So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[tonyb]

I get those solicitations in the mail too. I enjoy a good steak as much as the next guy, but yeah, if it means sitting through that nonsense, I'd rather eat dirt.

I haven't "pre-planned" my final preparations either, and frankly neither me or my wife care much about how it gets done. My wife says if she goes first, and I waste money on a funeral for her, she'll come back and haunt me. If it's me, I don't really care. Just find a sandlot ballpark somewhere and spread my ashes at home plate. It'll help fill in the holes.

I can go for a nice slab of bovine flesh every now and then myself. Whenever I find myself near Ellensburg I make a point of stopping in to the Palace, a steakhouse with a decor that leans heavily on antique farm implements.

The steakhouses hosting those financial planning pitches around here are of the white linen and moody ambience type, which carry the names of former star football figures — Elway’s, for instance, and Shanahan’s.

Not for me.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

The vast majority of this sort of thing is a result of "think of the children" initiatives. Sometimes child protection is the intended aim, other times it's a trojan horse. Nothing new; there are records of Socrates giving off about the dramatic poets' corrupting effect on the young...

I've found that there's actually a name for this. It's called algospeak where content creators are forced to come up with these euphemisms to get around the algorithms that look for certain keywords with violent connotations that can trigger demonetisation or removal from the platform.

I was watching a vid recently about inmates on Death Row and instead of Death Row it's "Final Row." There is nothing more unintelligent than AI!

 

[GHT]

I was watching a vid about death row inmates and instead of death row it's "final row." There is nothing more unintelligent than AI!

Nothing more unintelligent than AI, good way of putting it. Once you have worked out the way AI uses key words, circumventing them is the way to beat it. Mind you, for me DIY means Don't Involve Yourself, could AI do any better?

 

[Rmccamey]

It was in a different time, but back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a small group of retired and almost retired old men in a town near me got a lot of mileage out of the term. They would meet at the coffee shop a couple of mornings a week to talk about high school sports, world politics, and the price of cattle and, from time to time, pull pranks and practical jokes on one another. This went on for years. At one point, someone asked, rhetorically, who they were. One of them replied, "the Brownwood mafia" and the name stuck. Some years later they were informed that they had been subject to an FBI investigation, looking into the dark and seedy world of organized crime in a small west Texas town, until the investigators figured out...they were just a bunch of old men drinking coffee at the local cafe!

I ran across a billboard in Springfield, Missouri advertising a business called "Hot Tub Mafia". Curious, I looked up businesses in Missouri with "mafia" in their name. I had 93 hits. What the heck is that about? View attachment 516422

 

[Trenchfriend]

Man, I tell you. Today, I had to deal with my mother and finally things had to be spoken out and I think, in the end it was good, that this happened today. I feel better now.
You know, my mother is meanwhile exactly the same kind of people like her mother. The apple never falls far from the tree.
Unnerving "blathering/gabby" people, never been able to stay objective, especially when the situation needs that and always unable to make decisions. People, you just don't want to talk to or have any business with them, because they naturally will wreck you nerves.

Sorry, my loungers, that I wrote this down, but maybe it was better for me to do...

 

[Edward]

It was in a different time, but back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, a small group of retired and almost retired old men in a town near me got a lot of mileage out of the term. They would meet at the coffee shop a couple of mornings a week to talk about high school sports, world politics, and the price of cattle and, from time to time, pull pranks and practical jokes on one another. This went on for years. At one point, someone asked, rhetorically, who they were. One of them replied, "the Brownwood mafia" and the name stuck. Some years later they were informed that they had been subject to an FBI investigation, looking into the dark and seedy world of organized crime in a small west Texas town, until the investigators figured out...they were just a bunch of old men drinking coffee at the local cafe!

Reminds me of that FBI obscenity investigation into Louie Louie, a song considered potentially dangerously subversive. Two years they spent on that, before simply concluding it was essentially gibberish. Nice work if you can get it.

 

[tonyb]

Man, I tell you. Today, I had to deal with my mother and finally things had to be spoken out and I think, in the end it was good, that this happened today. I feel better now.
You know, my mother is meanwhile exactly the same kind of people like her mother. The apple never falls far from the tree.
Unnerving "blathering/gabby" people, never been able to stay objective, especially when the situation needs that and always unable to make decisions. People, you just don't want to talk to or have any business with them, because they naturally will wreck you nerves.

Sorry, my loungers, that I wrote this down, but maybe it was better for me to do...

Get used to it.

You’re in your 30s now, right? If you’re lucky (or maybe not), you’ll have your mother for a long while yet. It’s doubtful her personality will change much.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Get used to it.

You’re in your 30s now, right? If you’re lucky (or maybe not), you’ll have your mother for a long while yet. It’s doubtful her personality will change much.

Yep, Im 38. And I tried, I tell you, I tried, over many years. But with such kind of people, where you got absolutely no chance to have an objective talk, when it's necessary, it's hopeless. I had the looongtime experience with my grandma and my mother (now 60) goes the same way, although she's still not THAT worse, but the older such people get, the worse they become.
I mean, look at these people. They just don't realize, what they are doing. Totally egocentric. My grandma was infact a classic example of a "histrionic", I tell you. And at one point of time, the majority of familiar people will finally start to avoid them and of course never tell them any private things. Bah...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Just as sidenote:

Ha, this year in October, the repair of my washing machine, you may remember, will be FIVE years ago! And the machine ist still going strong after the thirdteen years, I tell you. No signs of attrition.

Maybe, the electronics will die again after eight years, long before the mechanics are worn out...

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I’m using the washer and dryer that came with the house we bought eight years ago. I’m guessing the appliances themselves are at least 30 years old.

I understand that newer w/d’s are more energy efficient and all, but I’ve also heard stories of the electronics going pfffft about a week after the warranty expires.

At the price of new units, it would take longer than I have left to live to recoup the cost through energy savings. So I’ll just keep using what I have until it stops working. And should that happen, I hope for a cost-effective repair or, failing that, to find used replacements on the cheap.

 

[Tiki Tom]

When I was a teenager, I briefly got into the ham radio scene. Truth be told, I was riding on my older brother‘s coattail. plus there were a couple of Burt Reynolds movies that made CB radio popular. Briefly. Got bored with ham radio pretty quickly. Mainly because it seemed to me that no one had anything to say that was of any importance.

Was amused to see that, as with many things “retro”, ham radio is apparently making a comeback. But it sounds like a bunch of bored men who are not-so-subconsciously hoping the world will end, just so they‘ll have something to do.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/27/ham-radio-emergency-natural-disaster-climate-crisis

 

[LizzieMaine]

Occasionally I'll tune in on the AM voice band around 3.8 MC, and hear a bunch of senior citzens complaining that the world has gone straight to hell. This is called "analog social media."

 

[Edward]

When I was a teenager, I briefly got into the ham radio scene. Truth be told, I was riding on my older brother‘s coattail. plus there were a couple of Burt Reynolds movies that made CB radio popular. Briefly. Got bored with ham radio pretty quickly. Mainly because it seemed to me that no one had anything to say that was of any importance.

Was amused to see that, as with many things “retro”, ham radio is apparently making a comeback. But it sounds like a bunch of bored men who are not-so-subconsciously hoping the world will end, just so they‘ll have something to do.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/may/27/ham-radio-emergency-natural-disaster-climate-crisis

Back in the arly mid eighties, doubtless largely as a result of the same, CB Radio was quite the fad in parts of the UK, Ireland and Europe. Looking back, it was very much a forerunner of online social media. My cousin got a CB from our grandmother for passing his eleven plus, as then did I in turn. Speaking to people all over Europe was like voodoo to us then. For years, my dad had mine installed in our family car; I think it's till in his garage. If ever I had a car or van, I'd dig it out and install it for the craic.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Yeah, free "CB-Funk" and restricted "Amateurfunk" fade out, when DSL-internet came up at beginning of the 2000s.

But even deep in the 90s, not less folks seemed to have not used their CB-devices (with mostly illegal antennas on the roof!) for years, because like @Tiki Tom mentioned, the motivation was too shortliving.

 

[tonyb]

I found few things quite as annoying as the CB radio craze, which hit its zenith in the early to mid-1970s, as I remember it. I was too closely related to a person who couldn’t get enough of the insipid exchanges on that thing. Riding in his car bordered on torture.

I can see how long haul truckers had a practical use for it, keeping up on road conditions and traffic at freight terminals and such. And hours alone in the cab of a truck might have been made more tolerable by conversations with similarly situated people.

 

[Edward]

I found few things quite as annoying as the CB radio craze, which hit its zenith in the early to mid-1970s, as I remember it. I was too closely related to a person who couldn’t get enough of the insipid exchanges on that thing. Riding in his car bordered on torture.

I can see how long haul truckers had a practical use for it, keeping up on road conditions and traffic at freight terminals and such. And hours alone in the cab of a truck might have been made more tolerable by conversations with similarly situated people.

It certainly had its uses. The Scout leader in our village took the family to France for a month on a camping holiday one year in the early-mid eighties. Unusually, they didn't phone home once a week (as people still did back then), and nobody knew where they were. His mother died while thy were away, and there was a serious operation in place to try and find them. My grandfather still worked at the ferry port in those days, and there were flyers being handed out to every trucker getting on the boat, and the CB network was hot with the details of their car... Those guys were very community minded. Alas, deep in France, the word didn't get to them; after three weeks the undertaker insisted on going ahead with the funeral; my dad met the family off the boat a few days later with the news the guy's mother was not only dead but already buried. If they'd been in the UK, though, I'm sure the network would have found them.

I've often wondered if truckers still use them or any of the CB community still exists; I can see it sometimes having uses on the road that a phone or the web might not (though of course these days you'd need a 'hands free' mode of operation).

 

[Rmccamey]

Was amused to see that, as with many things “retro”, ham radio is apparently making a comeback. But it sounds like a bunch of bored men who are not-so-subconsciously hoping the world will end, just so they‘ll have something to do

But I'll take that over Zoom...or FB...any day!

 

[GHT]

But I'll take that over Zoom...or FB...any day!

My guess that FB means Facebook, never used it, if I am honest, I don't even know how. Zoom I had to Google, is the explanation of Zoom's definition written in gibberish or gobble-de-gook?

"Zoom One: A unified platform for team chat, phone, whiteboard, video meetings, and more. Over 86% of the Fortune 100 choose Zoom, the preferred platform for the hybrid work world. Connect Anytime, Anywhere. Industry-leading Platform. Smart Collaboration Tools. All-in-One Communications. Trusted by Millions. Hybrid Work Made Easy. Your Favorite Meeting App."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Orwell's nightmares...

 

[Edward]

My guess that FB means Facebook, never used it, if I am honest, I don't even know how. Zoom I had to Google, is the explanation of Zoom's definition written in gibberish or gobble-de-gook?

"Zoom One: A unified platform for team chat, phone, whiteboard, video meetings, and more. Over 86% of the Fortune 100 choose Zoom, the preferred platform for the hybrid work world. Connect Anytime, Anywhere. Industry-leading Platform. Smart Collaboration Tools. All-in-One Communications. Trusted by Millions. Hybrid Work Made Easy. Your Favorite Meeting App."

Zoom is basically the new Skype.... except unlike many of its competitors, Zoom is designed only for pre-scheduled meetings, so not much cop as an alternative to an impromptu phone call.