watching social media implode
I sincerely believe the future of internet communications is going to be email, IRC, tight-leashed forums and nothing else. And for everyone else, text messaging, which technically doesn't count as internet communication since it can operate outside of internet.
The last time I actually cared about social media was about 15 years ago. At that time, I was giving it a genuinely decent go. But then my brain kicked in and said, "Wow, I really don't give a shit about any of this", and that's when my posting slowed, then after a while stopped altogether. And by that I mean a 100% stop, which included posting no replies to anything on other profiles, because I seriously do not care about the crap other people post on social media. I should wear a nobody cares t-shirt. Or maybe a Breaking News: I Don't Care shirt. Either would work.
Before getting into the whole social media implosion thing, I need to describe the internet communications I was talking about above.
Email: You know what this is.
IRC: Old school chat like Undernet or DALnet.
Tight-leashed forums: Independent web sites with discussion areas. Each one of these sites is usually run by one guy (meaning not a company/corporation) with a small team of moderators, and all have semi-strict to very strict rules one must go through before being allowed to post anything regularly. Why? Mainly to avoid bots and spammers.
Now as for the social media implosion thing, this gets weird, but at the same time not.
The entire point of social media was to connect and make friends.
Nobody does that anymore.
There are only two things people use social media for these days. A contact list i.e. address book, and as a swap meet. That's it. And concerning that swap meet thing, it doesn't matter if the platform has an area to sell things or not, because even when it doesn't, people will still use it to sell their crap.
People are really quick to blame AI for social media being such a dismal thing to use.
It's not AI's fault.
Social media just got old.
When you've got a platform designed for human connections and making friends where nobody talks and all anybody cares about is selling their garbage, that's when the whole thing crumbles in on itself.
I've read a few posts in forums where people have said social media should just drop the whole social thing and solely concentrate on being a swap meet. Said honestly, that's not the most terrible idea I've ever heard. If you've got this giant-ass network with millions of users who are literally not talking, not connecting and just want to sell junk, um... yeah, cut the social crap completely (except for the contact list since people use that) and go all-in with the swap meet thing.
eBay is a great example of this. Did you know that eBay Live exists? Yes, eBay has social media style streaming, done the right way. That right there is what social media platforms need to do, except not a little bit. Go all-in with the commerce like what eBay is doing since that's all anybody cares about.
What's the Next Big Thing with social communications on the internet? There won't be one. This is why I say email/IRC/forums/texting is the future of internet communications. When people want to actually communicate with each other using something that isn't a bot/spam-infested nightmare, it's either going to be email, text chat, old style forum or a text message conversation on a phone.
And yeah, that means you might want to update your phone number and email contact list if you haven't done so in a while, outside of social media. If that means you actually need to physically write that stuff down in a real address book, well, that's what you do.
Enjoy the growing piles of dust on social media, because that's the only thing truly growing in those places now.
traffic reporting is starting to suck
Late last year, I said I stopped using traffic reporting. Changed my mind on that. And now I'm about to change my mind again.
Took a drive into a large city recently. My Garmin is directing me as usual, it gets a traffic report and automatically reroutes to get around it. I go where it says to go, and I realize that yeah, this isn't exactly a good route. A few turns later, I did get back on track and got to the destination.
I didn't start using traffic reporting with automatic rerouting until the late 2010's. Sometimes it has saved my bacon, sometimes it sorta/kinda works, and other times the rerouting is just straight up goofy. It's a crapshoot every time. Does the traffic reporting and rerouting get any better if a phone app is used instead? No, and I'll explain why in a minute.
For that most recent trip I took, this was one of those sorta/kinda worked moments. It technically did get me around the traffic, but the alternate route was a little goofy. Not big time goofy. Just a little.
Something that all traffic-capable Garmin DriveSmart models have is the "Optimize Route" option. If set to "Automatic", that means the navigator will automatically reroute you whenever it knows about significant traffic delays on the current route. If set to "On Request", then it means the navigator will alert you that upcoming traffic is ahead on the current route, but not reroute unless you specifically give the go-ahead to do so.
I went ahead and set mine to "On Request", because I do want to know of upcoming traffic, but I'll make the decision of whether the navigator should give me an alternate route or not.
There's a big reason traffic reporting and auto-rerouting on the phone isn't any better than a Garmin DriveSmart. A couple of reasons, actually. First is that "I'm going to reroute you whether you want it or not" approach that map apps have, with no way to turn that off. Not cool. Second, most (all?) map apps have no way to define custom no-go zones, whereas you can on a Garmin DriveSmart, along with enabling/disabling them at whim.
I've also found custom no-go zones (technical name: Custom Avoidances) really nice for avoiding things like specific alleyways in parts of suburbia. An alley obviously doesn't have a street name, so it's not like you can set that kind of specific avoidance by text input. But it's not a problem on the Garmin. Just draw a box.
For now, I've made the switch to "On Request" for traffic reporting. I'm still on the fence concerning whether I should just disable all traffic reporting (again) outright. If this way of traffic reporting is less goofy, I'll stick with it. But if the goof level doesn't change, traffic reporting gets turned off.
Either way, it's nice to have the option of whether I want it or not.
$8 fix that's probably impossible on new cars
A lot of "advances" in car tech absolutely suck, but a genuinely good one that's been around for a long time is the fast click when one of your turn signals is out. Some genius figured out that hey, all we have to do to alert the driver one of the turn signals isn't working is have the click inside the car run at double speed when engaged. This is genius because a) it did not require adding a light to the gauge pod, b) it alerts the driver visually with a fast blink, c) it audibly alerts the driver with a fast click. Like I said, genius...
...unless you own a new car, then you're screwed.
Before getting into that, the passenger side front turn signal went out on my car, which of course I was alerted by from the fast click. I get back to the house, take the bulb out of its housing, then turn on the signal to make sure I have the correct one that's out. The stupid bulb started working again. Okay, that's good, but I'm not about to trust that. I went out and bought a pair of replacement bulbs anyway, which are now in the trunk in case I need them. And from what I could tell, the wiring looked okay, so, yeah, I'll just keep on keepin' on.
Most turn signal bulbs are about 8 bucks for a pair. That's highway robbery since they were under $3 for a very long time, but at least it's something that can be bought without taking out a loan for it. Yes, I did spend almost 8 bucks for the pair I bought.
Changing a turn signal bulb on a car used to be stupidly easy up until around the mid-1990s. After that, changing a bulb became annoying but doable. And that's the way things stayed until the late 2010s.
From the late 2010s to present is when factory installed LED exterior crap started appearing. Now instead of just replacing a bulb, the entire assembly requires replacement.
And for super stupid cars, dealer service is "required" because the internal computer of the car gets all sorts upset if you dare disconnect a wire anywhere just to replace a stupid light. Gotta "reset" the computer for that stupid light, don'cha know.
Thankfully, the car I have doesn't have a single LED lamp anywhere on the exterior, and that includes the CHMSL a.k.a. third brake light. Every single light is a regular bulb.
I may seriously consider going with something pre-2012 for my next car for whenever that time comes. And this is not just to avoid LED, but also to have a car where I can, y'know, be able to actually fix it myself. I'm obviously not a master mechanic, but I do know how to do bulbs, lubricate the window tracks with the right stuff twice yearly, and so on.
restaurant depot sysco slop
The first time I ever had industrial frozen food slop was from school lunches in the early '80s. But even back then, the entire idea of the frozen meal had been around for about 30 years. The only difference between the '50s and '80s versions is that frozen TV dinners of the '50s came in an aluminum tray that was heated up in a conventional oven, and '80s versions used plastic or cardboard trays. That, of course, was to accommodate for a specific type of oven, the microwave. And while true microwaves were around since the introduction of the TV dinner, lower cost microwaves anybody could buy weren't available until the very late 1970s. However, truly rock bottom cheap microwaves weren't available until the 1980s. When that decade rolled around, sure, everybody got a microwave. Frozen meal companies adapted, made all their meals safe to heat in a microwave, and it's been that way ever since.
My tongue can very easily identify frozen slop that's been heated in a microwave. That "food", regardless of what it looks like, all tastes the same.
Before getting deeper into that, I'll describe something I've been doing for years.
At any grocery store, you'll find frozen mixed vegetables in a bag. Very common. It's usually green beans, carrots, corn and maybe peas. Every one of these bags has microwave instructions. Ignore that completely. Use a steamer pot set instead to cook that veg with. On the lower pot, put in 2 cups water, bring to boil. Dump the frozen veg in the metal basket. Stack the basket on top of the pot, steam for 10 minutes, done. I absolutely guarantee that veg will taste better. Instead of being wrecked by a microwave that turns the veg into tasteless mush, steaming it actually keeps the flavor and crispness. All you need to do after steaming is add a pat or two of unsalted butter and just a little salt. That's it. And it totally works.
The reason I'm telling you this is because yes, you totally can make frozen food actually taste right and feel good eating it, if prepared properly.
Well, that's not happening at restaurants these days, because all the food is prepared improperly. Everything is microwaved.
I used to think microwaving didn't affect things that much. Oh, how wrong I was, because it totally does. Any food or drink microwaved will be wrecked. For example, when I brew coffee with my coffee maker and make a mug of it, sometimes it will sit in the mug too long and go cold. It happens. When I reheat that in the microwave, yeah, it's hot again, but it does not taste the same. The microwave somehow takes away coffee flavor. I just muddle through and finish the mug whenever this happens. The point is that yes, I can taste the difference in the negative direction.
A similar thing happens for food. Microwaving turns food to mush and strips out the flavor, every time.
The first time my "this is frozen slop" detector went off in my brain was at Italian restaurants in the northeast. Every single one of them always had food that tasted the same. The salad always tasted the same. The meatballs always tasted the same. The sauce always tasted the same. The pasta always tasted the same. Even the frickin' bread always tasted the same.
Why? All of them used the same restaurant slop supplier, and the "cooks" microwaved whatever they could get away with.
The same exact thing happens with Chinese restaurants. It doesn't matter if you get your Chinese slop in Massachusetts, Florida, Texas or anywhere else in the US. That food will always taste exactly the same, because they all use the same restaurant suppliers.
What's different now?
Okay, so the everything-tastes-the-same crap with restaurants has been going on for probably around 30-ish years by this point, so what's different now compared to then?
It really all comes down to two things. Laziness and price.
There's always That Guy who can take a low-cost food and make it into something good. You may know one. It's some dude who can take a bottom tier piece of meat and make it taste like something a gourmet chef would craft. He knows exactly how long to cook the meat for, how long to let it rest, what seasonings to add, and so on. Through his wizardry, he gets a result that is simply amazing. You wouldn't think so from seeing him standing in front of an electric stove wearing no shirt and has on just jorts and flip flops, but he knows how to work with food.
No restaurant these days has That Guy. They're all gone.
Instead, whoever does the cooking is just some dope who goes to the freezer, gets whatever that needs to be made for the customer, EXACTLY follows the directions on the bag, microwaves the slop, and nothing more. No food crafting takes place whatsoever. It is all the same ultra generic slop, "cooked" the same way, every time. Lazy, lazy, lazy.
Then comes price; this is the real reason why people are pissed off about microwaved restaurant food these days.
People are very willing to accept microwaved slop when it's cheap, as there is no expectation whatsoever for the food to be any good at all. The general opinion is, "As long as it's cheap, hot, edible, and doesn't make me retch, I'm good."
People are very unwilling to accept high-priced microwaved slop.
Imagine going to a restaurant where the bare minimum price for one entree is $30. Now imagine that for two people and we're up to $60. Oh, hang on, you forgot the drinks. That's at least $5 per person or $15 minimum per person if it's booze. But we'll say you skipped the booze and got two $5 drinks. Now we're up to $70. Did you want dessert for two people? Add another $30 and now it's $100. Think you're done? Nope, you forgot the "required" 20% tip. You just spent $120...
...for food that was nothing but microwaved slop you could have made at home, and drinks that are available at any gas station.
If that same two-person meal was something more reasonable, like, say, $50 out the door, that wouldn't grate you nearly as much.
Or, if the food was absolutely amazing, spending $120 wouldn't have nearly the same sting, because hey, what you ate was awesome. Except it wasn't. You got microwaved garbage and paid 3 figures for it. Oh, and that dessert wasn't made by the restaurant. Probably something from Costco with a 500% markup.
Are there signs that restaurants will die out completely?
Mostly, and I've already seen their replacements. You have also seen them, and I'll say more about that in a minute.
I don't see a bright future for traditional freestanding sit-down restaurants. All the food is ridiculously overpriced microwaved slop that all tastes the same, people are getting wise to this, and they're simply going to stop buying.
There's a running joke where it's said only restaurants who can work some magic with Sysco foods will be able to thrive. I think that's true. Since all the food is the same, it's the cooks that make the difference. However, if a restaurant doesn't have That Guy like I described a little bit ago, then it's doomed to fail. It doesn't matter how much effort a restaurant puts into design or atmosphere or ambiance or whatever. If the food is nothing but microwaved garbage with no thought put into it whatsoever, that business won't last.
Two things have already happened that are replacing restaurants. Drink businesses and sit-down areas in supermarkets.
For drinks, there are three things going on. Coffees, teas and sodas. You've seen the coffee places, so no explanation needed there. A lot of tea places have sprouted up in the past few years and continue to. The soda shop is a weird one, because it sounds like a business that absolutely should not work, but is actually doing well. An example of that is Swig. It would not surprise me at all if more Swig-like soda shops start happening in the next few years. It is much cheaper to run a drink shop compared to a sit-down restaurant, and it also stands a much better chance of being actually profitable. Also, what's sold doesn't hit the wallets of customers anywhere near as bad as a restaurant does these days. Sounds like a winning combo all around, because it is.
For food, I've been seeing more supermarkets offering two additional things. A place where you can order meals, and a sit-down dining area. Some of these grocery stores will actually bring the food to your table once ready.
How fancy or not-fancy the dining area is directly depends on the supermarket. I've seen some that are just a few small tables and chairs in a semi-open area, others that are sectioned off with half-walls, and one time I saw one that was a straight up full restaurant with live entertainment, all inside the store. Quite impressive. Yeah, it was one of those highfalutin upscale "organic" style grocery stores, but still, real money was spent on that, and it appeared to be doing good business.
If the traditional sit-down restaurants go away, you've got the coffee/tea/soda shops, and more supermarkets are setting up shop for dining with more on the way.
This is not one of those things where when the economy gets better, people will start going out to eat more again, and sit-down restaurants will be saved. How do I know this? People who have money now are oh-so done with the high-priced microwaved slop and are just sick of it. Literally.
But maybe I'm wrong, and the restaurant business has a chance of surviving. Maybe they'll find ways to turn things around. Maybe some will find That Guy and actually start cooking food properly. And maybe the prices for entrees at restaurants will stop being so insane.
Until that happens, which I doubt, I'm a-okay having a sit-down meal at a grocery store, especially considering how good some of them are.
the closest you will ever get to living free
Some US states, but only in certain counties, allow to buy undeveloped land, pitch a tent or park your camper/RV/whatever on it and live there. But there are restrictions and permits involved. Namely, health permits. And most if not all to do with that has to do with septic stuff.
Using Texas as an example, I very highly doubt you could buy land in Dallas County, pitch a tent and live on it. That county probably doesn't even offer the permits to do so. But if you were to go to a more rural area, such as Wrinkler County, they'd probably allow it. Do I know that for sure? No. But given there's a whole lot of nothing for miles around in Wrinkler County, probably.
There are two happenin' towns in Wrinkler County. One is Kermit TX. It has Pilot, a Love's, and a Flying J right off state highway 302. Fancy. Just south of that is an even smaller town, Wink TX. The high school there is a big deal where Wildcat Stadium is. I have never been to either of these towns, but both look like decent places to be. And I'm not saying you can buy land in either of those towns, pitch a tent and go about your business. But you could probably do so outside of those towns within Wrinkler County.
At the same time, however, there are houses in both Kermit and Wink for under $150K. I checked. And these are not wrecked properties, either. I don't know how move-in-ready those houses are, but from what I saw, yeah, not bad at all.
The point I'm making is that in a sea of $500K to $1M+ McMansion HOA hell houses, there are sub-$150K houses with sub-$2K/yr property taxes available right now, IF you are willing to go rural. And not just in Texas, but just about any of the 50 United States.
Here's the pecking order when it comes to the prices of property crap:
Level 1: Not a big deal
Level 2: Annoying
Level 3: Concerning
Level 4: Frustrating
Level 5: Angering
Level 6: Oppressive
I'll be describing this as price/tax. For example, a 2/4 is annoying price and frustrating tax.
Property prices in Kermit and Wink are 1/2. Great price with annoying-but-manageable property taxes. If it were Dallas County, that jumps to 4/5.
Going southeast to Tampa Bay Florida, this is where things get pretty wild where you can have a 1/6. Easy to find properties that are cheap to buy, but with absolutely oppressive property taxes the closer you get to the ocean. Things get somewhat better when you go inland, such as Lakeland, but not by much.
Going northeast to New England, if it were somewhere like Boston Massachusetts, that's a 5/6. But then if you go clear across to the other side of the state, in Adams MA it's 2/3. Why so much cheaper? No close access to any interstate, that's why. Only one "major" route through town, Route 8, and that's it. MA-8 is a slow, winding, twisty/turny road from the north to the south side of MA. The closest free interstate is I-91 to the east, and it will take you over an hour of driving just to access it. Adams is absolutely that picturesque sleepy New England town, no question, but not convenient whatsoever. Yeah, you can find a cheap and pretty property in Adams, but you really have to know what you're getting in to up there.
If you're wondering which areas are the worst at 6/6, it's fairly obvious what those are. San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, maybe Denver, and so on.
In New England specifically, almost the entirety of those 6 states (CT, MA, RI, NH, ME, VT) was a 2/2 for price at worst in the early '90s, even in city suburbs. I'm not saying the prices were awesome compared to the rest of the country since New England has always been expensive, but it truly wasn't oppressively bad. At that time, you could buy a property on a lower middle class income and afford the payments.
Now it's the situation where to get non-oppressive pricing that's affordable and good but in an inconvenient area, going rural is the only answer, such as Adams MA in that part of the United States.
The second option is going non-oppressive, ridiculously affordable, convenient and bad. A really good example of that is Birmingham Alabama. There's a whole swath of dumpy broken down houses for sale there at under $20K (yes, really) with sub-$1K/yr property taxes all day. All. Frickin'. Day. But they're all in bad neighborhoods, along with having to sink a minimum $100K into the property just to fix and replace everything. Technically, yes, that's still a 1/1 all around for price since that can be covered with refurbish/rebuild style loan, but that doesn't get rid of the bad neighborhoods. The only good there is the convenience. Birmingham has a lot of stuff like major hospitals, major banks, and so on. If it weren't for the bad neighborhoods (and by that I mean areas west of I-65 and north of 78 a.k.a. 4), Birmingham would be a top tier place to live.
Inconvenience might be worth dealing with?
Not for bad neighborhoods. No way. But for a rural area, maybe.
I have the benefit of having been raised in a rural area, so if I ever had to live in another, I know what to expect. More importantly, I know what not to expect.
While I'm not retirement age yet, that obviously will happen. When I put myself into Retiree Mode Thinking, the dirtiest word I could hear concerning where to live as a retiree is sprawl.
Parrish Florida is sprawl incarnate. Mow down everything, prop up as many McMansions as fast as possible, HOA the bejeezus out of it all, call everything "luxury" when it's obviously not, price it high for the suckers, lower it when the suckers have all been squeezed, and when those secondary suckers have all been squeezed, Section 8 the rest. That last part hasn't happened yet, but it will.
Texas is also notorious for sprawl, as is Arizona. Build build build and do it fast fast fast, cut corners everywhere, sell sell sell, squeeze squeeze squeeze, then do it again for the next town over. Rinse and repeat.
Side note: It's going to be interesting when all those overpriced McMansions made out of cardboard start falling apart (if you know new construction home building, you know that's not an exaggeration) in fewer than ten years.
The ideal place to retire is a town that has seen no sprawl, and moreover is highly unlikely ever to see any. The house bought should be smaller, as in not more than 1,200 sq ft, and sitting on a couple of acres. Nothing crazy. That to me is manageable, and I'm not just talking about cost but also maintenance.
A house is a money pit, so smaller is better. Usually.
Small house doesn't mean to go without, by the way.
Pool? Don't need it. Hot tub all day.
Garage? Only in a state with snow. Otherwise, carport all day. For the lawnmower and other outdoor tools, small shed.
Whole house fan? Absolutely. Get the airstream going through the house during summer. Uses far less electric than A/C.
Retractable window awnings? Yes. Again, summer and hot weather thing. Shade is an easy way not to run the A/C as much.
In the end, "living free" to me does not mean no cost, because there is always cost.
What it does mean is free of sprawl and hopefully future sprawl, free of traffic for the most part, free of NOISE, things like that.
I started off life in a small town like the one I grew up in, and may end up going there again for retirement when that time comes. No, not to the town I grew up in, but possibly one similar to it.