One of my longest, best relationships was with a woman I met at a bar. We were both regulars, had seen each other before, but had never spoken. Turns out we were both out for a rebound one-night stand after each ending a long term relationship. Despite not looking for depth, we ended up talking the whole night, went home together, then got up and went out for breakfast and spent the whole next day together. We absolutely clicked and moved fast, and even thought we eventually split we are still friends.

Personal opinion from 30yrs of dating- spontaneous clicks happened more easily before internet dating, hook-up apps, or all the digital pre-screening. Right or wrong people make opinions about each other’s digital footprints, which are often only curated half-truths or their attempt to sell their idealize self image without their insecurities. Or, with Tinder, a lot of people aren’t looking for a click and are walls up about letting it happen; the terms of the relationship are short and clear. When the first impression is each other in the flesh you can (generally) get a better feel for who one another are.

I had an opportunity to buy a juvenile peacock. Why not? Learned a lot about caring for peacocks very quickly.

I was the secret.

My brother and I were adopted at birth by an abusive, hyper-religious Christian family. Both of us walked away and never looked back when we were old enough. I knew they moved out of state not too long after my brother left but never bothered to follow-up.

About 24yrs later I get a call from a young woman claiming to be my adopted sister. Turns out my parents moved to the Midwest, reinvented themselves as an older couple who’d never had kids and adopted a Korean girl through their church. She started to suspect in her teens that something wasn’t right because the two decades they raised my brother and I were full of gaps, stories they’d tell one time didn’t match the next time, but it wasn’t until she was a bit older she realized “holy shit, they completely covered up an entire family”. Also lied to her about the nature of her adoption (did that to my brother and I too) as well as learned nothing from their mistakes with us about how to care for a child. So now they have three kids that don’t talk to them and I have a sister that’s young enough to be my daughter that I never met until she was in college!

I’ve been lucky to see Bad Religion over a dozen times in the last 25yrs and they never let me down. They’ve been dropping hints on their socials that their touring years might be coming to a close though. But they’ve earned their retirement. Everything must cease.

I think the final straw will be midterms. It’s, IMO, a fool’s hope that a blue wave would do anything more than those in office already aren’t doing, but I get that most people don’t seek violence. If the elections are called off, winners not recognized, or the fraud/voter suppression is egregious, maybe then. Protests alone do nothing, the rich are rich enough they can survive a general strike longer than any of us can, so voting them out is our last chance to change course peacefully. After that it’s accept the New America or invoke the Amendment of No Return. And seriously, that’s going to suck.

Our distant ancestors had just as much capacity for learning as we do, they just used it in different ways because that was what the nature of their daily lives demanded. Where we can recognize dozens of brands by their logo alone, they recognized plants by their leaves, useful stones, and scat. Our accumulated knowledge we pass on doesn’t make any one of us any “smarter”. Some of us alive today are not rocket scientists but have the capacity to be, just as there were people thousands of years ago that had that capacity but not the thousands of years of science and engineering that was needed to build on to take that last step and achieve it.

Solitary living is a luxury made easier by the abundance of technology we have, going it alone in a Stone Age state would be very, very difficult, then and now. Folks who understand things like tool making, agriculture, medicinal plant identification, bushcraft, animal husbandry, hunting/fishing/trap making, and clothing making would have a leg up. Those who have all that and the ability to form small cooperative groups would stand an even greater chance of success. I’d also throw out that despite the rise of digital storage, we have a lot, a lot of printed material in the world. Even if we forget how to read, there’s pictures and illustrations. Kids aren’t raised in isolation, knowledge (even diluted knowledge) gets passed on, and we wouldn’t forget where we once were, and the ruins of civilization would be all around. You’d almost need some sort of sci-fi level disease to wipe all of our minds to get us back to true Stone Age levels of living and prevent us from understanding how scavenged tools could be used. We might forget how to forge steel but we’d keep scavenging it for blades rather than revert to stone.

There’s a reason they quit teaching “John Brown’s Guide to Protest Etiquette” in schools and told us peacefully standing on the side of the road for an hour (after securing all the necessary permits) and cooperating with all directives from law enforcement is how Americans “make themselves heard”. They hear us, and they know they don’t have to listen.

There are, and like any social/political group it’s not a monolith but has plenty of various subsections that would broadly be called “anarchist” but aren’t themselves all in agreement (and at times accuse others of not being “real” anarchists). This watered down meme is just [insert political group here] Utopianism jingoism. Of course people tend to help each other that are like them, leftists tend to be more likely to help outside their tribal communities, but the extent to how much they help and under what circumstances is not blind enabling. If I see a person drowning I’m not going to ask who they voted for before helping. If I see some Trumper with a flat tire… fix it yourself, asshole.

I admire the coyote’s ability to adapt and survive, and like me it’s equally at home in the wild or in the city.

Nah. There has to be a twist.

There’s enough distrust and conspiracy theorist in me to question if the whole thing isn’t a good cop/bad cop publicity stunt to attract “conscientious” consumers.

“Hey all you anti-authoritarian, anti-AI, anti-surveillance types, we’re your friend; we’re the un-AI. Now be good idiots and plot your dissent on our service.”