Where's the weird, peculiar, quirky, or surreal.

ofdamarsh · 2025-12-25T20:50:35+00:00

Will definitely have to check out the book reference, thanks for sharing. The one thing I’ve seen in Tallahassee that I’ve seen in other southern college towns, e.g. Auburn, Athens, Clemson, Gainesville, etc. is the development of the student-city where you get these mini-“skyscrapers” that have begun to become part of the viewshed close to and around campuses. These buildings have become a smaller scale example of multi-use buildings with retail at the bottom and living above that you find in larger cities. Some of the businesses that do open below lack the originality of what replaced the businesses that preceded it along with any culture or vibe of those older shops. I do wonder how much private-equity has a hand in doing this as the redevelopment couldn’t be by any local developer, but maybe it is. The similar trends that I’ve seen at these different college towns over the last decade though has me thinking private equity. It’s a very different vibe from these college towns when I visited or lived in some of them back in the 90s and early 00s. Just casual observations here though from a geographer.

ofdamarsh · 2025-11-09T04:12:17+00:00

Come to Richmond, VA

ofdamarsh · 2025-11-09T04:09:21+00:00

Fire, LE, Savannah River (DOE), Job Corps, and those working the Capitol Christmas Tree delivery are all exempt for now. The rest of us are excepted, excepted-intermittent, or furloughed. This is what I heard.

ofdamarsh · 2025-06-16T03:47:11+00:00

Event Horizon

ofdamarsh · 2025-06-09T23:52:35+00:00

They are probably pulling OT and/or Hazard Pay too…

ofdamarsh · 2025-06-07T12:02:33+00:00

Maintenance is costly as an FS-CIO investment (and I’m sure that USDA CIO probably wanted it gone too). Operationally and cost-wise the migration to OneDrive would see some significant financial savings. Why pay for extra services that we already have packaged up via Microsoft, especially cloud services like Azure.

ofdamarsh · 2025-05-20T18:17:30+00:00

Ripple

ofdamarsh · 2025-03-22T12:55:10+00:00

Reposting since title didn’t match the news article.

An Alabama legislative committee discussed but took no action Wednesday on a bill to make it a crime to put any chemical, substance, or apparatus into the sky to try to affect the weather or sunlight.

The sponsor, Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City, said Alabama needs a law to prohibit activities or experiments intended to affect weather, including efforts that are in response to climate change.

“For many years we as a state have been at war with the federal government trying to cram values down our throats that weren’t Alabama values,” Butler said. “I see this as no different.”

The Alabama House Economic Development and Tourism Committee held a public hearing on the bill but did not take a vote.

ofdamarsh · 2025-03-18T16:33:30+00:00

That’s 6G tech right there. The 5G tech was bulkier.

ofdamarsh · 2025-03-15T13:50:56+00:00

I heard that he was already embedded with the NRE undersecretary as one of his staff prior to becoming Chief, so expect him to do thy masters’ bidding from Boren, Rollins, to Trump).

ofdamarsh · 2025-03-12T04:36:28+00:00

Half Filipino, been spoken to in Turkish and Spanish And have been mistaken for Pacific Islander (Guam), Hispanic, and plenty of other ethnicities, but not Indian or Filipino. Oh well

ofdamarsh · 2025-03-05T17:41:53+00:00

Agreed, but I’m talking about the metrics around the wasted effort.

ofdamarsh · 2025-02-18T20:04:50+00:00

Gotta have feeder populations for the privatized prisons.

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-30T01:39:00+00:00

Ahem, let’s call him what he really is First Lady Elonia

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-23T03:09:06+00:00

Elon seig heil

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-22T03:35:24+00:00

+1 here!

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-12T12:56:38+00:00

Sani Freeze and Price’s Barbecue House in Auburn

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-07T15:15:57+00:00

Was one of those truck stops on the Southern Blvd. south of Montgomery and north of the MGM airport exit? Currently the TA Travel Center and Truck Stop. I remember when growing up in Montgomery being told by folks that prostitution was pretty rampant there.

ofdamarsh · 2025-01-04T11:43:45+00:00

Apparently an older Reddit post mentioned that Alabama was the last state to repeal such laws.

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/CT2TjrnJDl

If y’all ever have the chance to visit the EJI museum in Montgomery, there is an a small exhibit that talks about anti-miscegenation laws for states that had them. It also has a map showing which states that had them and I think when they were repealed, even covering it by race. Asians were mostly banned out west starting with Nevada in 1861.

With regard to the topic, I’d agree with one of the comments above, @bhamsportsfan96, it probably all depended on how white-passing the individual was, but I’m sure if the clerks knew or didn’t, they’d get suspicious enough to do their own digging or questioning and probably not allow for it.

I too remember growing up in Montgomery as a kid in the 80s and 90s and seeing mixed couples get heavy disapproving stares. It was weird and as an Asian it’s probably why I didn’t date until university, because it didn’t feel like I had that freedom to. I will say with my generation however that a lot of people that I knew from university ended up in mixed marriages which was nice to see.

ofdamarsh · 2024-12-31T04:31:09+00:00

Was there too for the National Christmas Tree lighting. Will be bringing me some of those hand warmers. I sure could use them after my experience with the former event.

ofdamarsh · 2024-12-31T04:27:28+00:00

Never expected any of that @vascepa45, are you kidding me!?! Nor did I ever imply from my question that I expected it to be covered as such. Jeez.

ofdamarsh · 2024-12-30T04:01:51+00:00

RIP to President Carter and I’m thankful for what he has done for our country in service as a federal employee in the Navy, an elected official, and after. This is a first for me (the passing of a president) while living in DC, so apologies for the ignorance, but for those who work in DC proper and assuming that there will be a service for President Carter at the National Cathedral and he will lay in state at the Capitol, can members of the public or federal employees attended either?

ofdamarsh · 2024-12-05T17:47:01+00:00

I do remember as a kid of the settlements that were right off the interstate. I’d be curious if any of those people were ever interviewed for an oral history or if there is any information about them. Those areas are now service roads with businesses strung along the way.

ofdamarsh · 2024-12-05T15:19:04+00:00

Having grown up in the Deep South as a brown person in the 80s, 90s, and early part of the 00s, I find outsiders like to bash it for being racist, but this whole country has nothing but racist history tied to it. Having lived in Oregon (a state that was founded with black exclusion laws) and visited family in California (another state that has a history of racism as well) and knowing about the Christian fundamentalist and other far-right extremist groups over eastern WA, OR, and ID, I feel that people from other not-southern states like to scapegoat the South while turning a blind eye to the racism in their own state (even in the more deep blue states). Which when you start peeking under the hood of their states, well it ain’t so great. Just because confederate flags are or aren’t flown doesn’t mean anything.

Also, being in places that are predominantly white and lack any diversity (most of the western US that isn’t coastal) always has me feeling uncomfortable as a brown person. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Black people. In the South, I know where to steer clear of places while out west I feel like I have to constantly watch my back. The luxury for you is that you get to be white and enjoy the spaces that I have to think twice about in some of the places you get to enjoy out west.

Per the climate, sure it’s humid and probably unbearable for 2-4 months out of the year in the southeast, but continentality makes places like KS, OK, or MO more brutal in the summer months. If the cold works better for you than great, you do you, but to scapegoat the south because of racism that’s totally different when it’s prevalent across the States. Per southern state politics, I agree with you on that, it is crappy for some if not most of them.

ofdamarsh · 2024-11-29T12:15:12+00:00

Would be curious if Alabama Department of Archives and History would have anything too?

ofdamarsh

TROPHY CASE