I’d do like that one guy did on the streets of New York. Cash it all out into $1 bills and just make it rain. But I’d prefer do it in the struggling mountain towns around me.

Trump is our time’s Andrew Jackson but somehow worse.

The more well off ones usually have a connected airport and “fuck-you-money” level security. As someone else mentioned, helicopters are an option, or perhaps boat if they’re by a waterway.

So congratulations, you’ve trapped the community doctors and lawyers, maybe a very well off Grammy or two with limited faculties, but you’ve set off the alarm bells to the true predators of society, who’ve now made it to Madagascar and shut down the ports.

Yes, it was called the whiskey rebellion and George MFing Washington curbstomped their asses.

Let’s not try to break up the Union anytime sooner than the inevitable, okay?

I’m supposed to have a flight next week. It was already right on the bubble of whether I should fly or just drive. I’m not going to stand in some long ass line and get berated by unpaid TSA officers and then risk my life with unpaid air traffic controllers.

Maybe I’ll make a trip of it and even go see some friends 2 hours away from the destination.

Man, I really wish this country had trains.

I would produce a pill that rewires the human brain to focus on the good events occurring around them and in the world.

Far too many of our societal problems are due to a significant portion of the world focusing on negative events. How many channel 9 news events are focused on car crashes or shootings? How much social media profit is based upon rage bait? How many hours wasted scrolling on insta fantasizing about being anyone but your own self?

We have within ourselves already great capacity to do great things, we just need to unchain that potential.

It’s all in the method. Some bots can fuck us. Other bots can go fuck themselves.

Oh bud, are you new here? Welcome. This particular corner bar of the Internet that you’ve stumbled into doesn’t take kindly to technology that severs the person from the job.

Things you can do yourself. Select those that are right for you:

• Most trips are <3 miles. Use a bike or e-bike where it makes sense, or public transportation if it’s built out.
• Take steps to avoid the consumer-for-the sake-of-consuming mindset. Get things secondhand or from buy nothing groups.
• Eat less meat. Vegetarian dishes can be flavorful. Even a grilled cheese and some soup is delicious. Miso also has that essential umami kick. As a reformed “need meat with every meal” type person, it’s doable, you just have to rewire your mind and gut. It’s a thing you can do to both save you and your environment.
• Donate to climate advocacy groups and call your political representatives.
• Recycle - it’s oddly getting a bad rap these days, because we’re the downstream consumer to the folks designing and making crap, but we still also have responsibility in the chain.
• Avoid things like fast fashion - buy things with sustainability built in and leave intense shipping logistics out.
• compost and grow your own food if you have the space and time. Less transport and typically better for you. At the very least, you’ll know what you’re eating.
• purchase personal carbon offsets from reputable organizations
• consider investing in a heat pump and insulated glass windows when it’s time to switch the older ones out if you have a home.
• Avoid buying items that are simply packaged water. Try to buy concentrated items and then add water at the point of use. Soaps, detergents, bottled water, flavored drinks are easy ones.
• Use a smart thermostat and set it between recommended standards for your region. You can always wear slippers / more layers to warm up when slightly cold, or run fans, hydrate and wear light clothes when a little warm.
• Procure preventive maintenance on big ticket items and use your built in paid warranties. So many pieces of equipment fail due to some minor thing that could have been addressed earlier.
• encourage others, evangelize sustainability. Political movements need to meet certain thresholds to turn into action.

One of the wittier guys in the trailer park I grew up in did that trick where it looks like you can pull one of your fingers off from one hand. As an 8 year old, that was fucking cool. Perhaps you could even augment it with some fake blood.

Another time he did the quarter behind your ear trick and then gave us the quarter.

To this day, I still remember him more than any shucker of a Milky Way or Babe Ruth candy bar. So yeah, go for it, make an impression.

Orange man learns new word this week, uses it everywhere.

Don’t stop the guac, don’t stop the guac.

Can we please just test the idea of storing them there first?

You know it’s because they ate it right? That’s the only possible reason.

Your opinion is noted, Russia.

Mamdani is the action verb as he’s the one outfoxing Cuomo.

Nothing against her, and by all means, I hope she does throw her hat in the ring, along with a whole slew of other candidates, but I hope she gets Mamdani’d. I hope AOC throws her hat in and we have a real debate about the direction of the party.

Moreover, what a time we are in where two potential candidates for president could be women? Broader forces excluded, that seems like quite a revolutionary time to be alive.

Good for Japan I guess? It’s typically the Conservatives who elect women first, because those are usually the ones who so vehemently oppose a woman candidate. It’s a bit of mind fuckery.

Now let’s see if they either set her up for success, or if she’s out sooner than a head of hakusai.

Nero fiddled as Rome burned. The Germans pillaged Europe’s art. Bankers profited off the Great Recession. Orange man builds a monument to himself while shutting down the government.

A reckoning is gonna come.

4/5 - coming of age film about a scrawny, scrappy poor kid. Opening shot is a fight against other kids in a trailer park to level up in status. Or maybe even earlier to my mom standing there pregnant, and then her mom punching her in the stomach upon finding out her teen daughter, though as much as she had tried to shut her away, had somehow gotten herself knocked up. And then following the resulting trail of blood. Regardless, it starts out by getting the shit kicked out of me a few times.

Sprinkle in the multiple times I almost died, slipping on wet cement that had just been coated with muriatic acid, that time a demented kid tightened a noose around my neck, the countless nights I’d wake gasping for air with my chest heaving because we had a cat urine and roach problem and couldn’t afford an inhaler. That one time two girls thought it would be funny to see how long they could hold me underwater, at a pool, of course unsupervised, and only stopping just so as things faded to black and all I heard was this saint of a kid saying to them “Stop! He’s dying!” Nary a parent in sight.

The sex, the drugs the drinking all at 13.

The divorce, the handoffs from family member to family member moving each year. Finally settling into a mountain town in rural Appalachia. Having a town general store purveyor of goods taking me under his wing. Learning a passion for the outdoors and skiing.

Going mudding in a Honda Accord with a bunch of other delinquents. Going streaking after we got stuck. Flash forward to a court house and nearly going to jail for vandalism and other stupid teenage mistakes.

Going back to the area I was raised and finding that everyone had 2 kids and a drinking problem…or worse.

Flash forward to the struggles of leaving my past behind. Failing out of university after 9/11. Constantly watching those two planes smash onto the twin towers in a dark dormitory until it was etched into mind.

And then more struggle to leave my past behind as I sought out a soulmate. Dropping out of the Peace Corps due to it.

Quitting my job and finding a love for cycling. Being given a dog who hated wheels, but even she eventually fell in love with cycling. The smartest, best damn dog in the world.

Nearly dying another handful of times. Motorcycle in the mountain roads of Tennessee, more motorcycle, sliding in the snow with a big rig behind, that time wrecking it the one dumbass time I went for a joyride after drinks. Being on the 3rd floor of a house as it collapsed on a rainy day in high winds and walking out mostly unscathed.

Discovering a love for travel. Still trying to escape my past, but working on it, like really really working on it. I try not to die anymore.

Could call it something like “The dirtbag’s field guide to survival, part one.”