^H

I’m digging through back stuff. It’s fascinating with what I’m doing with the import of old diary stuff into WordPress.

I’m only two months through. Ugh.

So, on top of that, I’m kind of loosely-arranging travel for the summer. We’ve got the money to do it, but I’m still so hesitant to spend money on just about anything. The decade of scraping the bottom of the barrel, along with the delays in getting paid out from my insurance really has me gunshy about things that I want to do, as well as things I want to do.

So, go thing-by-thing.

Quick trip to Biloxi. I kind of want to go see my mom on a down-and-back. Flying in and oud out of Gulfport from DC isn’t easy; you pretty much need to go through Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, or Houston. I really don’t feel like doing what I used to do and fly first class to make me feel a bit less guilty about sorta-luxurious travel.

You get treated pretty damn well when you’re in a wheelchair and hold a first-class ticket.

But do I want to do that?

I also want to go down in July, spend like a week, and take the train. But figuring out Amtrak bedrooms is hit-or-miss.

I want to be some place stable for Independence Day. But do I really care if I’m in DC? Pfft. But I have a medical thing back here on 7/10, so I have to plan around that.

Or not. But it could be if I wanted it to be.

I’m trying to put in my old OD entries here. If I wasn’t broke (still), it’s the sort of task where an AI agent would be pretty adept, I think.

• Take the title from the ASCII file
• New Entry
• Set to private
• Make it private
• Date of the entry from back in the day
• New preformat block
• Paste the entry and comments from the exports I did before OD died the first time.
• Save

I started writing there in July 1999. I’m into September, now. It’s not going particularly quickly, but I’;ll get through it. The first batch of entries, I was fumbling around trying to do horizontal rulers between comments. The way that old site worked, you could do tons of stuff with formatting to embed HTML, etc. I also had a tendency to hide things by setting the text color to the same as the background. The ASCII outputs end up stripping a lot of that away, but there’s nothing that’s really all that embarrassing.

My wife was surprised by some of it; “you were a jerk.” Yeah. I still am in many respects, but I try not to be. And, yes, you were thirteen when I wrote those things at nineteen. No, I would have judged you as too young, then.

I didn’t talk about the Twi^H^H^HX post yesterday with the 60 year-old TV host and hist fortysomething wife showing another positive pregnancy test.

It is a bit interesting reviewing stuff from just before the Y2K rollover. It’s strange, really.

After momentary nostalgia, it takes me a big to get the bigger picture. No, lots of things in 1999 actually sucked. I’m fumbling around figuring out how to get down to Mississippi. Not only are the airfares, even with TRUMP’S WAR OF CHOICE (because he’s Netanyahu’s lapdog..and if you believe those sorts of things, please stop reading) is something that i can figure out.

I’m stopping now.

No, I’m not talking about The Bad Orange Man. I’m tired of trying to convince people that I didn’t vote for him because I didn’t vote for Officer Harris. Or Biden. Or Hillary.

You need a very, very, very compelling argument to convince me that any member of the Party of The Klan deserves is worthwhile. Or worthy of a vote.

Today’s election is the reassembly of the Byrd Organization. Officer Harris got 54% of the vote last year, which means that giving the Party of Slavery 91% of the House seats is appropriate.

Whatever. I’m paying attention to what you do with your business, and what your employees do. If you come out hard in either direction, I can find somewhere else to spend my money. Show your Massive Resistance, and leave me alone.

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Trying to figure out something that goes along with the vibe-coding AI apps. Purportedly, there’s smart fridges that’ll automatically order things you need for you.

I don’t know that I want that. My wife certainly doesn’t.

But I would like a good way to track what I’ve got, what I need, and a way to store that list so it allows updates.

Still trying to figure out the best way to do this. For pre-packaged stuff, scanning the barcodes should be pretty straightforward.

Project for later this week, maybe.

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So close to being finished cleaning off this VM. Then figure out Mailman3 on the new one. Ugh.

I think this is working now. Back to the old again; I really hate what IBM’s done to Linux, but I think I’m getting things figured out, now.

PHP was complaining about the older version that was supported, so, back.

Self-abuse, perhaps, but I’m hoping this setup will have updates long enough that I won’t have to fuck with it for a few years.

But I listened to Jersey Dave Smith on with Rogan while I was finalizing things. Distortions At Fourth Hand is something that’s completely unfamiliar to the NeoHippies.

Nah, the IRGC didn’t execute nearly that many people in January. Maybe there’ll be discoveries of the graves like there were in Cambodia, but Iran is going to prevent anyone from even looking while the IRGC is in charge.

*shrug*

But the unstated thing is that noting bad ever happens if the US isn’t behind it.

But listening is me trying to show that I do at least make an attempt to consume information from multiple sources.

Endless onslaught of ads about the Byrd Organization’s attempts to gerrymander Republicans out of Virginia. Officer Harris won here by about ten points. That means because Texas redistricted after Merrick Garland sued them, that any and all efforts to erase Republicans is justified. A 56% vote justifies 91% of the seats in the House. Um. Okay.

Would Texas have done it if they hadn’t been sued? No, don’t ask that question. It’s all just the Bad Orange Man’s underhanded scheme.

Peeking at local social media discussions amidst the TV ads, I think my opinion is in the minority. I will vote against, but I’m not sure it really matters. Virginia will be completely blue again, just as Harry Byrd intended.

Whatever.

My inclination with the most-ardent supporters of this power grab was to make mental notes, and avoid doing any business with them.

But, on further thought, that’s unfair.

Keep this shit away from your business.

Both sides.

If you, or your employees (or owners) are forcefully supporting either side, I’m going to avoid doing business with you. Make your product. Provide your service. Follow the laws. Treat your customers with respect. And I’ll do business with you.

If you can’t do that, I’m just not going to do anything with you if I can avoid it.

I’ve been thinking about this common anti-Libertarian trope quite a bit as this ongoing situation with DC Water continues. Description of the trope is courtesy the Mises folks, who meet the mark some the time, but far from often.

A sewer is not a road. In fact, I’d say that proper wastewater treatment is more important to the protection of life and property than a road ever could be.

So, a collective effort to provide those protections can be justified I think.

Why the hell, then, does government need to run it in perpetuity? I could say the same of the now-not-getting-paid TSA who are all Federal employees thanks to Harry Reid.

The Beltway Swamp media has been doing a job that’s a lot like what was spilled into the Potomac.

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime accident. Of course, the lawsuits are finally starting, but I really can’t find anything about who’s been disciplined for it.

I don’t really care who was at fault. A sternly-worded letter of reprimand is insufficient. Someone, probably lots of people, should have to find different employment because of this.

But if we ignore the issue, maybe it’ll float out into the Bay, and nobody will remember.

Going through my notes on this in preparation for the BARPod book club meeting. (Yes, I did listen to the audiobook, but I am actually going blind; I don’t get disability accommodations for anxiety.)

The reviews on this are absolutely mixed. I would say that, overall, I enjoyed it, but there were so many instances where I could not at all relate to her experiences.

So much of many of my formative years were spent just trying not to screw up, not embarrass the family, that I really never did anything reckless.

There’s a whole late-GenX thing there, too. We weren’t coddled, but we were constantly in danger. If you did anything, sexually, you were either going to get someone pregnant, or give someone AIDS, that it was better to keep things completely to yourself. Being around the military, too, saw the fallout from Tailhook, Bob Packwood, etc.. Whatever you might desire or enjoy, along with any fluids that might be created therein, were to be kept to yourself.

Laura being younger, and of much more affluent means, was spared of those sorts of worries.

As I’ve been thinking through this, along with the uncorked anti-ICE protests, I’m confused.

How the fuck do you afford this? As I tend to listen to Apple Music’s top songs in the workout room, Kendrick Lamar’s Not Like Us kept floating through my scarred brain.

On further consideration today, this popped in, but it’s also not completely there.

This is the sort of thing I just never would have considered; too expensive. How do you afford your own apartment in MassholeLand?

In a similar vein, I’m watching the protests from a high school near where I lived for a long time.

When I was in high school only a bit north of there, (Bad Newz reprushent, yaknowwhatimsayin?) the consequences for walking out of school would have been: suspension from school, not being allowed to attend prom, and not being allowed to walk with the graduating class. Will these kids face any negative consequences for leaving?

And, if you screwed up too royally, your parents or the Commonwealth would pull your driver’s license. Would the kids today even care about those things?

“How do I reach these kids?”

How do you reach these kids? What rewards are they getting for doing dumb shit, and who’s putting them up to it?

Some angry teachers? Unpossible. They’re not the sort of people who’ve been put on the sorts of drugs discussed in the book for years?

Not being able to drive was a big deal to me. Not being allowed to play sports was a big deal to me. If I’d misbehaved, those would have been off-limits completely.

Would any of my counterparts have received similar treatments? Would someone who’s been on Medicaid since before Obamacare made it okay have gotten meds and psych counseling?

Rich People Problems

Or would we have just gone and done something else to keep our heads above water?

But I’m looking forward to the discussion tomorrow.

Even without tariffs. Though I doubt any of the high-tariff countries produce anything funny.

1. I think tariffs are a bad way to run things. You want a general tax on imports, that’s fine. Congress should pass it. The attempt to use them as rule changes in a never-settled jigsaw game is….I can’t even find the words. Taxes, which tariffs are, should be uniform regardless of product.
2. Two-thirds of the SCOTUS appointees from Trump voted against him. Obviously, this means that the institution is broken, needs to be expanded and packed by the Party of Jim Crow. If you don’t understand that, you’re $TERMOFDERISIION
3. Rand Paul’s take was very important

In defense of our Republic, the Supreme Court struck down using emergency powers to enact taxes.

This ruling will also prevent a future President such as AOC from using emergency powers to enact socialism. https://t.co/M55CZgz4By

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) February 20, 2026

This actually might push the governing0-by-emergency strategy so often employed since 9/11.

4. Though I need to more-closely examine the opinion, I’m wondering if this is actually a furtherance of Roberts’s actions against arbitrary power. Regardless of what you thought about the decision on Obamacare, he really threw a monkeywrench into the Democrats’ oft-used assertion that government can regulate just about anything. no, Congress has the power to tax. The “individual mandate” was a tax, so it’s contituaionally-acceptable. (I do disagree with him that the penalty isn’t a capitation, but that’s a separate discussion. I really enjoyed Justice Kennedy’s dissent on that…)

So, as is so often the case, I’m ultimately okay with this.

“Both Sides” are wrong for different reasons.