Blackmoor Vituperative

One of the first things I did when I bought my Hyundai Tiburon in 2003 was to replace the stereo and install an mp3 player in the trunk (mounted on the back of one of the back seats). It was a full size 20 GB hard drive that connected to the “head unit” (the stereo in the dash board) via the interface that was originally intended for a trunk-mounted CD changer (basically a very long extension cord). Imagine that: 20 GB of music in a space the size of a large hardback book! Keep in mind that this was a year before the iPod was released: we are talking some cutting edge stuff here.

A couple of years later, I upgraded from that beast to a Creative Zen Touch portable mp3 player, which held as much as the Neo did in a fraction of the size. I replaced the stereo with one that had an auxiliary jack in the back, and custom-wired a headphone jack into one of my blank dash buttons. As the years passed, I eventually upgraded to an 80 GB iPod Touch (running Rockbox firmware — I have no love for iTunes). 80 GB in a package the size of a pack of cigarettes? Astounding!

Now it has come time to upgrade again. This time, the stereo has USB ports in the back that can support a standard thumb drive. I removed the headphone jack from the dash, and installed USB ports in the ash tray (which is normally closed). Into one of those USB ports, I now have a 128 GB flash drive: six times as much music storage as the Neo 35, in a widget the size of a nickel, hidden in my ash tray.

Freaking amazing.

Nova Scotia has an average of 8-10 feet of snow annually, which is too much for me. So retiring to Cape Breton Island is out. Retiring to Cape Breton Island is still a possibility.

Looking at the countries on this list, Cuenca (Ecuador) is still high on my list, because of the climate, the cost, and the existing expatriate community. Boquete (Panama) is a strong second, and Panama (for the moment) makes it very easy to obtain permanent residency. Mexico (Guanajuato or San Miguel de Allende) would be a third choice: it’s easy to emigrate there, and like Panama and Ecuador, it rates pretty well for health care and medicine. And it’s a lot closer to the USA, in case we want to come back for visits.

A lot of the other places listed in the attached link sound great in most respects (like Malaysia), but are just too warm for me, while others sound great in most respects but are too expensive for me to consider retiring there (such as Ireland).

The first step will be visiting one of these places to see if we actually like it there. Anyone up for a group vacation in 2017?

I need to remember to check on the internet speed, cost, and reliability in these places.

Update: Internet in Cuenca seems decent. Netflix and Hulu are available, but require a VPN. In Boquete, there appear to be a number of high-speed internet providers, but Netflix and Hulu are only available through a VPN. Guanajuato also has high speed internet, and again, a VPN appears to be needed to access Netflix and Hulu.

Reading the “Gringos Abroad” blog (linked above), two things jumped out at me as possible deal-breakers for me: parasites, and cockroaches. So maybe ten feet of snow is not such a bad thing.

Two centuries from now, humans will still be able to read The Iliad and The Declaration Of Independence, but there will be a huge gap where the late-20th and early-21st centuries were.

Atoms survive. Bits do not.

I have found that it makes my life more pleasant if I try to be generous in what I offer, and modest in what I expect of others. I do not always succeed, and it doesn’t always work out as I’d hope… but that’s okay.

Or to put it another way: “Eschew petty criticisms.”

I posted a comment on a YouTube video this morning, “helpfully” pointing out that the alien in Alien (and sequels) is a xenomorph, not the xenomorph — that any extraterrestrial encountered in that film’s universe is “a xenomorph”. It occurred to me that this is the modern version of telling people that Frankenstein is the scientist, and not the monster.

And then it occurred to me how incredibly annoying it is to be around someone who talks like this, pointing out petty errors or inconsistencies in movies, comics, or TV shows. I don’t care if Nightcrawler has face tattoos in the comicbooks. I don’t care if The Purple Man looked or acted anything like David Tennant in the comicbooks. I don’t care if Gal Godot’s Wonder Woman costume looks like the one in the comics.

And even if I do care a little, listening to that sort of thing annoys the hell out of me. So I am going to try, from now on, to not be someone who says that sort of thing. If I like a TV show or a movie, I will say that I like it, and I’ll say what I like about it. Other than that, I’m going to try to keep my mouth shut.

There should be a name for the phenomenon of, “I’m right to believe this even if the reasons I state for believing it are false”. I see it all the time. Guns. GMOs. Black pets around Halloween. Being offended at someone’s costume. No matter how portentous or trivial the topic, facts just don’t seem relevant. It’s not a “liberal” vs “conservative” thing, either: it’s universal.

But it’s easier to block people who spew nonsense than argue with them. It’s not like an argument on the Internet ever changed anyone’s mind, anyway.

My opinion on ethnicity and religion: they are, at most, as important as being a fan of a sports team or a film franchise.

If it causes you to share good times with people in the same group, great. If it entertains you and a competing group to be opposed in a safe and friendly contest, that’s great, too. If it’s an excuse to be mean to other people, or take something away from some other group, or reserve some benefit solely for your group, you are doing it wrong.

I have seen a meme going around lately to the effect of, “I had to get drug tested to get a job, so you should be drug tested if you are on welfare”. There are so many things wrong with this.

First, I don’t think anyone should have their medical privacy invaded in order to earn an honest living. Also, I think “I have been mistreated, therefore others should also be mistreated” is a terrible foundation for public policy.

Second, in municipalities that have instituted this plan, they have found that the rate of drug use among those on public assistance is generally about one-ninth of the national average. It actually costs taxpayers more to institute this mandatory invasion of privacy than it would to just accept that some tiny percentage (generally less than 1%) of those receiving assistance have used recreational drugs. So it’s not only insulting, unkind, and uncharitable, it’s also a waste of taxpayer’s money.

Finally, the people who receive TANF benefits are the caregivers for minor children. The benefits that would be taken away would directly — not indirectly, not eventually, but directly — result in children not having food to eat. So even if you are willing to spend extra in order to be deliberately unkind to people who are already having a rough time of it, do you really want to make children go hungry as part of that? Really?

If you are a Republican, the answer is an unequivocal “yes”.

Exactly one year ago, I held a rum-tasting at the Midnight Frights​ party at RavenCon​. The best one we tried was the 12-year rum from Trinidad, followed closely by the 5-year rum from Barbados. The 8-year rum from Haiti was a distant third. The New Orleans rum and the Cruzan 5-to-12-year rum were not very good, but perfectly serviceable when mixed with orange/pineapple/banana juice and ginger ale.

(I am posting this here so that I can easily find it when I am at the liquor store. If you find it useful, that’s a bonus.)

Happy Mother’s Day, Moms of America! Now go back to work.

I agree more with libertarians than I do with any other political cubbyhole that I have been able to find, but I think I might not actually be libertarian. Libertarianism is all about putting theory into practice, without exception (that theory being, in essence, “an it harm none, do what ye will“). There are, as far as I know, few libertarians who consider financial exploitation “harm” (I may, in fact, be the only one). But I think one would have to be deliberately blind to look at the USA around us and fail to see the harm done by financial exploitation.

Being “rich” in the USA in 2015 means you have a house and you can pay your bills.

That’s messed up, and it’s getting worse every year.

The thing is, twenty years ago, I was a hardcore libertarian. I sincerely believed that the world would be better if there were no laws preventing, say, an employer from tracking your every move, 24 hours a day. I sincerely believed that the world would be better if there were no laws requiring cars to be safer, or requiring employers to pay no less than a certain minimum, and so on. I didn’t believe these things because I wanted people to be underpaid and driving death traps — I believed that freedom of choice would result in the greater good. So what has changed in the past twenty years? What changed my mind?

Seeing how the world actually works for twenty years is what changed my mind. Because in theory, if everyone is free to choose, they can all choose not to work for employers who invade the medical privacy of every applicant. In theory, they can choose not to work for $2.13 an hour.

In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.