Mostly_Gristle

Gonna be even more fun when all the empty trucks leaving from the empty west-coast ports I've been reading about for the past few days become empty shelves over the next few weeks. The real pain hasn't even started yet.

Yes, comrades, Emmanuel Goldstein has struck again. Obviously this is all his doing.

Would if I had somewhere to go. It's cute that you think we can just snap our fingers and immigrate somewhere, but while most countries are happy to have Americans show up at the drop of a hat to spend money as tourists, nobody wants us staying there to live. Unless you have a ton of money, advanced degrees in an in-demand field, or a job waiting for you and willing to sponsor your visa, moving abroad is very difficult. I have none of those things, so unless I win the lottery I'm pretty much boned. Or until I have a legit asylum claim, or Austria decides having an Austrian great-grandfather is enough to qualify you for birthright citizenship, whichever comes first.

That's actually pretty cool.

I think that pretty much sums up the entire ethos of Silicon Valley these days.

Been listening to The Meffs a lot lately.

Brittany Petterson is the congressional representative for Colorado's 7th district. Not Utah. It's literally the first full sentence you'll read if you google her name, and it says so on the page her name links to in the article, in case you wondered what level of fact checking and editorial oversight we're dealing with here.

Looking at this with adult eyes, no I don't think you're a jerk. It sounds like you're trying help him see the reality of the situation before it causes him any undue emotional (or financial) suffering. It's not, however, very hard to imagine how from his point of view he might feel like you're being jerk, or maybe a bit hypocritical.

Is there any way you can get him playing with kids who are good enough to go pro? If he can start playing against people who genuinely have the goods, it's probably not going to take him very long to figure out for himself whether he can keep up or not. And that way you don't have to set yourself up as the bad guy as much, and you can play a more supportive role and be there to guide him to an alternative path once he gets sick of the other kids running circles around him. At least that's how it worked for the couple of kids I knew growing up who were good enough at basketball or American football that they really thought they could go pro. It was playing against people who were the real deal that made them realize they didn't have the shot they thought they did. It was pretty obvious that these other kids had something extra, and were playing on a level my friends felt they were probably never going to reach.

Legend has it they ain't nothin' to fuck with.

The story behind this band is actually pretty crazy. The Shaggs were sisters who grew up in a house where there really wasn't any music. Then their father was told by an astrologer (or some kind of fortune teller) that his daughters were going to be famous and influential musicians, and he got completely obsessed with the idea. He bought them all instruments and forced them to play (but for some reason didn't bother to spring for actual music lessons). If I'm remembering correctly, he even pulled them out of school at some point so they could focus on music full-time.

So basically these sisters were basically locked in a basement and forced to invent the concept of music from scratch. It's like some crazy thing an anthropologist would study.

The only reason we still know about them is because people (not the least of which being guys like Kurt Cobain and Jello Biafra) found the record in thrift stores and bargain bins and began passing copies around, and it became kind of an underground obsession among punk, indie, and experimental musicians. So they did actually end up being famous and influential in a way, but not in the way that makes anybody rich, which is probably what the dad was hoping for.

Not even a year. It's only his first fiscal quarter.

If it's a person at all, and not one of those shit-disturber bots that get unleashed on non-MAGA spaces to start arguments over innocuous things and just generally sour the vibe. BlueSky was infested with them last month. They tend to swarm around celebrities, and posts about celebrities. Either way, a quick glance at their post history shows they're only here to start shit with people.