I was there. Mid-70’s southern Florida. The most batshit crazy fundies making my life an utter misery for around 4 years. Surely they don’t still exist.

Only know about chicken fish from Tom Waits and John Lurie.

“What’s all this sectarian racket then? We don’t get Buddhists playing bagpipes in our bathroom or Hindus harmonizing in the hall! The Shintoists don’t come here shattering sheet glass in the sh__house and shouting slogans-”

Heard someone assert that MBA’s have ruined the world. Seemed a hyperbolic statement at the time. Though casting my eyes around an ever more enpoopified landscape, it’s tough to disagree.

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.

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.

I’m ever astonished at the variety of deep fried stuff at Appalachian festivals and fairs. All these stalls trying to one-up the rest with the lengths they are willing to go into hot fat depravity. Grease-boiled confections and savories of every niche. A healthcare nightmare. But this is a region steeped in despair. It’s tough to heap blame on folks giving up.

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?

It’s also sometimes used as shorthand for crypto-orchidism -undescended testicles.

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

Long-time offgridder here. Would love to have a reasonable alternative to lead-acid or lithium. Opted for lead-acid again on the last battery swap around 5 years ago. Squeezed about 12 years out of the last set -though they were pretty degraded by that time. This bank is depreciating faster, probably because of increased use.

How many sets of footprints in the sand??

This reminds me of a recent meme pushing back against the “greed is human nature” narrative. Was something like:

“If you see a bear riding a bicycle at the circus, do you assume it is the nature of bears to ride bicycles?”