I grew up squinting at lines and playing with the antenna on the UHF channels to try and see a boob from the Spice channel. Compared to that Lara Croft had it going on.

Hang on your telling me I could have been getting my weed hook-up from Madam Sora down the road all this time? Brb.

“I can, but that’s because I’m not a penniless hippie.” Also Elon, probably

I still have my “Free Kevin” bumper stickers somewhere that I bought from 2600 Magazine. I think his mom is the one that shipped them out. He really got frickin’ railroaded with those charges.

I agree that we have come a LONG way. I was in the first generation of ravers. I am aghast at some of my fellow old ravers and how they scorn the LGBQT community considering they were that their bars were often the only place we were offered safety and respect. The motto these guys wore on their sleeves was PLUR - Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect, but now they are SLUR.

A surprising number of ravers compared to my other social circles have gone full conspiracy, MAGA cult, qANON. IMO it attracted a good number of contrarians, counter culture, anti government types in the first place and they were bound to get roped into something like this. I thought hare krishna type things, but boy was I wrong!

They are going to use this as an excuse to finally have to get out of providing (POTS) land line service. Expect them to spin off a subsidiary that owns all this old infrastructure, declare bankruptcy, and either get a bail out to repair the cable of they convince the regulators to let them kill off POTS for good.

I am pretty disappointed in the Gen X generation. I really thought we were going to be a lot more open minded and accepting of people than we have turned out to be.

The risk in CA is that they have built so many communities in areas that are prone to wild fires (and in some cases are even part of the natural eco system) that is inevitable that if they rebuild that it will burn down again. They also have high material costs, higher labor costs, and more stringent building codes (rebuilding to code can get really expensive). Lastly CA has a more highly regulated insurance market which protects consumers, but makes it less profitable for insurance companies. While IMO this is a good thing it has ripple effects on whether or not the private market wants to participate.