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Aha! It's been a year since I cast some thoughts to the wind here. There have been countless political panics, social spasms, strange stories, disorderly digressions, and ornery obscurities since. How about we pull up a chair or lift our newfangled standing desks and talk about some of the things that brought us here, whether by way of a certain difficult to pronounce, two character site or otherwise?

I happen to have gotten a turbo XT recently. Besides an immediate affinity for the software that runs on that machine, I've found that 8086/8 assembly is an unusually refreshing reminder of what personal computers both are and can be. The most difficult part of the process isn't even writing the assembly itself! It's in finding useful nuggets of information in the web development fueled muck that represents current technical search queries.

It's been fascinating to learn first-hand about why certain parts of DOS behave the way they do, from the 8088's strange division behavior leading to those comma separated file size listings to the quirks behind memory management and beyond.

Given the above, would you, dear reader, happen to have any old references on hand from decades past? Any fun stories about these 8 and 16 bit machines or their contemporaries? Any old grudges you'd like to air about the latter?

If you trust in yourself...
and believe in your dreams...
and follow your star...
you'll still get beaten by
people who spent their time
working hard
and learning things
and weren't so lazy.

-- Sir Terry Pratchett

YouTube recently took down a video of a bunch of guys having a chat wherein they say kids don't need to wear masks. Completely understandable being as the guys in question weren't proper politicians or talking heads but instead completely unqualified chuckleheads who were only medical experts from sketchy places like Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.

I shit you not, they actually suspended a student over asking problematic questions of a lecturer rather than simply Listening and Believing. And he's not allowed back to class until he undergoes psychiatric evaluation.

Epstein did not kill himself.

MLB has decided that since Georgia passed racist Voter ID laws, they're moving their All-Star game over to Colorado. Which has had Voter ID laws for some time now. Maybe they don't see it as an issue since they're really good at keeping the black people run out of Colorado, so there's very few folks getting oppressed?

So let me get this straight:

Things it's racist to require ID for Things it's not racist to require ID for Voting
Gambling
Buying booze
Buying smokes
Buying pot
Drinking while in a bar
Not drinking while in a bar
Seeing naked people dance with a pole
Letting people see you dance naked with a pole
Consuming porn
Making porn
Buying a gun
Buying a fishing license
Buying a hunting license
Buying a house
Renting a house
Renting a hotel room
Buying a phone
Buying a car
Renting a car
Driving a car
Driving a boat
Adopting a dog or cat
Applying for foodstamps
Applying for welfare
Applying for social security
Applying for medicaid
Applying for medicare
Applying for unemployment
Applying for a job
Applying for a loan
Flying an airplane
Riding in an airplane
Opening a bank account
Cashing a check
Going to college

If this doesn't seem full of shit to you, you really need to take a hard look at why.

A progressive agenda rag actually committed journalism for a change and fact-checked Biden! With actual facts! As unfavorably as their rating system allows!

That's where all this global warming is coming from. Someone slapped a Peltier between hell and earth.

For them wondering how big of a problem those scary-looking, scary-sounding "assault rifles" stack up as a preferred murder weapon: 2019's numbers are in.

Handguns: 6,368
Edged weapons: 1,476
Blunt weapons: 397
No weapons: 600
Rifles (all types): 364
Shotguns: 200
Other guns (???): 45

Handguns are, as usual, the clear winner. By a factor of 17x and change vs. every type of rifle combined.

Knives n swords n shit by a factor of 4.0x and change.

Going UFC on their ass by a factor of 1.6x and change.

And clubbing them like a baby seal by just under 1.1x.

Shotguns, you need to step up your game.

Yup, you're four times as likely to get taken out ninja-style than to get Rambo'd. But "assault rifles" are scary, so let's ban them and anything even kind of like them. No, we don't care if the previous "assault rifle" ban had literally no effect, it'll work this time!

P.S. If those 3,281 "Firearms, type not stated" get on your nerves, feel free to distribute them among the reported types in the ratio of those that were reported are distributed. Math says you'll get the exact same ratios I stated above when you do the new calculations.

Ya know, I've been mildly annoyed by progressives thinking they can just arbitrarily redefine a word so that it means whatever they hell they want it to for a good while now. And I was wrong. I was looking at things like those morons do for some reason. It's not a problem, it's an opportunity!

That realization had, here are a few words I used to not enjoy and their new meanings:

1. *ist: a master in sexual techniques related to the root word.
2. problematic: an adjective meaning somewhere between "badass" and "da shit".
3. toxic: well endowed.
4. trans*: a robot created for the purpose of activities relating to the root word. transsexual: sexbot. transgender: bot that accurately identifies male or female for those who can't. transphobic: bot that goes around scaring people. transcontinental: bot that serves you a crappy breakfast at a hotel.
5. burn in hell: fuck me like grandpa used to then call the dogs in to lick me clean.

Okay, those are the ones I thought up while mowing. What have you guys got?