Man, I remember being scared of this virus many years ago.

Well said!

I worked at a gas station for years in a poor town and I bought and sold several used computers that sometimes ended up being stolen. I always did my best to make sure that didn’t happen. I’d check the personal info on the drives before I’d clear them and try to get up with the people who originally owned them. I probably returned at least 15 of them over the years.

It’s crazy to think that I could have ended up being charged with murder if I had been pulled over with some shit in my car.

One time I got a sob story, “I lost my job bro. You can get my Xbox 360, my tv, my laptop, and all these games right now for 100 bucks.” I lost that 100 bucks because I contacted the Xbox account and found that the stuff had all been stolen and I returned it. Imagine if someone had killed someone to get that stuff and I got pulled over with it.

They gave me a cheap guitar for returning it. They didn’t have to do that and I’ve always appreciated it. It’s risky being in a poor town and buying things for resell.

Reeeeheeeeeeee. Pfffft. Excuse me, sorry about. I’m a horse after all.

Space Ghost Coast to Coast though.

I really did think that a Chinese social media company would never stand a chance here. I run into 80 year old farmers who ask me, “Did you see ‘at feller on TikTok who does ‘at thang with the tractor?”

That same person will go on and on about China. People are neat.

Haha, god I loved doing this on Counter-Strike. “Did you guys hear about the hidden tit pics in counter strike? No shit, hold alt and press f4 and it shows the best tits I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how game developers get away with this stuff.”

Half the lobby is gone, the other half is laughing.

Hey! Look at me over here living in the future!

My cat wanders around hissing at anything that moves and threatens the family all day. She’s a devil, except for when she isn’t. That’s at the same time every day, first thing in the morning. She gets on my lap and gives me love and won’t leave me alone or stop following me. Around 10:00 though, every morning, she’s right back to contemplating the murder of every other living thing in the house.

The whole “small town on the edge of dying” bit. Holy shit have I experienced that firsthand.

See, what happened with a lot of these towns is that their industry became a part of their pride and culture. Where I’m from it’s coal. Trucks everywhere have a decal of a coal miner with one of two phrases. “Coal keeps the lights on.” and “6 inches from hell.”

My grandfather was a coal miner, so was his father, and his father, on both sides of my family. My father realized that the industry was dying so he left (and left us here haha). My brother did it for awhile but left it behind because of the drug problems in the mines. There was a whole underground urine market that kept things moving.

Even the poor fools who never worked in the mines go on and on about coal like it’s some kind of idol.

I would imagine the same thing happens in other places. The people fear big changes until their fear backs them into irrelevance. I’m getting older, so I can relate to that, only I vote for my kids, not to make me feel less afraid. Whatever world they grow up in won’t be one that I’d be perfectly comfortable in. It has always been that way as far back as we have been recording history. No sense in fighting where the world is going just because I don’t understand it or relate to it.

Oh me too, I’m absolutely loving it. They put so much work into it. Even the things I didn’t initially like about it have grown on me. It’s been nothing but fun for me.

My Steam Deck has been my primary gaming device for about 2 years now. I absolutely love it. I’ve put a lot of my switch games on it for the convenience. I love my OLED switch though and I wish I had the OLED deck.

Still, it’s amazing enough that everything else I have is collecting dust. Been going through all the MegaMan games recently. I’m on 8 at the moment, the only one I never played in the main series.

Moscows are fat. Trump is fat. Coincidence? Probably not.

The Beatles spring to mind for me.

Elea👂👂nor Rigby.

In my town at least, we’ve got it right, that is if we could get more funding and help everyone.

The system that I went through has tiers, and it’s mostly drug addicts, but man I’ve seen it turn people around completely.

If a person ends up arrested because they’re tweaking, paperwork is immediately filed to get them into a specialized local hospital. It’s very small, but the people involved really do work hard to get things moving.

Once the person is in the hospital, they keep them until withdrawal ends or psychosis subsides. Then they enroll them in a very strenuous program that pretty much takes up their entire life for a bit. They try to get the person on Medicaid, but if they don’t qualify the hospital actually has a fund to pay for their treatment. They are provided with a ride to drug classes and group therapy multiple times a week and drug tested daily. If they fail a drug test they take them back to the hospital, unless they’ve been charged criminally, then it’s back to jail first, but ultimately they’ll end up back in the hospital.

Assigned case managers will visit them at their home at random daily. If the person doesn’t have a home, we have several “sobriety houses” in the area where folks are sent until they can get on their own feet.

Their case worker files applications for low income apartments and other programs like HUD. The person will ultimately end up in a home if they work the program.

In my time with the program I seen way more success than failure. The only failures I seen were those people who just made criminality their entire life. I’m talking drug dealing, robbing, constantly fighting. There are some people you just can’t help. I might be wrong there, but I seen a personality type that didn’t seem like it could be helped anyway. It was those folks who found their source of pride in a criminal lifestyle.

I probably do have some bias on the success of the program because they stick you with people who have progress similar to yours. If you’re a success in the program, you’re generally going to have appointments scheduled alongside people who are doing at least roughly as good as you are.

When I left the main program in 2020, I always had my appointments with the same people. We were the “no failed drug tests in years” group. Several of those people were homeless but they aren’t now.

At my store (which I worked at for 23 years and miss dearly), I would always let my regulars come in after closing if I could still serve them. If they had cash, I’d ring it up the next day.

That was one of 7 stores I worked in over the years (same company).

The other 6, hell no. Once they realized that I’d open the door after closing those bastards were coming up to an hour after I locked the doors. Same jerks every time yelling and cussing at me, “Well yer still here yuh faygit I don’t see why you won’t let me git a beer!”. Sometimes I’d stay late and hide in the office to watch a little tv before going home. It was always the same jackasses beating on the door at 1 AM putting their hands and faces up to the glass with stupid looks on their faces. I stopped letting them in after it became a problem for me and no matter how many times I said no, they’d walk their drunk asses to that store to try me.

It is amazing how much culture can change over 40 miles of road. I mean it, it’s crazy. Even the meth heads were polite and reasonable when they were in the middle of a 3 week, no sleep, hallucination fueled nightmare. “Ah, man. I’m so sorry that I bothered you. There’s people following me across the road so I’m just gonna borrow a little of your light here until someone I know comes to get me. I hope you have a good night.”

In that one store every local was always polite. I had two memorable assholes there over 23 years. At the others I had so many I couldn’t tell you.

I had to do this today on my wife’s laptop. The settings menu just wouldn’t do it. It just sat there for a thousand years.

Did I ever tell you about nuclear?

Oh, well that I don’t know. That’s fun.

Chromium got opera bruh…I’m sorry.