Powderhorn @ Powderhorn @beehaw.org

Unemployed journalist, burner, raver, graphic artist and vandweller.

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With inflation being what it is, I'd aim for $7.99 per minute. You're leaving money on the table by going for '90s rates.

Man, are people going to be surprised when the camps they're building "for immigrants" get used for other purposes. Doesn't matter the level of public support -- that only matters in a democracy.

Scarcely surprising, coming from Gannett. Time was, one kept complete and utter bullshit out of the paper. There's a reason I bailed years ago.

That was my reference. Rolling Stone didn't touch on an '80s Canadian sketch comedy for kids that somehow turned into Nickelodeon's brand.

You'd think there would be all sorts of memories from that show, but I've really only retained one. Standard kitchen-table sketch, and the kids get handed boxes of cereal. One advertises a bigger box, and the kid is disappointed that the bag inside is still the same size.

To which the dad says "well, it is a bigger box. They didn't claim 'more cereal.'"

You're missing the underlying issue that these people care about, once again, "celebrities" I'll never meet. It makes fuck-all difference what their politics are. What am I going to do, get past layers of publicists and show them the light? I'm not L. Ron Hubbard, and times have changed.

"I don't recall, Senator" goes back to Watergate. Fuck, that seems close to Reagan at this point. I'm old.

Donald Regan was very confusing to me at about that time my memories started to take.

Regardless, Reagan had wildly different ideas on walls.

This guy watched TV in North America in the '80s.

(and likely was as surprised as I that Alanis Morissette was part of the cast)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to head to my rocking chair.

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.