I was there. Mid-70’s southern Florida. The most batshit crazy fundies making my life an utter misery for around 4 years. Surely they don’t still exist.

U.S. has the Dr. Bronner’s soap label of currencies.

Yeah. I totally get it. It does take effort to preserve any wonder and stave off cynicism. Especially in these days of ever growing inequality and tougher material conditions for folks in general. When I was growing up there sure seemed more cause for optimism. Now, folks who look squarely at reality find it tough to muster, what with stagnated wages, an erosion of personal ties, a generally lousy work/life balance for most.

Still, I try to look to and look after my friends, my community. It’s not much, but it’s what I can do. I’ve seen hardship, illness, betrayal, personal devaluation, loss. But I’d rather not become a bitter, old bastard like so many I see in this region.

And I’m cracking up at the scammers phoning up my 85 year old father telling him his Windows has been compromised on his Linux desktop.

Appalachian here. No doubt curbing demand for coal and doing little to take up the slack in viable livelihood has dropped an economic bomb on an already historically depressed region. All of the programs you hear about teaching coal miners to code and such are superficial window dressing and often non-profit grifts that fold in a short time leaving executives to float away on golden parachutes. Whichever way you turn it, people here are exploited and propagandized. Most often attributing their woes to the wrong sources. Folks that are for sure feeling the effects of a changing climate with frequent severe storms, 1000 year floods, etc.

Sadly, the sociopath/idiotic formula does seem to resonate with the algorithms and/or the public. There is a local creator that I know to be a thoughtful, well-rounded person, yet they had to reduce themselves to a cartoon caricature in order to get traction. But that approach seems to have worked out for them, at least initially through Tik Tok and YouTube. Now I see them taking on increasingly sketchy sponsorships as their 15 minutes fades. And of course audience capture indisputably steers media makers into conspiratorial niches they can’t escape without sacrificing views/payout. Authenticity be damned.

Whoa. “Going to Hell in a handbasket” just got literal.

Or you arrive to find the civilization has had time to collapse and given way to the rise of damned dirty apes.

Split-screen simultaneous brawling action.

Just assumed he was incognito at a “wizards only fools” sort of place.

I’ve been getting ads for Henson razors -Not an endorsement! I know nothing about safety razors- . But the idea of not buying razor cartridges anymore is attractive, provided I’m not cutting myself all the time. But supposedly this sort is less likely to cut me, even if I’m a klutz?

Started really paying attention when my health imploded some years back. Would add that food content literacy tends to drive me to the outer edges of the grocery, and out of the middle where there’s more junky, processed crap.

Heard someone assert that MBA’s have ruined the world. Seemed a hyperbolic statement at the time. Though casting my eyes around an ever more enpoopified landscape, it’s tough to disagree.

Growing up, for a time my folks were way into the evangelical thing and I attended a totally batshit religious school where we recited 3 pledges back-to-back every morning. To the U.S. flag, the Christian flag and the Bible. Then had to recite entire chapters of the Bible we had per force committed to memory that week. Failure to do so was grounds for savage corporal punishment. No other experience in life so inoculated me against authoritarianism and organized religion. It also let me know at that tender age that sadists existed.

Living in a very economically depressed and propagandized region of the U.S. I really feel this. Have often said, the big problem is that so few people have your back here should you wish to protest in any meaningful way. Ironically, it is a place that once fought hard and bloody battles for labor. If you bring this up, they reckon it is totally unrelated to our present crises.

One web LLM I was screwing around with had Job Interview as a preset. Ok. Played it totally straight the first time and had a totally positive outcome. Thought the interviewer way too agreeable. The next time I said the most inappropriate stuff I could imagine and still the interviewer agreed to come home with me to check out the rock collection I keep under my bed and listen to Captain Beefheart albums.