I appreciate the insight and time you have taken to respond. Also your understanding. I have a really difficult time processing the situation. It does feel very cult like and matter of fact. I don’t understand how someone that seems so good can know something so bad is going on, who is so obviously able to recognize the bad in other related areas, and blindly vehemently support them unquestionably. He’s intelligent and successful…yet so lost, the most caring and compassionate person I know; it can’t be ok.

He is evangelical Christian yes. I don’t have much exposure to religion. I have gone to his church a couple times when he has asked me to in the decade or so we’ve been friends. I’m in my forties. I’ve never felt pressured but I also keep my religion or lack of to myself. I just never really understood the position on Israel and it really stuck out to me. Even though he will freely admit how crazy and hateful things are out of the MAGA crowd, I get the feeling anytime the topic gets close to coming up with me he fends it off by essentially communicating to me that he has unwavering and unquestioned support of Israel and I haven’t been willing to push it since he is otherwise a great person in my life that has helped me through a number of difficulties.

I am not religious so I don’t know the details but I have a friend who is very religious and refuses to vote for Trump again. He hates Harris but won’t give me a reason. When I have brought up the Israel stuff he immediately jumps to a very, holy land, must support and defend at any cost mentality. He would never vote Democrat but it makes me wonder how pervasive this weird fairy tale attachment exists throughout the voting base.

We don’t have sidewalks in my community. Kids play in the streets and people are out walking on them all the time. Pushing strollers, walking their dogs, etc. The real difference is everyone is respectful. Cars drive slow and slow down more to go by giving extra space. Folks on the road move over and let the car go by. Kids collect up and move out of the way. A lot of the folks walking their dogs will step into the grass and wait. Everyone waves at each other. It’s like having a nice little community of friends that I never have to actually talk to. After living here for almost two years I strongly believe that I could stop and ask for help from any of them and I’d do the same. Kind of crazy reflecting on being that I’ve only ever talked to a few people, one of which only because she does crossing guard duties for the school crosswalk I take my son to in the golf cart.

I think Woz is the last tech idol I’ve had.

They already do this to flag potential traffickers. I’m not sure what we want has anything to do with what happens.

It’s really bad though. Have you ever seen this study?

https://www.wyliecomm.com/2022/03/technology-literacy-skills/

Broad brushes don’t work. I moved out of country in my early twenties. Moved back home in my mid twenties, then proceeded to move to three different coasts over the course of the next decade, selling two homes and most belongings in the process before ultimately moving to an inland city that’s a fourteen hour drive from where I grew up and knew nobody (I’ve been here nearly twenty years now). If the area goes to hell then yeah, I’ll scope out job options and quality of life in other locations, sell my house and unnecessary belongings, and move my boys and I. It isn’t nearly as difficult as people flap about. Staying somewhere until theirs no longer a buyers market is short sighted similar to people refusing to leave Biloxi when it was certain to be destroyed (one of the places I moved out of) and folks deserve what they get if they refuse to leave. I’d love for us to fix the climate and socioeconomic issues so difficult decisions didn’t need to be made but people burying their heads in the sand and refusing to look out for themselves and their family in response to global and societal issues will never make sense to me. Control what you can control but recognize what you don’t control and adapt. If folks aren’t going to take responsibility for the things they can control I don’t see any reason to fret about the things outside of their control negatively impacting them.

I reread his comment three times because I was convinced I must have read it in error somehow.

I would like to think I would be able to catch up with that kind of income, my apparent immortality, and smart investing, compounding over so many centuries. I’m curious what all currencies and cultures I have had to endure and how the exchange rate of my income is worked it and what currency I will be operating under after the US dollar.

Kind of a bummer if the culmination of a marriage is the wedding ceremony I think. The birth of our kids, buying our first house, celebrating new jobs and milestones with each other, and signing the divorce papers were all more significant climatic events in my marriage anyway.

I’m not the same person I just recognized you were a jackass and decided to call you out on it, turns out you’re not even an observant jackass.

I bet the $4 ones are 18 count instead of 12 count. I always buy mine in 18s and you can’t really tell unless you look from above.

You are being a shit, I’m not sure if it’s on purpose but you’re so shit sure of yourself you won’t even take a beat to see if you could understand where someone else is coming from. Grow the fuck up.

So I’m imagining them as a legend based on unverified lore, conjecture, and conflicting information with no real evidence of them ever existing and I’m having a difficult time seeing where the value lies in that.

Do most people really not have a birth certificate and ID? How do they complete an I9?

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That just gave me some deep seated nostalgia, I forgot how much I enjoyed that week off of school we’d get. I feel so out of place trying to get my sons raised up sometimes. My entire grade size was never over 37 and that was with five combined towns going to the same school. We live in a town of fifty thousand people in a different state and everything feels so big to me even though I’ve lived here nearly twenty years. Anytime I’ve stayed in a real city for more than a night or two my anxiety goes into overdrive, I don’t know how people do it.

I had a shotgun and .223 in the back window gun rack of my truck through middle school and high school (started driving at 14 with a school permit) with shells and rounds in the glove box. Nothing was ever locked where I grew up either; homes, vehicles, businesses.

Granted I grew up in a town with under 1,000 people and the closest ‘city’ to us was an hour away and had a population of 25k.

That was forty years ago and I feel a lot differently about things and the world is a different place but when I grew up more students and teachers had guns in their vehicles at school than didn’t. Everyone hunted, I pulled off and shot a coyote in pack that was stalking around one of my teachers herd of cows on the way to school one winter. I took the coyote into class and gave it to him since I had him first period.

Humans are just as much part of nature as everything else

I was making a joke using the absurdity of what I put together as a hobby project over the past couple years as an example to reinforce the comment I replied to. I’ve spent my whole career in IT and it’s absurd the level of knowledge a lot of career or even hobbyist IT folks expect the general public to have.

My generator cost $8k installed.

I ran all the cables myself, still cost $1k for the materials.

Doorbell camera $200.

PoE cameras averages to $174 each or ~$2,500

UPS’s: $300 combined

MiniPC: $500

Cage and mounts: $150

Isolated cameras: $30 ea

SD cards: $15 ea

All told I have over $13k invested easily and it would easily be over twice as much without knowing how to do it myself. Anyone giving folks shit for using WiFi security systems is out of touch.