In better news:
https://apnews.com/article/france-gisele-pelicot-rape-trial-verdicts-2b25791099f785fabb3c46123d30d9f9
That case is so insane. Quick, someone replace this post with a guest post!
But I'm trapped in a hotel room and things are bonkers. Be the change, Moss.
I used to be better at being alone, because I had a better attention span and enjoyed reading long-form writing. I read a ton as a kid.
I also used to listen to public radio talk shows. My favorite was WBUR's The Connection. I do still listen to WGBH's Boston Public Radio, because they mix conversation, culture and local issues and are anti-Trump. I don't want to talk about politics all the time, but I need to hear people calling out how bad Trump is. I need to hear that there are still other people who think what's happening is wrong.
But thank you Mossy for that link, because it's hopeful. And I heard about those billboards somewhere else (probably Bluesky?) and was horrified.
Does Texas plan to warn people coming from Oklahoma or Kansas that lots of Texans are rapists?
It's like John Turturro's character in The Big Lebowski going around and warning all the neighbors as ordered by the law. They should try this with other states. Like New York could put signs up in Canada warning them that New Yorkers will try to get them to sell or buy pictures of feet.
Illinois: We're not very subtle when we stare at your ass.
Without making any excuses for the Texarchists, traffickers are the fucking scum of the earth.
They are. That's why we need Greenland as a buffer zone.
I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone that if we'd made Trump king of Greenland a lot of heartache could have been avoided. All hail Donald Fairhair!
I think maybe that's not his natural color.
Sort of halfway between Elba and St. Helena.
In the past several years I'ne had a succession of ~20yo US colleagues who I've fucking despised for their total lack of self-sufficiency. They seemed physically incapable of enduring more than 20 seconds of silence.
I have an 18-year-old that I can't get to talk.
I go solo hiking regularly but find it difficult to do anything I should focus on at home without putting some kind of tv on, and then I get things done but more slowly than if I just focused. I've done a lot of math/computer science homework while half paying attention to tv shows I've already seen. When short on time, I turn the tv off and then oddly enough I get things done more quickly. Weird.
I loved Meow Wolf Vegas. Not sure what their thing is in NM.
No we loved it. Just feel a little dazed after two hours in there.
Oh, no, I got that. Just that I know their installations are pretty different across cities so I'm curious the differences from Vegas. But it's the kind of thing better to see for oneself, so don't actually tell me.
I'm not sure that 1 is a bad thing. There are people in horrible situations, and these billboards are gross, but they are more or less true. And if they work in discouraging people from hiring smugglers, maybe that's good? I'm certainly not claiming to know anything about this.
I'm fine with being by myself. That's what I'm best at!
I have to remind myself that there are limits to this -- when I was a divorced guy in my 30s living alone, I did get lonely. But now between the time I spend with my wife and stepdaughter and my job, I have all the social contact I need and mostly just want to be alone. That's probably why I don't have any friends.
Meow Wolf in the DFW area was funky and weird and fun and interesting, and also nearly the polar opposite of being alone.
Otherwise, I'm very good at being by myself, though I like to have music going in the background. My dad keeps a tv going as background noise, and it makes me kinda nutty when I'm there because I can't pull my focus away from it the way he (and the others there) apparently can. But my in-laws never had any kind of background thing going, and that too drove me nuts. Just felt like the house was dead. So: it me, radio listener.
I treated my in-laws to the Meow Wolf in Denver the last time we visited because it's the kind of thing they'd never spend money on themselves. We all had a great time, although--related to the OP--I thought that I might enjoy it more on my own so I could explore without keeping track of four other people.
I finally had to search to figure out what Meow Wolf was.
Man, last I checked there were like two Meow Wolfs. I wonder if they're sustainable.
29: I'm avoiding it like it's political news.
Heh, I'm going to see Meow Wolf Santa Fe tomorrow morning. Arrived Santa Fe late yesterday and I'm leaving on Friday. Family members wanted to do Christmas in the Southwest.