Do It Again

I really haven’t written much here lately. Variety of reasons for that, but there’ll probably be more to come.

After Robby Soave’s findings about what Meta (read: FB, IG) did in the early months of the Biden Administration is very, very, very disturbing. (Story in case the Tweet thread disappears…) The Livestream is here.

After listening to the livestream, I’m a bit more sanguine. My initial reaction after seeing things unfolding earlier today was to return to my frequent instinct, and just leave.

The sanguinity comes in after watching Jeremy Borin’s response to Crowder.

I’ve paid for BlazeTV for a very long time. Somewhere my MIL has a photo of Glenn hugging a very fat me at a promotion where I’d gotten his phone working after I’d left the radio stations. My replacement at the stations and I got the job done….then he and Stu caught us smoking on the loading dock on the way out of the show. To be young and healthy…

Back on topic, after the “just leave” instinct kicked in big time when I noticed the order-taking from the government (the CDC).

Big tech shouldn’t be seeking direction. Even more, however, government shouldn’t be offering it. Even more importantly, government shouldn’t be giving it.

Speaks a bit to the difference between Rawlsian positive rights, and Lockian negative rights.

But a restriction on government kind of falls into the latter category. With the conclusion that government doesn’t work, you stop looking for it to succeed or fail at anything.

It’s there. It’s always going to be there. And, aside from breaking things, and killing people, it’s not going to ever do anything well.

As a consumer, you minimize your exposure to companies who seek government-like power. As a citizen, you try to restrain government whenever, wherever you can.

And you minimize where you can’t.

Sadly, I need to use some of the commercial tools. I’ll miss IG, but it’s going in the box again. So be it.

Tomorrow, Satureday, and Sunday, I’ll be trying to catch some talks from Shmoocon. I was really physically-exhausted after last year’s foray.

I’m also not spreading around as much cash between inflation, job uncertainty, and probably losing a not-insignificant amount of money dealing with a crypto company who’s likely reeling from FTX, etc..

But I can sit, watch, and write.

On forgiveness

Something I’ve been mulling lately is how long it’s appropriate to hold a grudge.

Not sure what got me on this line of thinking, but it did go into thinking about companies I’m refusing to forgive for things they did during COVID.

I have relatives who probably never bought another Nestlé product after the boycott. Did that go too far? I mean, hearing about this would have been well into the 1980s. (I really don’t remember many current events before about 1985; I remember, vaguely, worry about my dad with the crash into the bridge out of DC; my dad had been TDY at Ft. McNair that day. A bit with the Beruit Embassy bombing, Reagan’s reelection…)

But when do you stop being angry with companies for overbearing things they did? Is it okay to permanently withhold your business?

I do try to forgive people who’ve wronged me, but there’s some I’ll certainly never speak to again if I can….

*STFW for this*

Hmph. I’m going to send this to my psychologist to see what she thinks.

I don’t know. But I’m inclined to never visit the places that wanted vaxports ever again.

Out With The Old

January 2nd, but kind of New Year’s Day because that fell on a Sunday.

Things are moving erratically, but I’ve really been about taking my own damn advice, and just leaving when things are happening that I don’t like.

There’s lots of really awful people around.

I could get upset about it, but that won’t really help anything.

So some changes.

  • GNU Screen. I have to use tmux for work, and have had some stumbles already where I use tmux keystrokes inside screen. So I guess I’ll just get used to it.
  • The Libertarian Party. Again. Unsubscribed from the stupid shit that was coming over their email list, and said I would not be renewing. I won’t. The Libertarian Party of Virginia disbanded itself instead of submitting to the stupid shit coming from the national party. Whatever. You destroyed something. Be proud. There won’t be any more messaging you don’t like, and you might well get fewer votes than Andre Marrou got in 1992. But, like, fuck you. With that, though, I’ve really started in on unfollowing people/accounts connected. I want nothing to do with you, and you can’t have any more of my money.
  • Feeling the same way abour much of hte crypto world, too. I sent bits and pieces of what I’d set aside to a mining operation, and to someone working closely with them. It’s fine. If there’s some lawyer who wants to take up the case, you can take it. I’m finished, and don’t expect to see things resolved. I just don’t want to deal with any more of it.
  • Piecemealing subscriptions. Again, choosing to leave. I’m giving more money to a company, but getting a lot more out of it.

I could keep reciting things, but I’m nog going to waste time doing that.

Move on.

Everything Gets Deleted Eventually

Or people just forget. Popping in on my podcast feeds lately has been Andrew Heaton’s The Political Orphanage.

Specifically, he interviewed the guests from the SoHo Forum Debate I attended last fall.

One of my randomly-consumed podcasts is The Political Orphange by Andrew Heaton.

Recently, he’s interviewed the participants in the debate. Krystol first, then Horton.

I found myself disagreeing with Krystol a lot more in Andrew’s interview. My disagreements really stem from Krystol’s view, that really is from the Cold War, that we need to have things spread all around the world in order to be effective taking out threats.

Things change. I’ve written about this in relation to the changes that have taken place on the battlefield, the Army getting rid of its MASH units.

The US can project foreign policy even without a large presence on the ground. See: Ayman al-Zawahiri or Solelimani..

(Aside: this came up in my podcast feed as I’m writing this.)

War has changed. The folks who’ve taken over the Libertarian Party are stuck in the early 1970s.

My tweet response to Heaton as I was listening to the Horton interview:

As I’ve said here before, for the AntiWar crowd, everything is still the LBJ Daisy ad. Still. Forever.

So I stared digging yesterday on some of the shit that’s come out of the NeoHippie crowd, things I’d forgotten about.

I wrote this back in 2005:

On Orkut I feel like I’m really in the minority in the American Politics community (if you don’t have an Orkut account, and want one, drop me an e-mail). There are so many confirmed Socialists…and those who sincerely believe that the United States was worse than the Soviet Union. I thought those people had really dried up. Now I’m being assaulted by quotes from that Khmer Rouge apologist, Noam Chomsky. It’s really disheartening to see that people still are busy denying what happened in the Evil Empire. Even more disturbing is that it’s still going on today.
What’s more disturbing, and perhaps this speaks to blogs, too, is what people use as evidence for their arguments. I really try to guard against using what I’d consider to be overly-biased sources, yet, these folks have no qualms about doing it. I don’t know if it’s because they are so blinded by their agendas that any evidence is fine, or if they just haven’t ever had to write scholarly papers.
All I can say is it’s really disappointing.

For reference, Orkut was Google’s first social networking site. I had a link to a New York Times article that’s gone away. (Even if the link still worked, I’m sure it’d be paywalled, so pretty much useless.

How did these people come back from the obscurity they so richly deserved?

And they’re running hte Libertarian Party now.

Maybe having a comic from New Jersey as your presidential nominee is deserved.

But the bigger issue is the same as it always was: not everything bad in the world is because of something the US did. That’s the undying principle for these experts reembraced by the LP.

I could be upset about it, but I’ll do what I tend to do, and leave.

When it comes to voting, I’ll do what I have been doing my entire adult life — vote against the worst candidate. For the past tew election cycles, that’s normally been the Libertarian. I’m less convinced that that’ll be the case in 2024. Good job. You broke it, you bought it.

Thirty

Wrap Up

So this is the last one. We’ll see how much more I have until the end of the year. I do have some Notes of a Goon writing to do, but I really can feel finished.

Christmas is going to be unsettled, just like Thanksgiving.

Whatever. Keep plugging along until I have to make a change.

Lots of thoughts listening to Mean Age Daydream this morning, as well as some of the Thanksgiving podcasts. The guest was a comic who wrote, and was pitching a book on “woke” comedy.

One of the things he had was following a rape victim on an open mic…and how that really killed his act for the night.

Another was following a disabled comic.

Going through my inventory, I really don’t fit nicely into a lot of the categories of concern. (Which sounds a lot like one of Fauci’s comebacks to Rand Paul about gain-of-funciton research being conducted in Wuhan; No, Senator, we weren’t conducting gain-of-function of concern….)

So what the hell am I? Disabled? Yep. Rich? Nope. White? Not completely, and that was a bit of an issue for my father growing up in the deep South in the 1960s. Product of an affluent school? Fuck no. I grew up all over the place, and really don’t have anywhere I consider “home.”

I could ask what considerations I should have, etc.

But I don’t care. Leave me alone, and don’t try to make me live the way you think I should.

There was a radio host to whom I used to listen (when he was still on the air…) who had a video message a couple of days ago that was targeting the sorts of things people think are important today. His message? “So what.”

I agree, of course, but that also makes me out-of-place today. But that comes with being a recovering radio guy, I guess.

I’ve written every day in November, now, for thirteen straight years.

So what?

Because it’s what I fucking wanted to do.

Twenty-nine

What are you most proud of this year? (Flashback to 2015)

In the 2015 entry, I wrote a lot about what was going on with the medical issues I was having.

It’s pretty incredible how different things are this year.

I think, maybe, I could really write to the improvements that started last year both physically, and especially mentally.

I thought I’d written about something very simple, going to the dentist for a cleaning, where I felt halfway like a “normal” person. I woke up, took a cab to the dentist, got my teeth cleaned, and came home. Like a somewhat regular person.

I didn’t have the sense of panic I’d had for years about being embarrassed publicly by something my body did. I wasn’t going to puke. I wasn’t going to pass out. I wasn’t going to shit my pants. I went, let the hygienist do what she needed to do, talked to the dentist, came home, then waited the requisite hour until I could have coffee.

This is not the sort of thing that many people can relate to, but it was my life for the past almost thirty years.

With that, I’d planned to travel later this year. As a test run, I went down to visit my mother. I rode the train to the Gulf Coast by myself. I flew back to DCA with a scared little dog.

Then I repeated the trip earlier this month.

Yes, that trip was largely flavored by my slide off the bench at the train station to start. (And, yes, I still have bruises, but the problems I was having down there have calmed down, at least.)

The trip for December was cancelled, which is probably okay. I didn’t go through the rigmarole to get my passport renewed.

But that’s okay. Settling in to Fitter Happier, maybe.

I’m ready to cut my hair. I’m ready to shave off the growth around my mouth. (Though I’m slightly curious about whether these few hairs are, in fact, gray, or if they’re just blonde…..I think I’ve mentioned before that if there’s a natural hair color, it grows out of my face…)

Professionally, again, it’s the sense of completion. When the thing I’m on finally ends, I’ll have a decision to make, but I really don’t think there’s a lot of point of trying to keep things the way they are, even if it’s going to cost people their jobs. The system I’m supporting has a purpose, and that isn’t to make me a lot of money. So wrap up tomorrow. And another year down.

And maybe we’ll get to some real winter weather. Just some freezing after the rain ends today.

And the US beat the Islamic Republic in the World Cup.

I wish I didn’t have more work to do tonight, but time to find dinner.

Twenty-eight

Is there someone you were close to at one point in time, that you can no longer stand to be around? (From 2020…)

My response back then was:

Absolutely. Her. Him. Her. No ill-will towards him. Well, I still talk to her sometimes. Him, too. *shrug*

You know, I think some of those was the people who had joined the Branch Covidians.

But, no, I haven’t changed much of any of those takes. At the same time, I really can’t remember exactly who I was thinking about in any of those.

I don’t know, really, however, whether I can really hold many grudges at this point. I just don’t have the energy.

I was listening to Finding Freedom this morning, and the interviewee was talking about being involved with UNICOR. (I’ll spare you searching the fine web; Wiki)

But I don’t know that there’s anyone to whom I’m really refusing to speak. Even in the hellscape that are many social media platforms, I rarely just cut off people I don’t know. Maybe that’s top of mind after a few weird blocks on Twitter; who knoes?

But I guess that sometimes there’s rash reactions that aren’t forever-justified.

So…?

Yesterday I referenced what I wrote years ago, “You Can Leave.” Still very much in that mindset. And if you circle back, be at least civil.

But very few of the connections broken I’m missing. I think that might be a part of my upbringing. Listening to a few programs leading up to Thanksgiving, I was hearing people talk about Thanksgivings with difficult family members.

I think I can count on one hand the number of times we traveled to see family for Thanksgiving. There were a couple of times we went to see my parents’ friends, but it was really not something where we’d head away for the holiday. Drunk Uncle has no relevance to me.

Maybe that’s not really surprising; I think I only saw my dad drunk once, and that was him with my godfather around my brother’s wedding. They polished off a bottle of gin, but weren’t upset/mean.

A couple more days; I have to go do work.

Twenty-seven

Describe what you’re doing for the rest of this year. (Flashback to 2014)

Really, other than maybe a trip to the dentist for a cleaning, I think I’m finished with medical stuff for the year, so there’s that bright spot?

I think when I pulled this, I already knew my international travel wasn’t happening. In a way, I’m okay with that. After the trips to the Gulf Coast, I think I’m okay not going anywhere for a while.

Again, it’s the feeling that things are finished, and there’s not a ton more I can do.

And I’m okay with it.

There’ll be bits and pieces here and there next month, but it looks like a time to relax, which is a change.

I think removing myself from some of the things that had been negatively affecting my mood has helped.

Whatever happens, I think I’m accepting of myself for the first time since, ummmm…before puberty?

I’m trying to do things to improve myself, even if those things aren’t others’ prescriptions.

And my willingness to take my own fucking advice, and just leave when there’s something I don’t like…and maybe not be too torn up about it.

But, again with completion, looks like we found a use for the property in Mississippi. I feel good about it, even if we’re not going to bring in as much money as we might have expected.

Going to forego the news segment, as I’m running out of time to write this morning. Whatever.

I did watch the US-England World Cup game Friday. I’m not sure why, but I did watch. That the Star Spangled Banner played right after God Save The King

I’m going to miss Drunk History; the Baltimore episode was everything that was great about that show.

Three more days. Three more days.

Twenty-six

Small Business Saturday/Christmas Shopping

Well, I’ve been trying to figure a lot of this out considering the circumstances of this year.

I have lots of folks who’ve told me that they don’t want anything, but I’ll probably end up getting something small for many of them.

So. What have I ordered? Lorenzotti Coffee. Dunno if it’ll pop on the AMEX Small Biz Saturday or not, but it’s worth a shot to show support for Johnny over at Peddling Fiction.

I surveyed the offerings on Goldbelly to see if there was anything interesting there, but didn’t find anything, really.

I’m still looking for fruitcake, but don’t really feel like paying what they want. Maybe I’ll look at what it would take to make one.

Tonight for dinner, I think we’ll order delivery from one of the local restaurants.

I do feel like I should be doing more, but I’m still kind of exhausted, even with the Tysabri dose kicking in full today.

Still feel like lots of things are unfinished, but, at the same time, I’ve done what I can in most cases. And doing the unfinished things, at this point, seems like an exercise in futility.

Four more days.

Twenty-five

Free Write

I figured that this prompt would be an opportunity to describe a few things that have happened over the past few days.

Thanksgiving was okay. Looks like things are moving along what what I went down to do at the beginning of the month.

Football was good, even if I didn’t like some of the results. Food was good. Checked work stuff for a minute this morning and will log on a little more formally tomorrow to look, but I really just don’t have impetus to do anything today.

This Microsoft automatic spelling and grammar is annoying as hell.

Leave my extra, Oxford(?), commas alone, okay?

I guess I could shop some, look at the “Black Friday” deals, but I really don’t know a lot of things that other people I’m buying for want.

Just have this sense that things are kind of at a completed point.

News….the President wants to ban semiautomatic weapons. To me, this seems like the same sort of thing — keep trying to repeat something that had a modicum of success in the past, thinking it’ll work the same way in the future.

So do that, I suppose. I’m not going to snitch on anyone who in violating the whim, and will push for the government to get rid of theirs first.

That’s not going to happen, of course, but it should.

(Apologies to myself, and future readers for the hyperlink that’ll probably be dead a couple of years from now….)

Off and check HN. This.

Yeah, nothing is really fitting, and I’m on my second cup of coffee.

So off to try to relax some. Maybe.