I just saw the news that they've charged him with terrorism. It's like they want to keep the outrage going, and give the jury a reason to acquit.

I read it as cutting through the spin. We use contemporary words like overnight oats, instead of words like gruel that have strong connotations of poverty, for essentially the same food, to obscure the fact that we are the same working class as medieval peasants were. There's nothing wrong with gruel; and we're just not as far removed from peasantry as we've been led to believe.

The story earlier knocked loose a memory:

I worked at a small law firm years ago, and we used to have a could of community-support workers, a man's and a woman both with Downs, come in to do janitorial tasks. The woman was an Elvis Presley fanatic. She would listen to Elvis on headphones while she worked. She'd talk about Elvis all the time. She'd mark his birthday, and the anniversary of his death. She was sad that she never got to see him sing.

One day, a potential client came in for a consultation, and this guy was an Elvis impersonator by vocation. And who happened to be there, by chance, even though she came for only about an hour a week? Yep, our Elvis fan.

The guy was really sweet, and put on an impromptu performance for her, and she was Over. The. Moon. It was a good day in the office.

Remember, it's only genocide if it originates from occupied Poland. Otherwise, it's just sparkling mass extermination.

Taylor Swift is fine, her music is enjoyable, but ultimately kind of forgettable. Her popularity comes from the social-cohesion function of popular music.

So stupid. If they were smart, Iran's leadership would use this opportunity to gain international support and clout by behaving like the reasonable ones while Israel is going rogue.

Here in the upper Midwest, it's highly impolite to ask guests to leave, or for guests to directly announce that they're leaving. The accepted way for hosts to hint is to say, "Would ya look at the time?", or steer the conversation toward things the host has to do later, e.g. clean up, or get up the next morning. For guests, stereotypically you slap your knees and say, "Welp, I suppose..."

Then you don't just leave, there's the goodbye, the doorway goodbye, the offer of leftovers to take home, and the driveway goodbye.

Poe's Law strikes again. Based on the community, I'm to take it as a right-wing meme, but this feels like a parody of a right-wing meme, or at least a parody of something.

But assuming it's real, holy wow, that list of things that the meme-maker thinks people spend money on is the clearest, most-explicit result of right-wing projection I've seen in a long time.

I don't think so.

I know so. I've read a number of articles in recent years about how weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for happiness. This is just the first result from a search: Weak social ties are just as important as strong ones for greater life satisfaction

Weak social ties are precisely the ones that get cut off by car dominance, what with driving across town to do everything in life, only mixing it up with strangers you'll never recognize again instead of the usual bunch of neighbors. Between snout houses, online shopping, and drive-thrus, one could live a normal suburban life for weeks without interacting with anybody but coworkers and family. Now add work-from-home...

Edit: Here's another article that makes the connection directly: https://www.businessinsider.com/barcelona-solution-loneliness-crisis-pollution-cars-streets-parks-traffic-sidewalks-2023-12

It does seem like YOLO = memento mori + carpe diem.

Back?

Goddamn, the United States really is a shithole country, isn't it? It's obvious that shooting was the homeowner's first resort, because this was a drunk guy who thought that it was his own house. Any sign that it was not, like lights going on, or yelling, would have at least made him pause in confusion.

But yeah, Americans be like killing somebody before even issuing a threat is totally justified.