I’ve always heard that apartments are what you rent, and condos are what you buy. Besides, if the Republicans are on board, it’s because they see a path to fleece the little guy out of even more money.

It took until 2025 for Oklahoma to pass legislation prohibiting teachers from hitting kids with disabilities. Still allowed to hit other children, they just finally came around to the idea that you can’t paddle the autism out of a kid.

We now exist in a state where we don’t even want to get to know our neighbour

I understand your overall sentiment, but this specifically is what I disagree with. There are people who dislike socialization, but I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re in the majority. Sure, people might be unpracticed with it, but that doesn’t mean the desire is gone.

I feel like it’s more accurate to say that people don’t want to have shallow unfulfilling relationships with our neighbors, and the current situation is preventing us from forming the sort of deep connections we desire.

Regarding screen addiction, I think it follows roughly the same behavioral patterns as any other addiction. It always starts with attempting to address an unfulfilled need. People seeking social connections, and having that be denied offline, are going to move online for that connection. I don’t think we’d have the same problem with parasocial relationships if we didn’t want friends so desperately that we’re willing to believe in a fiction. Same with brainrot, if we had easy access to quality entertainment, and the time to actually unwind and enjoy it, I don’t think brainrot would even exist in the first place.

I don’t know how much I agree with this. While the rise of television and the internet does correlate with the timeline of community decline, and an argument can be made that they’re the modern equivalent to the circus part of “bread and circuses”, I think that it’s just part of a larger pattern of breaking down community. I think the primary facilitator of losing our connection is financial and housing insecurity.

You used to be able to have a Superbowl Sunday gathering, or season finale parties, where everybody would sit around the television, eat, drink, and be merry, but nobody’s got the time or money for that any more. All my friends have moved away due to the cost of living, and most people I meet are on short or yearly leases and will be moving soon. It’s hard to connect with your neighbor when it’s a new stranger every year.

Depends on how you do it, really. Most of the candy color dyes these days are semi-permanent or temporary colors, so they don’t have the same harsh chemicals that permanent dye used to have. The most dangerous chemical in the process is the peroxide bleach, and you can get really gentle formulations of that now for bleaching your mustache.

I love how you knew exactly who I’m talking about

More or less, yeah. The church also took advantage of us, telling my mentally ill stepfather that being poor was a good thing actually, and it was good for his kids to go without so we could learn to rely on god like the sparrows of the field, or some shit. My parents never missed a tithe, but they sure made us skip meals so god didn’t get angry at us.

Spoiler, they don’t. I grew up in the kind of poverty that has us digging food out of the garbage if we wanted dinner. My parents didn’t take me to the doctor when I dislocated my knee, or when a schoolmate knocked me out with a text book. The school provided a couple of uniforms, and weekend clothes were all secondhand. Toys were few and far between, we mostly just played ball in the street with the other kids in my neighborhood. School supplies were borrowed from other kids or the teacher. We didn’t do extracurriculars except church, no field trips, no birthday parties. Special needs were called “being lazy” and I just got my ass beat a lot, so, I didn’t discover the brain tumor until I was an adult.

Saw a DJ once that dyed her underarm hair in rainbow colors.

I agree, and I’ve got good news. California has multiple programs to aid in the upgrade to solar, like the DAC-SASH program, which will completely cover the cost in low-income areas, or the PACE financing program that lets you borrow the money against the house and pay it off over 30 years via additional property tax.

There’s more, but it’s a little weird that nobody else has brought this up at all.

I had a very confused Red Belted bumblebee buzzing around my living room lamp once. No idea how she got inside, but she got escorted back out.

I can’t read the article without a subscription

Last Christmas I was having a hard time tracking down a book I wanted to gift. It was out of stock at all the big stores, but I found it at https://www.summerbeambooks.com/, a small bookstore down in Oregon.

One could say… they’re pretty cool

Feels good to live in a rural area that’s embraced solar.

That’s good then!

I don’t know if he has any hobbies besides getting angry at the news, but it’d help and give you two something to talk about that isn’t upsetting. I know you mentioned in another comment that he sees frivolity as a waste of potential, but maybe you could emphasize that he’s worked hard his whole life, and fun in retirement is supposed to be the reward for that?

What does he do for work? Maybe there’s a hobby that hits his dopamine the same way?

but lately he is getting stuck on topics and gets very very repetitive.

I used to do elder care, and this in particular could be an early sign of dementia.

Maybe you can get the California Wildlife Crossing Database map to load, which shows the topography, although you have to zoom in to see the stream. https://arcg.is/1n001K3

This is what I’ve been taught as well.

If you can’t see the mountains in the big picture at the top of that article, I can’t help you, but here’s an actual map of the area showing the stream:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18%2F34.138007%2F-118.728733