelling like anything relevant, just a vaguely unpleasant but otherwise anodyne smell. I think I’d have better been able to actually watch the movie without all the distractions people pay more to get.

Way too much Jesus for me. I was court-ordered to go to AA meetings after a 2005 DUI, and there is nothing in the world that makes me want to drink more than an AA meeting. It’s a fucking cult.

Any sort of public assistance for substance abuse here that includes housing comes with a laundry list of demands and restrictions, up to and including being locked up like you’re in jail while claiming you can leave at any time (nice words, but when you say you want to leave, up come the roadblocks, stonewalling and gaslighting).

I have more agency and freedom roasting in my van than attempting any sort of help given how demeaning it is. As such, I’ve stopped bothering and am relying exclusively on networking through all possible channels to get out of this mess.

The first two were great cinematic works, so I have high hopes for the third. Shame it’s still a year and a half out.

You can always check the modlog.

The reason I provided was “Blaming falling fertility rates on Covid vaccines via a preprint is not appropriate for this community.”

You provided no context for irrelevant links. That’s not how Beehaw works.

I went to a conference for college newspaper editors at the University of Georgia in 2000. The goodie bag included a copy of a UGA professor’s book When MBAs Run the Newsroom. And prescient. Now they run everything and have no fucking clue what the business actually does.

Golden parachute time! They can take some time off while figuring out what to fuck up next.

I was on a VPN well before Texas pulled this shit, simply because I don’t care to have the ISP that I’m already paying double-dip by selling my history to data brokers. Honestly, I think a VPN is necessary for basic online hygiene at this point.

So far, so meh. Talked with my mom yesterday and got an update about how my dad is doing in his nursing home. Apparently badly, as he’s been banned from the dining room for spitting up food on his way out and refusing to use a napkin.

Sorta feels like the endgame. In lighter news, mom realized she’d sent half the expected amount to start the month, so I live to eat another day. It’s so weird, being accustomed to having all manner of food in the pantry in a previous life, to realize that there really isn’t anything left.

I turn 46 on Friday, but I have nothing to celebrate.