But.. Worth the hassle :)

2022 we were in Sienna sitting at a cafe, I picked up a real estate guide, flipped through it, did a double take at the prices, and asked her if she'd ever consider moving to Italy? "It's always been the dream."

That was 5 years ago. Closed on the farm last year. Farm cost less than a SFBay condo.

Much the same here. We're in the process of relocating from San Francisco to Italy to become Tractor Goths on the farm we purchased in the sticks of Abruzzo. I can't think of a more on brand way to take a knee and run out the clock.

Bonus: Surrounded by actual castles, bats live on property.

Just tell yourself they relocated there for the QA testing.

Hi, I'm Mike, nice to meet you. @spikely.bsky.social and I are also Elder Goths :) Music is a big part of our lives. She worked in the industry. I'm just an ex club-rat.

We usually try to blow the dust off our matching blacks for Deathguild's Elder Goth night once a year.

There was something special about that slice of musical era on the alternative / industrial side that we've not really seen since. Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads dropping History Repeating. The entire Spawn soundtrack, Wolfsheim released Spectators in '99 for your poet/spoken word :)

Most days the cotton candy daydream is better than the cold hard unvarnished distilled reality.

...or so Hollywood and Pulp fantasy would have you dream.

As an Club Officer I was constantly in meetings, updating spreadsheets, booking venues, campsites, catering, bands. At meetings with other orgs strictly following Robert's Rules of Order. Doing everything but actually riding my motorcycle.

It's all like that... all of it. Everything. Every fun thing you can imagine once you boil it down into Serious Business.

I am in a Motorcycle Club, 3 piece patch. The Real Deal. Freedom, the Open Road, No Rules, Just you, your clubmates, and your motorcycles, tearing ass...

HAL did something similar with Gillian Anderson in the late 90's at the height of her X-Files fame that I remember made the rounds in the Goth/Industrial clubs for a minute. It was quite the unusual collaboration, she would have paired well with Massive Attack.

Given what the world was like in 2018, what the world is like now, and extrapolating that trajectory into the future... I am sold that is the penmanship of a fully grown adult 50 years from now.

sunflower

Nebraska Car Show Officially Bans All Nissan and Infiniti VQ Models, Citing Bad Behavior by Owners Organizers cite repeated incidents and safety concerns for the decision to prohibit an 350Zs, G37s, and more.

As a Nissan 350Z Drift Missile owner with a VQ35DE powertrain I get it. I really do.

The VQ platform does draw a particular type of 'enthusiast' that really fits into a statement I like to often make,

"Enthusiasts ruin everything."

www.roadandtrack.com/news/a710149...

Makes that whole 'land the capsule back on the dirt with rockets' thing make a lot more sense in terms of simplicity.

It'l be better once they figure out how to do that for the moon / planetary trips and move away from splashdown landings.

I heard despite budget cuts NASA was able to get a killer deal on the 'front porch'

VRChat, is an entity unto itself. I actually know the founders in real life, I was there day one. Like you state, none of us at the time could have predicted VRC would have evolved to where it is now.

I do not care about the 'Metaverse', we'll get there when we get there. VRC isn't it.

Beyond that at the consumer level it serves two purposes. Face Gameboy and Babysitter for failed parents.

It's a niche within the niche that is the PC Simulation market,

But the headsets are heavily used in Enterprise/B2B for real work.

And some of us looked at that tech back in 2012 and thought, "That's a neat tool, I'm going to use it to solve weird problems in the industry and turn that niche into an absolute money printing machine."

Those of us who went that route have been Incredibly Happy.

Do you think at least one of them is already out of their seat, bag removed from the overhead, waiting in the aisle?

There's always one on every flight as soon as the earth is touched.

Watched Integrity splash down and now I want a game engine physics model toy that maths the same way the three main chutes lazily bounced off each other on the descent transferring their kinetic energy back and forth through the conservation of momentum.

That was a thing of beauty to witness.

I'm up late on a school night watching YouTube so I actually caught the earthquake alert coming into my phone

I don't know what it says about me that as soon as I saw that it was 5.0 / the epicenter was quite a ways from San Francisco that I knew I wasn't getting off the couch when it hit.

Well that was exciting.

I refresh the news and get a bit worried...

...and then I remember as a kid when the Death Valley Days President was chambering up neutron bomb based space defense systems for the incoming ICBM's from the USSR that were going to kill us any day... we were told. Promised.

I'm still here.

"Technically, the cheese is still in the room with us..."

From the perspective of an uninformed idiot who tries the best he can as hard as he can most days to do better... If you pushed those two and photos in front of me I'd tell you those were two different people.

Eat too many buckets of popcorn in one sitting and it really turns into a hands clasped together under the knees wallet biting last 15 minutes of Braveheart scenario.

Stuff is nature's pushbroom, in significant quantities It'll move chunks of crayons you ate when you were three.

Well I'll cross my fingers for you. If it makes you feel any better I was working on our Italian toilet brush holder and it tipped over and poured toilet brush water all over my nice Vans.

a young boy is standing in front of a basketball hoop and talking about the future . ALT: a young boy is standing in front of a basketball hoop and talking about the future .

if it wasn't for the Vanguards on my face I wouldn't have just caught one of the security staff at a particular airport I'm at right now trying to lift my wallet my passport my boarding pass.

Nothing like being gaslit hard and saying, "Oh yeah? Let's go to the tape." to just shut everyone up.

Well, at a minimum you now have garden shoes :)

Me watching Formula 1 in 2026 knowing the brand new cars have zero ABS, zero traction control, are half Internal combustion half electric, make over 700 horsepower, have articulating front and rear wings, are hard to drive, and the drivers now have boost, overtake, regen, just like a video game.