It’s a shame I’m not out in Westlake. Running into Louis Rossman at HEB would be fun.

We can’t all be Avis. (Orville references welcome.)

I’d counter that I trust my data going through Sweden ahead of letting an American conglomerate gain access.

I would counter that I’m saving $1,500 a month by living in a van. As a cost, the VPN is a rounding error.

I mean, I’m using Mullvad. I don’t have the hardware to host my own VPN in a van, so this is my best approach. Could I host Wireguard locally? Sure. With access to alternating-current power.

The dek gives the game away. The “future of the workforce” is all that matters. Why had we been doing all this gaining of knowledge in college all this time?

Are you sure you can’t? Because when my phone was stolen last month, I came to terms with how much the modern world needs one to have one.

I’m fine with that timeline. The rollout in Austin hasn’t been the smoothest – though in faiirness, we now have so many Waymos in town that they keep having issues like knowing what to do when encountering an emergency vehicle. They aren’t going around killing people, but that’s a pretty low bar.

Anecdotally, I’ve found that the larger issue is one that is not historically unique: people not following through on what they say they will do. This, sadly, does not include Trump and his junta.

Ironically, I say this sitting in an air-conditioned hotel room paid for by a complete stranger. We never even exchanged names as I met her at the top of the stairs and she handed me the keycard.

This was the result of meeting someone off Reddit who founded Street Medics via the burner community, then started inviting me to Discord servers including Together We Stand, where I posted a rather lengthy plea for help.

Community is still out there; it’s just hard to find (he reached out several months after my post), and sitting around using ChatGPT all day is not how one goes about it. When systems fail us, the solution is not a retreat into isolation, but rather further work into finding those with whom we share values.

And make no mistake: The system has failed. Ah, to go back to the halcyon days of believing the bullshit that if things aren’t going well, it’s entirely my fault. Victim-blaming has become a bedrock of our society.

But this also happens writ small. Abusive partners who feel emboldened by the fracturing of societal norms … if it’s hard to find someone new, it’s easier to stay with what you know.

What we can’t do is give up on believing people can be good just because many aren’t. Confirmation bias is a bitch.

Quick reminder that you are on Beehaw. There’s only one rule here, and this sort of dismissive take does not adhere to it. Please find something substantive to dismiss.