If you're out bike touring, KOA's almost always have spots set aside for cyclists to camp. Both KOAs and state parks are really useful for showers and clothes washing. Was genuinely surprised how many state parks had both when I toured across the U.S.

If you're in Washington state, the state parks are legally required to find room for you to camp if you rolll up on a bike and they're otherwise full.

Yeah, this hits home all right. I'm Gen-X, and while I always got by OK on a very low income even here in Seattle, it was entirely due to have a very modest lifestyle and the sheer luck of that rarest of Seattle unicorns, reasonable rent.

The stars aligned, and over the course of only a few years I've suddenly moved into a very comfortable 6 figure salary, and oh holy jebus words cannot express how much stress just…evaporates…when you've got enough to cover all expenses and easily sock away some money too.

Of course, that was promptly replaced by a new stress, the realization that I might just possibly thread the needle and end up with a comfortable retirement—not rich mind you, just not in penury—but I now had to save, save, save, save, save.

Work affords me access to both a 403B and a 457B, which has helped immensely in my quest to get savings built up appropriate for my age bracket, but all that anxiety is back now that I've got a retirement fund that was on track, but now the orange twitiot is doing his damndest to wreck our economy, likely for good. I'm just waiting to watch everything I've invested go up in smoke. It's nerve-wracking, but hey, at least I'm Gen-X and know exactly what it's like to live with existential dread. After a childhood fearing nuclear holocaust at any moment, this new anxiety is practically a cakewalk!

Oh, who am I kidding? It still sucks.
Fuck.

I'd much rather drive the Miata. There's a reason that when I was forced to purchase a car after almost 20 years without one, I opted for a Miini Cooper. Sure, they're cute, but I was ecstatic to look it up and find it was only about an inch larger than my first car, a 1983 Renault Alliance MT.

Small cars rule.

"…some of which they argue are undermining democratic norms."

That there is known as a "load-bearing clause," and Newsweek should know better than to put it under such heavy strain. The entire article is likely to collapse—much like the media's collective spine—if it gives way.

Oh dear God, I am so so so very tired of saying "What a fucking moron," every goddam time I see a headline with his name in it.

I was over it four years ago and it feels like some cruel joke that I'm saying it again day after day.

The first time I played Super Mario on the N64 I can still recall how it made me slightly dizzy, which delighted me. That effect only lasted a short while, but it was a lot of fun to feel that disoriented by a video game, if but briefly.

This not-stop drama and incompetence bullshit is just so damn tiring. It really makes you appreciate even more how Democratic administrations just Get Shit Done™ compared to their fumbling Republican counterparts.

Holy hell but do I miss government just working.

"Alpha" as in alpha software: buggy, not fit for release, a poor first approximation of useful, error-prone, almost certain to fail at the desired task, etc…

JFC NY Times, you're just noticing his decline now?. It's been self-evident for years.

While I wouldn't say that's right, I also wouldn't come right out and call it wrong either. This very much engages with the "Selfish Gene", an heuristic model of thinking about evolution from the perspective of the gene itself instead of populations.

As an added amusement, the book "The Selfish Gene" came out in 1976, and is the source of the word "meme," used somewhat differently than it is now, naturally.

This really rises to one of 2023's oddest stories. I mean, I don't even have a square for "Indian-Canadian Cold War" on my 2023 bingo card.

Making matters worse, Aldean was ON STAGE during the Las Vegas mass shooting, perpetrated by yet another white guy suffering from a fragile male ego.

It's beyond insulting.