Temple, Texas.

I got up with the alarm at 4:55 a.m. today, having not made it to bed until 1:30. The final outcome of the past three years was 60 miles away. I’d resurrected my starter batteries Saturday, and one of the bartenders from the brewery I park near came by Sunday to flip up my liftgate, then biked off (I really need to regain upper body strength – I was flipping that thing up daily while building out the van.).

After which I canceled my internet service and returned my 5G hotspot.

So, nothing left tying me to Austin, plenty of diesel in the tank from when last I drove in August 2024. And without A/C, it was imperative that I do the drive at the coolest part of the morning.

I got here at about 6:30, having gone on an accidental minor excursion before arriving at my new home. Then the malaise set in after getting on the bed. I’ve been mostly useless all day, but I managed to scarf down some Hamburger Helper one of the parents had cooked. This is the first time since 2023 that I’ve had fixed housing and all my possessions in tow.

By 11 a.m., the heat index was already 99F, so I think I timed this well.

It goes to the greater question of how many red flags are enough to call time out?

You’re begging the question. What proof do you have that this particular incident is a red flag? I want quotes before I’m willing to accept that. It’s a funny thing called journalism, and you’re falling for the framing where the practitioners failed.

If tomorrow, Gertner says she was deeply hurt and it nearly tore the marriage apart, I’ll readily accept that this was infidelity. To claim otherwise before that is unfounded moral judgment.

The Nazi tattoo is irrelevant to this revelation. It’s a further attempt to frame this as “because he did X and Y, clearly, Z must be a violation.” The presented facts do not lead to this conclusion. I’m not saying the other things he did were a good idea, nor were they bereft of harm to others, but leave the moral conclusions about sexting while married to the opinion page, and report the facts in the newshole.

Months is just trying to optimize your first run. Then, you discover mods.

If you have your life affairs in order, you could try Factorio. Your friends and loved ones won’t see you for months.

All we have at this point is useful idiots.

It’s the only thing she can stroke with more than two fingers.

Distinct lack of penis.

We can’t all be Avis. (Orville references welcome.)

I’d counter that I trust my data going through Sweden ahead of letting an American conglomerate gain access.

Nixon closing the gold window was a terrible move. Think about it: $35/ounce, and now it’s about $5,000/ounce.

This doesn’t so much reflect gold being orders of magnitude more valuable so much as dollars being orders of magnitude less valuable.

I would counter that I’m saving $1,500 a month by living in a van. As a cost, the VPN is a rounding error.

I mean, I’m using Mullvad. I don’t have the hardware to host my own VPN in a van, so this is my best approach. Could I host Wireguard locally? Sure. With access to alternating-current power.

I’m fine, thanks. It was just weird for her to revert to … whatever this was.

The dek gives the game away. The “future of the workforce” is all that matters. Why had we been doing all this gaining of knowledge in college all this time?

You know what the main difference between a girlfriend and a wife is? You remember the precise day you met your wife with the sizzling sear of a brand.

(I’d not brand my wife until later.)

It appears I’m getting a new fridge. Which is helpful when trying not to spend $15 per day on food. Look at me, squandering my inheritance on dentures and avoiding paying for prepared food.

You don’t have to be a student of revolutionary France to understand what happens when every legitimate channel for grievance gets closed off. The grievance doesn’t disappear. It changes shape. The dark side isn’t more powerful, it’s just quicker. Hatred takes no architecture. Division doesn’t have to build anything to do its work. The people who just gutted the Voting Rights Act picked the quick path, which is also the path that ends in rubble.

This is what the legitimacy-test Democrats refuse to see. They keep framing the choice like this: do we do it the nice way, or the ugly way, to get the same result? That isn’t the question.

The question is whether this country holds or comes apart, and coming apart doesn’t mean a stern editorial in The Atlantic. It means what it has always meant, every time a society told a critical mass of its members that their participation was decoration. It means blood. It means whole regions of this country deciding that the social contract is a piece of paper the other side already burned, and they’re under no obligation to honor a corpse.

Yep. When “work hard and you’ll have a better standard of living as your parents” was killed in the '80s, what’s the motivation to have any faith in the system?

I’m still working on this idea that I can directly bite into things with my front teeth. You never forget how to ride a bicycle, but you can forget how to chew because of pain. And then, once I was bedentured, I hung out with a friend who took three bags of trash away. And that was just Monday.