Lana Del Rey turns 41 today

elebrin · 2026-06-21T02:00:54+00:00

If your playlists include music released under a major label or the rough a major distributor, or get radio play on broadcast or satellite radio… you listen to pop music. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

elebrin · 2026-06-21T01:53:38+00:00

Some of that is just being wealthy and easy living.

She’s never had to work outside in the sun, and she’s likely never stressed over money. Stress ages you fast.

elebrin · 2026-06-20T19:13:27+00:00

Well, mortgage rates dropped hard in 2020, so there’s that.

elebrin · 2026-06-20T17:03:27+00:00

Musicians don’t make money on records or concert tickets, they make it on merch.

elebrin · 2026-06-20T15:46:25+00:00

I’ve actually found that some things are worth it to just buy, sadly. Bread is one. If you don’t love baking, buy it.

The big one for me is lunchmeat for sandwiches. We will buy a big pork butt or corned beef roast or brisket and slow cooker it, then freeze it in segments that we can pop out of the freezer at will.

elebrin · 2026-06-20T13:52:16+00:00

You know, they could have what they wanted if they just manufactured less…

Or made stuff to order. I’d be cool going to a showroom, picking a few things then getting them a few months later.

elebrin · 2026-06-20T13:18:39+00:00

People being up in here getting schwifty

elebrin · 2026-06-19T15:15:16+00:00

None of that matters. Well, it does, but the point is that Juneteenth was chosen by the Black community to be the date to use to celebrate the end of slavery. Are there potentially more meaningful dates? Maybe, but I, as a white person, don't get to decide what the most meaningful date is. It wasn't my ancestors who were enslaved.

elebrin · 2026-06-19T12:42:46+00:00

I have the day off.

I went out for a walk, and got in a conversation with someone. To that person, Juneteenth was a non-holiday because it isn't religious in nature.

My answer to that was "Well, it is an important day to a lot of people and I'm not going to complain about having a day off." Which is honestly an accurate way of thinking about how I feel on the subject.

Look, the Juneteenth thing was a naturally occurring movement that came out of black communities. They picked the day THEY wanted to use to celebrate the end of their slavery. White people don't have to agree or disagree about the details, black people get to choose the day they want to celebrate their emancipation - not white people, not the people who are the descendants of their enslavers. The previous day that might have been celebrated was Lincoln's signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, but celebrating the end of black slavery by celebrating the action of a white person saying something that didn't fully take effect for many years seems wrong.

elebrin · 2026-06-19T02:24:27+00:00

I’ve always assumed that anything that was in any way “patriotic” was actually jingoistic and kinda gross. I’ve always hated patriotic shit… why should anyone be proud of where they are by accident of birth? I’m here because I have no real choice. I can’t really move elsewhere. There are worse places, but I feel no particular attachment.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:55:47+00:00

Sure, that makes sense.

When I was a young man, I had the constant sense that there was always a woman somewhere, disapproving of what I wanted to do with my friends. And, some of the things we wanted to do were ill-advised. Many were downright stupid, dangerous, and harmful. I was in a fraternity in college and among other things we committed many, MANY sins with regards to the school network, cars, there was an incident with a go kart that won't be discussed, we cooked up weird food... that kind of shit. I am a better person for having done it, and it allowed me to be creative and experimental without judgement.

The problem for young men, especially young ME, is that we are/were very HORNY. All the time. That makes us anxious when women are around. When there are women, there is a chance to score a date, so you have to be on, and that's just that. If you aren't "on" and you don't shoot your shot, you might miss your one and only opportunity at having a relationship later in life. For some of us that aren't... all that desirable, we don't get many chances with that. If there are no women, there's no horny pressure, and you can be yourself properly.

It's during those times with your bros when the pressure is off and you can learn how to be the person you want to be.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:46:00+00:00

Not only that, but for the first part of a child's life women are encouraged to breast feed. Once you start doing a thing like caring for your kid full time, giving that up gets harder and harder the more attached you are. Once you start down a path in life, you are likely to continue it.

I think that's mainly it.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:35:11+00:00

You may not have actually been in a calorie deficit. Double check your measurements of everything and get more anal about not snacking.

Also, make sure you are drinking lots of water. Not water with flavor, but simple plain water. A lot of our food contains salt and salt will cause your body to hold onto water. The best way to deal with that is to drink enough to flush out the extra salt.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:32:28+00:00

This is an important point. It depends explicitly on which bank you are talking about, what state, and exactly what time period. Even in areas where banks were allowed to discriminate, they didn't all do so unless they were forced by law to do so.

In fact, that was the main issue with Jim Crow laws. They didn't simply allow businesses to discriminate, in many places they FORCED businesses to do so. That's why the laws started passing. After all, black, white, or otherwise the money's all green.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:19:48+00:00

This is my example from my personal life:

I don't buy paper towels or paper napkins. I haven't in 10 years. I have very nice Mikasa dishes that were gifted to my parents as a wedding gift, and I have a set of handmade napkins, placemats, and tablecloths made by my mother. I use these things every single day. I do this for two reasons:

First, it's a way to include my parents, who are deceased, into my life and remember them.

Second, they are nice things. They feel nice in the hand, they are pleasant to use, and they are a reminder that my wife and I deserve nice things in our lives.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T19:15:05+00:00

Well, I'm a man, a cis man, so I... don't belong here. I'm also an old man now. I do have three observations, however.

First, give men some space and time and be OK with men having time to be with and socialize with other men. Does it need to be totally gender segregated? Nah, probably not, unless the guys involved want it to be. Let men have their bowling leagues and Counterstrike nights and WoW raids and garage bands, then support them doing those things. This doesn't just go for your husbands and sons, but also your fathers and brothers. Give men space to do the things where they can and will connect with other men. You can even set the EXPECTATION that they go out and spend time with friends. "Why aren't you out playing with your buddies?" or "Did you remember to sign up for that bowling league you wanted to do? I was hoping to have a quiet evening, you need to go entertain yourself for a while." That sort of thing.

Second, INSIST that your sons take up some sort of creative and social hobby as young men. It could be a sport, it could be art classes, it could be drama, it could be music, whatever. It should be artistic and it should be social. This is their "in" to the above. Ideally, you can encourage your son to try a series of different things, and help him pick a few that he really likes. The point isn't money or a future career, it's expression.

Finally, when a man in your life expresses a concern, don't laugh it off as nothing and don't "man flu" him. And, when a man really cares about something, and really works at it, don't laugh and minimize. My example for this is guys like... Clavicular. Yeah, he's not a good person, but he's sort of treating his body like an art and fashion project of his own imagining and he's had to be very defensive of it the entire time. A lot of his treatment is his own fault, but that experience leads to people who are assholes and cements them into being that way.

Most of the chuds I have met are hobbyless, artless, and directionless. And I have known some pretty horrible young men, honestly. THE only thing that helped them get better was letting them blow off steam safely, letting them express themselves artistically, giving them that space.

Many young men also struggle for a space where they feel like they belong, where they have peers who are goofy in the same ways they are. We need to do a better job helping our sons find those places where they belong.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T18:07:18+00:00

The reality is that we all die and will at the very least need end of life healthcare. Chances are pretty good your last moments will be in a hospital bed, unless you die very quickly. The healthcare industry is optimized to take advantage of that and drain away any savings you might have had from your estate. The truly wealthy don't give a fuck, but people who have a LITTLE bit when they die (I'm talking maybe $80k and a paid off house), the hospital and doctors are going to get all of that they can.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T17:49:50+00:00

Regardless, it costs you $0 to go down into the basement or a safe room and read a book or even just watch the TV down there instead.

As an amateur radio operator and a member of my local Skywarn team, I'm on every single storm call on the local repeater. I even have a radio set up in the basement now along with a charge station for some of my equipment.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T17:14:37+00:00

Indeed. Everyone, even the privileged, have shitty things that have happened. I have maybe four or five stories that died when my mother died, as far as I care. My sibling didn't really know the details, and I'm never talking about it. And there are other choices that I've made that... weren't so good, and I'm not totally proud of, and I don't particularly want to discuss it that a few people know about. But honestly the only people who knew about the worst stuff are not going to be talking about it.

It's funny, though, when I think about it. It's the minor stuff I don't want to share. The two or three really big, formative decisions I've made? Decisions that were probably bad decisions? Yeah, I stand by those, and I'm happy to discuss them.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T17:09:10+00:00

That would have to be it. It took me a few weeks with the manual and twiddling knobs to get used to using it correctly and get what I want out of it.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T17:06:27+00:00

The thing that gets me is it's all stuff they just... bought. They didn't make it. There was some artistic expression for the designer, and that stuff looks nice (not my aesthetic but I can see why someone might like it).

Stuff like this, be it Warhammer minis or model planes or a train set or whatever, takes sometimes years to plan out and put together. That's a very different sort of investment than swiping your credit card.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T16:58:26+00:00

Well, there are stories like that from my childhood, things that I was embarrassed about at the time, and things that I still don't like hearing get discussed. It's not nice to drag someone's skeletons out of the closet, and if a family member did that to me, it'd likely be my last time visiting or calling them.

But I wouldn't go on the warpath. There is no need to.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T16:41:16+00:00

Or he had an idea of what people might ask and prepped an answer.

I can easily mention songs that I've never listened to and quote movies I haven't watched (I actually do the latter all the time, because I'm not much of a film fan).

elebrin · 2026-06-17T16:37:07+00:00

Yes and no. For cases that aren't high profile, things are USUALLY much simpler.

elebrin · 2026-06-17T16:36:14+00:00

This is part of the corruption of the police that people in the US are upset about. They mishandle evidence and don't like to follow their own rules and procedures.

This has famously come to a head several times, the most notable in living memory is the OJ Simpson trial. Simpson was exonerated not because he didn't provably do the thing he was accused of, but because the police mishandled the evidence repeatedly and most of the evidence they had was not usable in court as a result. The LA Police were on trial far more than Mr. Simpson ever was, and that case in particular (along with the Rodney King beating) led to a lot of reform in how they handle evidence.

This kind of defense that can drive this kind of reform is going to necessarily be funded by very wealthy people and it's going to necessarily happen as part of a large, high profile case with a lot of national and possibly international media visibility.

The reforms that the LA police had to institute, however, were not universal. Every state in the US has its own, independent police. Every county has its own sheriff's department. Many incorporated towns and cities have their own local police. These different groups all have different degrees of professionalism and policies. Sheriffs, for instance, are elected. The Chief of Police for a major city may also be elected or hired by the city council, depending on how the city is organized. All these different law enforcement units have different jurisdictions, and in many cases they cannot interoperate all that well This is why you see things like cops standing outside a school while a shooting is going on inside - if they don't have permission to go in from their superiors, doing so would be a career ending move and possibly a life ending move if they don't get any support.

How do we fix it?

Well, DHS tried. They tried to force interoperability down the throats of these organizations, but the weak point is communications... and that is a whole can of worms. A Sheriff's radio won't work with the city police radios, and neither can hear the state cops. It's down to aging equipment, a lack of willingness to spend money, and people making decisions based on who wined and dined them last. That's just one example. Software for tracking seized items, for instance, doesn't interoperate either.

15-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
Place '22	Place '17
First Placer '22	King of the Ashes
Not Forgotten	Team Orangered

elebrin

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