I had a wildly different experience growing up in the '80s, although anecdotally, it was socioeconomic. There were dogs who were pets and inside most of the time, and then there were guard dogs people tried to slap a veneer of love on.

I hate the way the pendulum has swung all the way to “Pweshus needs to be in the produce aisle with Mommy.” And then dogs shit on the floor in grocery stores. I’d much rather have them in someone’s yard for 20 minutes than where I’m trying to buy fresh foods.

The “furbaby” phenomenon is marketing and gaslighting at its finest. The only reason people have gotten to the point that they think it’s appropriate to take a dog everywhere is that the endless growth machine saw lowering birthrates and figured recasting pets as children would partially offset slowing revenue on the human baby end.

Absolutely no one in the '80s thought it appropriate to bring a nonservice pet into a public place, and it’s not like people individually came up with the notion that this was now fine. But people don’t realize they’re being manipulated … it feels much better if you’re convinced that’s just who you are, and that’s all it takes.

This is, of course, the way a lot of things have gone in the past 40 years, but I generally don’t run into other such issues at HEB.

So it was an income stream.

It goes to the greater question of how many red flags are enough to call time out?

You’re begging the question. What proof do you have that this particular incident is a red flag? I want quotes before I’m willing to accept that. It’s a funny thing called journalism, and you’re falling for the framing where the practitioners failed.

If tomorrow, Gertner says she was deeply hurt and it nearly tore the marriage apart, I’ll readily accept that this was infidelity. To claim otherwise before that is unfounded moral judgment.

The Nazi tattoo is irrelevant to this revelation. It’s a further attempt to frame this as “because he did X and Y, clearly, Z must be a violation.” The presented facts do not lead to this conclusion. I’m not saying the other things he did were a good idea, nor were they bereft of harm to others, but leave the moral conclusions about sexting while married to the opinion page, and report the facts in the newshole.

They’re always a bad idea, but feel so good.

This said, those are the relationships one learns from. It appears we shall have to do this as a country. I was on a choir tour in 1993 where we saw a lot of Nazi symbolism having been blown up.

The only time you want manic is that relationship with an alt chick in college that burns hot and fast.

I’ve been in Texas for 11 years, and I gave up on voting. City Council? Whenever we vote progressive candidates in and they do something progressive, Abbott calls the Legislature into special session to make those laws illegal at the state level.

A good example is when the City of Austin implemented a ban on single-use plastic shopping bags, which given the production of said bags set the O&G lobby into overdrive.

County? Well, my vote doesn’t really count there, as Travis is overall aligned with my political views. State? Nah, gerrymandering split the city into I think now five districts at the federal level of unusual shape to dilute Austinites’ voices by including sparse areas 10s of miles away. Federal? We just redistricted. Senate could be interesting

There’s a reason I chose journalism. Voting harder clearly wasn’t going to help even in college.

Months is just trying to optimize your first run. Then, you discover mods.

If you have your life affairs in order, you could try Factorio. Your friends and loved ones won’t see you for months.

Stewart/Colbert 2028. Let’s elect people who actually understand policy and can string sentences together individually, and then expand to paragraphs.

I’d be fine with Colbert at the top of the ticket, but he hasn’t yet testified before Congress.

That is some fucking quality. Daniels deadpanned perfectly.

All we have at this point is useful idiots.

It’s the only thing she can stroke with more than two fingers.

Distinct lack of penis.

It’s a shame I’m not out in Westlake. Running into Louis Rossman at HEB would be fun.

We can’t all be Avis. (Orville references welcome.)

I’d counter that I trust my data going through Sweden ahead of letting an American conglomerate gain access.

Bypass Paywalls Clean

Nixon closing the gold window was a terrible move. Think about it: $35/ounce, and now it’s about $5,000/ounce.

This doesn’t so much reflect gold being orders of magnitude more valuable so much as dollars being orders of magnitude less valuable.

It’s this damn Firefox extension … I pretty much don’t see paywalls anymore.