Month: February 2026

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.