5 Great RSS Feeds for Good Reading Every Day

RSS

This is a special edition containing links to five of the best sources on the Internet to keep abreast of the latest trending topics and discover new writers. And then there is a bonus feed.

1 follow my favorite IndieWeb bloggers via RSS to stay abreast of what they are up to, for inspiration and education. I also have an RSS feed that's mostly for curated reposts of the best of the web each day. If you'd like to build a list like that, here are some great feeds to get started with. Keep these in a separate app or however you want to segregate them, but don't mix them up with all your other subscriptions or they will just get lost.

  1. Jason Kottke - one of the Internet's OG bloggers who posts regularly and who alwways seems to be finding the best stuff. - RSS Feed
  2. I've been reading NextDraft for well over a decade. Dave Pell says "I pluck the most fascinating news items of the day and then create a modern-day column which I deliver with a fast, pithy wit that will make your computer device vibrate with delight." -RSS Feed
  3. Feedle is a search engine for the IndieWeb where any search you fo can be turned into an RSS feed. Try it for any subject that interests you. In the meantime, subscribe to their curated feed of some of the best blog posts they've found -RSS Feed
  4. BearBlog is the home of two of my own online endeavors. It's also the home of many fine bloggers. Reading the most popular posts on the platform each day is a good use of your time and a good way to discover new writers - RSS Feed
  5. Murmel is a service that tracks the most shared stories on social media. The main feed covers a giant cross-section of the Fediverse, but you can subscribe to a personalized feed to see what the people you follow are sharing. - RSS Feed
  6. The last feed on the list is in way over its head. If you have a hard time sorting out where all the stuff I write about is being posted, you can subscribe to a single RSS feed and get it all out of one fire hose, including my weekly bookmarks and my updated /now page in addition to AppAddict, Living Out Loud and Linkage. - RSS Feed

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Librewolf for Security and Privacy

Librewolf


If you become more concerned with privacy and surveillance regarding your online activities, moving to a more secure browser is a definite step in the right direction, along with using a reputable VPN, a privacy focused DNS setup and good ad and tracker blocking extensions. The ultimate in privacy for most users is probably using the TOR browser and network. That comes with a significant performance hit. If you are looking for more privacy without the usability issues of TOR, Librewolf is most likely your best option for a daily driver.

LibreWolf is a privacy-focused fork of Firefox. Its primary benefits include:

Tracking Protection

  • Strict default settings protecting against trackers, ads and scripts
  • uBlock Origin included by default
  • Fingerprinting resistance, including protection against canvas, font, and WebGL fingerprinting.
  • Encrypted SNI:preventing your Internet Service Provider (ISP) from seeing which websites you visit.

Privacy

  • No telemetry or data collection
  • Privacy-focused search engine, DuckDuckGo enabled by default, although you can change it to Kagi or the engine of your choice:
  • Cookie AutoDelete to automatically purge tracking cookies after each browsing session
  • HTTPS-Only Mode on by default

Security

  • Blocks known malware sites through disconnect.me's list of over 5000 tracking and malicious domains
  • WebRTC disabled by default to prevent IP address leakage
  • Strict default settings for website permissions for your location, camera, and microphone

Open Source

  • Open Source
  • Ethical community members
  • Removes sponsored content, distracting elements on the home page, and search suggestions
  • Wide range of customization options

The most important element in your security setup is you. No amount of consumer technology can protect you as much as limiting what you share online. Making use of encryption technology to share highly sensitive data can be a necessary step if you are engaged in conduct that hostile actors could intercept.

The recommended way to install Librewolf is using Homebrew. You can download a DMG, but you will lose access to automatic updates.

brew install --cask librewolf

Download site.

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A winter view of the dogwood and azaleas in my front yard that will be so beautiful come spring.

Snow-covered trees stand still, their branches laden with white, against a backdrop of a road lined with more snow-blanketed landscape and bushes, under a dim, pale light.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Speak Out

I have been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum just once. It was in the 1990s. I took my children to Washington for the express purpose of having them visit. We had to go to the museum in the morning to get tickets to be able to tour it in the afternoon. We spent a little over two hours inside. I've always been interested in history and although I wouldn't say that I studied the holocaust, I'd read many books about World War Two. I knew how Hitler has enacted the Nuremberg Race Laws (modeled on Jim Crow laws from the US). I knew about Kristallnacht , the Night of Broken Glass when the Nazis started a pogrom against Jewish businesses and synagogues in November of 1938. I knew about the death camps like Auschwitz.

The displays at the museum were haunting and memorable. The one that left the deepest impression was a pile of hundreds of leather shoes confiscated from Jews entering one of the camps. Many of the shoes were children's sizes. Most children were killed on the same day they arrived at the camps unless they happened to be twins, in which case their lives would be temporarily spared so Nazi doctors could experiment on them. You could smell the shoes in the exhibit, even from behind glass and even after 50 years of storage. They were a stark reminder of extinguished humanity.

With the rise of authoritarian government all over the world, including the far-right AfD in Germany itself, I think it would be good for any American to visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum. See a civilized modern society went mad listening to a popular but insane little man who tooks a country of farmers and industrial workers and turned it into an extermination machine. Think about that the next time you a politician telling you that immigrants are animals and talking about them spoiling the blood of the nation.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Holocaust Encyclopedia

A visit to the US Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. - YouTube

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Tales from the Dark Ages

McCain Hospital

The recent stories of the resurgence of tuberculosis, first in Kansas and now in my home state of North Carolina, stirred up some long forgotten memories for me.

North Carolina tuberculosis cases rising for first time in decades following one of the worst outbreaks in U.S. history | The Independent

It seems strange to recount now, but when I went to work as a prison guard in the 1980s, the unit where I worked housed a category of offender known as a health law violator. These inmates were invariably chronic street alcoholics who had contracted tuberculosis and been non-compliant when it came to taking their medication. The state of North Carolina in all of its infinite wisdom decided at some point in the distant past that the best solution to this problem was to make it a crime. They would arrest these men and send them to the prison where I worked where they would receive treatment for TB. When they were no longer contagious, they would be released.

It was a grim situation, made even grimmer by the conditions of their confinement. The men were housed in a single cell segregation unit, the same type of housing used for prisoners convicted of disciplinary offenses. The health law violators only got to come out of their cells for an hour a day, always wearing a mask. They could mix with each other, but not with anyone else from the population. They were not allowed visitors. Eventually, the law was changed and by the time I left that kind of work in 1993, the Department of Correction had gotten out of the tuberculosis treatment business.

I don't know if anyone has figured out the logic behind the recently announced cuts to medical research by the fascist government of the United States. Not only are we getting a certified lunatic who admitted that a worm had eaten part of his brain as a cabinet secretary in charge of Health and Human services in Robert Kennedy, Jr., we are apparently just giving up on cancer. Not to worry because the US has also stopped AIDS eradication in Africa and assistance with other worldwide diseases because…I don't know. Fuck all those brown people. Right?

The tuberculosis comeback should scare people. You see, the prison where I worked in the 80s was originally built to house nothing but prisoners with tuberculosis, not health law violators like I dealt with, but run-of-the-mill bank robbers and cat burglars who just happened to also have TB. There were that many of them. It was only a mile away from a gigantic sanitorium the state operated to treat regular citizens who had the disease.

I remember a time, also back in the 80s when the US government also didn't give a damn about sick Americans, specifically sick gay Americans during the early days of the AIDS epidemic. St. Ronald Ray-gun couldn't even be bothered to say the name of the illness out loud. That's what we are headed back to now, except the American fascists are uncaring about all the non-billionaires. They plan to let idiots of all stripes forego vaccinations. In the face of a pandemic, no one will have to take any precautions against spreading disease. I know this sounds like the rantings of a crazy person, and two months ago, you would have been right if you thought that. Now, I am right. We are screwed, and eggs are still expensive.

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Applite Updated with New Features

Applite


Installing software using the package manager, Homebrew, makes it much easier to update than downloading installation files manually. It isn't necessarily difficult to find the commands to download apps, but it does require a certain amount of searching around. The free and open-source utility, Applite, provides an App Store like interface for Homebrew, allowing you to browse what is available through a GUI. Anything you download through Applite can also be updated through the same interface.

When you install Applite, it will offer to install Homebrew . If you don't have it installed already, you'll want to do that. Otherwise, just choose the option to use your currently installed version, which will be detected.

Every application in the Homebrew Catalog is available through Applite. When you launch an app downloaded with Applite, the built-in Mac security apps, Gatekeeper and Xprotect will examine it to make sure it is safe to run. Most of the apps in the Homebrew catalog are notarized, but not all of them are sandboxed, meaning that some may run with elevated privileges. Be careful when downloading applications that few others have downloaded. Not all apps available through Homebrew are FOSS. Some are trialware of commercial products.

The following categories of apps are available along with info on some of the apps I have tested:

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Punching Nazis

Punch Nazis

Have you ever been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC? Better yet, have you traveled to Europe and visited the sites of former Nazi concentration camps like Dachau or Auschwitz? Did your grandfather or great-grandfather serve in Work War 2? Even if you can't answer any of those questions in the affirmative, do you simply have a gut level understanding that Nazis and their ideology are among the most despicable things to ever exist?

My Grandmother lost her younger brother to Nazi gunfire in Italy. I have proudly organized with survivors of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre in North Carolina where Nazis and Klansmen gunned down community activists marching through a public housing project.

I am glad to support and encourage anyone who is antifascist. If you list Nazi-punching as one of your hobbies on social media, I am sending you a friend request. If actually get to punch a Nazi and I can get your address, I am sending you a fan letter. Celebrate these heroes whenever you get the chance!

Armed Nazis Flee as Local Heroes Burn Their Flags

Can I Punch Nazis?

Antifa Tracked Down and Knocked Out a Neo-Nazi Using Social Media | New York Post - YouTube

Punching Nazis Totally Works | Defiant | Medium

The 'punch a Nazi' meme: what are the ethics of punching Nazis? | Science | The Guardian

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Useless Things - Hiking Edition. The little known national scenic trail, the Nuesiok, located in the Croatan National Forest in North Carolina floods frequently and the park service tries to help, kind of.

A narrow wooden bridge crosses a small, flooded area on a forest trail surrounded by trees.

Use KIWIX to Access Wikipedia and Other Resources Offline

KIWIX


You should use this free and open-source tool to secure a personal copy of Wikipedia and other resource information valuable to you. KIWIX believes that access to knowledge is a fundamental right. That’s why they’re dedicated to providing free and open access to it for everyone, everywhere.

KIWIX enables you to have the whole of Wikipedia (and many other websites like TED talks, Stack Exchange, Gutenberg Project library, WikiHow, Khan Academy, freeCodeCamp, YouTube channels) Data downloaded on a Mac can be transferred to mobile devices.

The source code for the Mac and iOS versions is on GitHub.

You may have seen the recent stories about attacks on Wikipedia. Certain parties have:

Some of these same parties have been responsible for the removal of publicly funded databases from government websites. If you are concerned about censorship or data altered to fit a certain narrative, download KIWIX to avoid issues. It is still currently available on Mac App Store..

The most reliable way to get the Wikipedia data is to use a Mac to download the small peer-to-peer seed file for the large non-indexed ZIM file you want (not the pre-indexed package for Windows) from http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Content\_in\_all\_languages, then use a peer-to-peer client (such as Folx) to download the actual ZIM data file to your computer. You can then transfer the ZIM file to your iOS device using iTunes/Apple Music File Sharing.

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Buy Less Stuff, Go More Places

The_Glens_of_Antrim

During my year-long project to see if it was possible to manufacture happiness, one of the exercises I undertook was to make a list of my own rules to live by](https://louplummer.lol/my-rules-for-me/). One of those rules was Buy Less Stuff, Go More Places.

Studies have strongly suggested that memories are more difficult to form when your surroundings don't change. I made the same 30-mile drive to work for twenty years, and the hour and half it took out of my life each day was essentially lost time. I listened to plenty of good books and podcasts in those drives, but the landscape might as well have been a blank slate. On our recent trip to Florida for the Miami Marathon, every mile was fascinating, even if it was through a typical neighborhood. The architecture and landscaping was so different from what I am used to.

This is a hard rule to follow when you have disposable income because you're old and have paid off your bills. Yes, we go plenty of places, but the Amazon delivery mobile has us programmed into their GPS. A couple of points though - We do not have an expensive home, nor do we want one. If anything, we want simpler. I also drive an old, old car. It's not a classic, or anything close to it. It is just ancient. Those two facts alone save us a few thousand dollars a month. This year, we may not take a vacation that includes airfare. We will probably opt for some place in the Appalachian Mountains instead - one of my favorite places on earth. Among our "fly to" vacations, I've prepared heavily for Northern Ireland and Santa Fe. I'm not sure what prevented me from taking full advantage of NYC and Colorado Springs. I had a good time in both places but I left a lot on the table.

The places I like to go to are more often the places we can drive to - or places we can park and hike to. Some touristy sites are fun to visit, but I enjoy exploring a new patch of woods a lot too. Whatever I do, I want to do it with Wonder Woman. Sometimes I feel like she has a stronger sense of adventure, but I think we're actually evenly matched. Her personality is such that she is usually happier to let me pick out the next adventure (I'm not fooling myself, either. I read about why that is true in a book). When I'm feeling tired, and she expresses a desire to do something, it just seems odd, out of the ordinary. It's just that I feel tired more frequently than she does.

I do sometimes feel guilty for buying things. A decluttering spree made me less inclined to buy several types of items: clothes, pots and pans, used books, random personal care stuff. I try to be mindful about what I buy lately. I ask myself if an item will help me feel happier. Will it help me reach a goal? What triggered my desire for it?

Anyway, I think I need to let go of some of the guilt, as long as I am willing to be a good steward of our the money we have and as long as I would always rather go somewhere new, than go shopping for something flashy. I don't need flashy.

I love to track things. I have an app to bookmark places. In the past 10 years, we have visited 76 parks, stayed in 44 hotels/VRBO, visited 28 coffee shops, 14 book stores and eaten in 352 restaurants. I want to at least match that in the next 10 years!

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I took this photo out the window of a restaurant while eating dinner near (not with) David Sedaris who has a vacation home nearby. In case you ever make it to Atlantic Beach, NC, check out Amos Mosquitos for fresh caught local seafood.

A house with windows lit stands against a vibrant sunset, surrounded by marshland with tall grasses under a dramatic, cloudy sky.

Remembering Bad Presidents

badprez
In my time on planet Earth, I have lived through of during the administration of 11 presidents. They all has faults, but, excluding the current White House resident, two of them were exceptionally bad people and presidents. I am referring, of course to Richard Nixon who not only ran a criminal conspiracy from the oval office to cover up the Watergate crimes, he also less famously prolonged the Vietnam war by sabotaging peace negotiations between the Johnson Administration and North Vietnam. The other spectacular failure was George W. Bush who lied the Ameican people into a two-trillion dollar failure of a war. If that weren't bad enough, he also was running the country when the world financial system almost collapsed due to his negligence, causing the worst economic conditions in the US since the Great Depression.

Isn't it odd then, that the current criminal fascist at the head of the US government does something almost every day as bad as the worst of Nixon and Bush? I mean, theguy already has 34 felony convictions. He owes $84 million to a woman he sexually assaulted and then defamed. He is openly racist and has been recorded on video bragging about grabbing women "by the pussy."

Just for the lolz, here is what we used to consider bad presidenting.

Nixon

What’s the worst thing each US President has done while in office? Day 36: Richard Milhous Nixon : r/USHistory

Worst Presidents: Richard Nixon (1969-1974)

Articles by Jonathan Rauch: Nixon: 20th Century's Worst President

W. Bush

The 7 worst moments of George W. Bush’s presidency - The Washington Post

George W. Bush was worse than you remember

George W. Bush Was a Disaster — Only Trump Looks Worse By Comparison - FPIF

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Why Do People Get Mad About Things That Are None of Their Business?

Prodigy_logo

When you meet someone named William, and they tell you they prefer to be called Bill, almost all of us do the one rational and sane thing that the situation calls for. We call them Bill. If their name is William, and they ask to be called Chip, all the non-crazy people in their circle call them Chip. Not only is it basic human decency to call people what they want to be called, it's also the path of the least resistance. It causes exactly zero problems, and it actually prevents conflicts that would be caused by some idiot's stupid obstinacy in insisting that the only rational name to call anyone is the name on their birth certificate. It's no one else's business why any of us choose to be called by our preferred name. Whatever the reason is for your choice or mine, it is good enough.

My middle name happens to be Kimbal. When you shorten it, as most people did when that was the name I went by, it's Kim. From birth to the first couple of years of school, Kim is the name I used when introducing myself. It's what I wrote on my first and second grade spelling tests, right there at the top on the line labeled "Name". Because kids are assholes, some of them decided that my name didn't conform to the gender norms they thought were acceptable, In other words, they thought Kim was a girl's name. Since I am not a girl and have never identified as a girl and because I had that traditional social conditioning that anything that challenges one's manliness is bad, even if for a six-year-old, I was greatly offended. It made me mad enough to cry, which made me even more mad. Since I was then a pissed off, crying, immature little boy-child with poor coping skills, my next step was usually to make the socially unacceptable choice of attempting to beat someone's ass. That was frowned on, and I got lectured on how I should just ignore mean people. Well, that was bullshit then and it is bullshit now.

I eventually caved to pressure, tried a few other names and ended up going by Lou, which is a perfectly fine name, I suppose, but not the one that I was used to.

Now, you probably know where I am going with this. Most people who are going to read this most likely don't have an issue calling people what they want to be called. If they wish to be called Mary, even though the name on their birth certificate is William, most people who read the rants of this particular progressive old white guy, are cool enough to call that person Mary. If Mary asks, quite naturally that you say she and her when you refer to her, then the people I like, are going to say OK, and do exactly that. They do it because they aren't crazy and they aren't assholes. They have manners and basic human decency. They are not needlessly antagonistic, and they would rather not make another human being feel bad for absolutely no reason. Good for them!

The only reason to refuse to call someone by their preferred name, gender, and pronouns is that you are morally deficient. You are a flawed human being with untreated personality issues. You are probably cruel in other ways that make sense to no one apart from your own twisted self. You may know and be friends with some other weirdos who share your flaws, but that doesn't make any of you right. Not only that, but you are most likely still mad at six-year-old me who beat your ass back in 1971 — because you deserved it then, just like you deserve it now.

Please send this, anonymously if you have to, to anyone in your life who needs to read it.

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Geofency - Location Based Time Tracking

Geofency for Mac
Geofency for Mac

I have used various location tracking apps over the years. Most of the ones I've tried have had issues. Either the company behind them folded or the apps had poor privacy policies or were strictly for iOS and drained my battery faster than I liked. These apps are often subscription-based. Google will gladly track your location for free using your device if you let them, but what sane person wants Google of all companies knowing their every move?

The one app that consistently delivers added features, accuracy, and unsurpassed privacy is Geofency by developer Karl Heinz Herbel. It is a universal app for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac. I use my iPhone as the default for tracking my location and use the Mac version to pull reports and see my data. Geofency is currently at version 9 and has been in the app store for 12 years. Geofency does not do route tracking, so look elsewhere if that's what you need. Instead, it tracks the amount of time you spend at the locations you visit. I used it for years when I worked in a rural county, traveling between schools. When I needed to complete my expense report, I could pull all my data from Geofency as well as for my time card. If, for some reason, it fails to accurately record a visit (rarely) you can manually edit the data.

It is accurate enough that today I use it to determine which buildings on the campus of the university where I work I have visited during the current reporting period. I am able to add notes to any visit to a particular building for later reference. For visits to commercial locations, Geofency connects to Apple Maps to pull phone, address and website data. I can automatically export visits to any location to any calendar. The app will even generate a CSV time sheet for any time period I specify for any location. I can customize the locations by renaming them or resizing the spatial radius Geofency recognizes, helpful for separate locations near one another.

None of your Geofency data is collected by the developer. It all lives in your iCloud account only.

The iOS app features live activities and widgets. I would gladly pay a higher price for this app I have now used for over a decade, but it is still only $4.99 as a one-time purchase in. the App Store.

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Another photo from the now closed North Carolina Aviary - A Victoria Crowned Pigeon with its vibrant blue plumage, deep red eyes, and a dramatic crest of lacy, white-tipped feathers #bird

A Victoria Crowned Pigeon with its vibrant blue plumage, deep red eyes, and a dramatic crest of lacy, white-tipped feathers.

This Week's Bookmarks - Buffy Returns, $1 Million Puzzle, Using Signal, Attending Protests, Night Experiences, Chatbot Limits, More Movies

Buffy

Sarah Michelle [[Gellar]] Says Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Return Is for the Fans - The Slayer herself revealed that a Buffy revival has been in the works for a while ahead of this week's announcement.


Officials Are Offering $1 Million to Anyone Who Can Decode This Ancient Script | Smithsonian - The enigmatic Indus Valley civilization left behind a script that today's historians haven't yet deciphered. While amateur theories abound, scholars are increasingly relying on computer science to crack the code


How to: Use Signal - Signal is a free and open-source application for Android, iOS, and desktop that employs end-to-end encryption ![[zz-attachments/b6c7153398baebdb9a3e3f70bbea364d_MD5.jpg]]  to keep communications safe.


Attending a Protest - Protecting your electronic devices and digital assets ![[zz-attachments/b6c7153398baebdb9a3e3f70bbea364d_MD5.jpg]]  before, during, and after a protest is vital to keeping yourself and your information safe, as well as getting your message out.


Five extraordinary night-time experiences around the world - From fiery festivals to nature's most dazzling "sky-dance", interest in the night skies is booming, with "noctourism" poised to be a major travel trend in 2025.


Chatbot Software Begins to Face Fundamental Limitations | Quanta Magazine - Recent results show that large language models struggle with compositional tasks, suggesting a hard limit to their abilities.


AMC Theaters Stubs-A List Increases to Four Movies a Week - Film fanatics are getting a greater value for their money, too. They'll receive an additional weekly reservation, allowing them to see up to four movies instead of the current allotment of three per week.

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When he was tiny like this, my grandson was very attached to his Mom, so it was rare for him to voluntarily leave her like he did in this photo when his curiosity led him to walk with me across this field. He eventually got tired and simply sat down on the grass and had to be carried home.

Person and child, both in red shirts, walk across a dry, grassy field with trees and houses visible in the background.

Telling Stories

four

My Dad can be aggravating every so often. He's conservative and opinionated and not a little arrogant. He got religion about thirty years ago and that made it worse. Despite all of that, he is as entertaining as anyone I have ever known for one reason. He is a supremely skilled and captivating storyteller. Granted, most of the stories are about him, but he's lived an interesting life, and he weaves all sorts of different elements into his tales. Unlike many combat veterans, he loves to talk about his time at war. It's rarely about the ugly parts. Usually, he has funny stories about different men in his unit during his first tour in Vietnam or men he flew with during his second tour.

One of my favorite stories is the one about one of his young soldiers who Dad said was the happiest American in Vietnam. Dad was a second lieutenant in charge of a platoon on armored cavalry soldiers. He knew this private stateside, before they deployed because the kid had gone through training at Ft. Know while Dad was also stationed there. He's found the private crying one day outside the barracks and with his best fatherly attitude (he was 21 at the time), asked the kid "What's the matter son?"

"Sir," the young man answered, "My girlfriend, she's going to have a baby." My Dad assured him that he could arrange leave for him to go home and "make things right." "But sir, you don't understand. Her Mom."

Dad asked,"What about her Mom, son"

"Sir, she's pregnant too."

Dad said it took a few seconds for the situation to become clear. Yes, the answer is yes. This young draftee from Nowheresville, Oklahoma had gotten both his girlfriend and her mother in the family way at the same time and then left for the Army. So, yeah, when he ended up in the jungles of Vietnam fighting a way, he was relieved that he wasn't back home being murdered by two irate women.

Telling stories runs in the family, though. My grandfather never presented himself as a military man, although he had been on active duty before Pearl Harbor and didn't get discharged until 1946. His World War Two stories were mainly about geography and culture. The National Guard unit he joined during the depression had been activated and sent to Trinidad in the later 30s. He pronounced it Trinny-dad. There was, of course, no combat there, but he played a lot of baseball. He'd been all over the states and spent time in England before landing in mainland Europe where he proclaimed to he's gone all the way across France and Germany until he "hugged necks with the Russians at the Elbe River." Some of his stories were harrowing in their own way. His unit liberated a German POW camp holding Russian prisoners. Before running from the approaching US Army, the Nazis turned loose their Alsatian dogs on their prisoners in a final spurt of brutality. The Russians, rather than scrambling in fear, instead caught the dogs and promptly ate them. I heard that story many times and thinking about it today reinforces the "war is hell" ethos like no other I've ever heard personally.

Some of my stories also take an ironic turn like that. I was in the military during the Cold War, so I thankfully, I have no combat tales. My personal war stories are from working manhunts after prison escapes. The most surreal moment from that period was when I was sent to escort a bloodhound handler into a patch of woods, where minutes before three prisoners who'd managed to penetrate a fence fled under gunfire. Two of the prisoners were being held at the prison where I worked even though they hadn't been convicted yet. They'd escaped from jail and were being held at my unit because they were a security risk. Yeah, no shit. Since they were not yet convicted felons, the "shoot on sight" law that is supposed to keep criminals from climbing fences technically did not apply to them. Thus, my captain as he pushed me into the woods to look for then cautioned me to "Try not to shoot them." Read the whole story.

Those stories are memorable, but they aren't my favorites. I loved to listen to my grandmother's tales of cooking for her six brothers on a wood stove, trying in vain to quell their appetites after they'd spent the days plowing with mules. I also love to hear my mother recount her early hardscrabble life living in an old farmhouse without running water or adequate heat where sometimes the hot water bottle she took to bed with her would fall to the floor where she'd find it frozen in the morning when she crawled from under the quilts.

It's not just the older generation that can spin a story. My kids love to elaborate on the things they did to exasperate me when they were growing up. My oldest daughter, who I dearly love, has and has always had a slightly sharp tongue. She used it one too many times on a trip home from a friends' lake house one day back in the 90s and I turned around in the car to pop her on the leg as a warning, except I didn't. I tagged her brother, who, while not an angel, was an innocent bystander in this case. "Dad, you got me!" was his indignant response. I was doubly furious. When we finally got home, my daughter, sensing that she had pushed things too far, climbed over the other children in the back seat and took off running as fast as she could with me chasing her. Lucky for both of us, I didn't catch her. Not funny at the time but hilarious to hear then tell it now.

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A winter sunset over Badin Lake in the heart of the Uwharrie National Forest in central North Carolina.

Sunset sky casts a warm glow over calm waters, with silhouetted trees and driftwood framing the serene lake scene.

I Hate PDFs, Here Are Some Tips

PDF_Logo_Laptop

First off, just let me say I hate PDFs in the workplace because even in 2025, few people understand all the ins and outs of working with them. All they know is that the boss needs to buy them or IT needs to give them some expensive software, preferably top of the line Adobe software, so they can do what they want with a single damn document they got from some seminar.

If you occasionally work with documents saved as PDFs, you can probably avoid purchasing, or worse, subscribing to expensive services to create, join, split, annotate and convert files. The key word is occasionally. If your everyday workflow involves working with PDFs all day, you need to go ahead and invest in the tools you need.

Both Macs and PCs can create PDF files from just about any file you can print. Where folks run into trouble is when they get a PDF file created by someone else, and they want to edit it as if it were a Word document. It is not. When you look at a PDF, you are essentially looking at a picture of a document rather than an original. Still, depending on your pain point, there are free tools you can use to make some modifications to PDFs.

There are also free tools to do OCR (object character recognition) on PDF files so that you can search the text in them for keywords. Not every PDF has a searchable layer. It can be created if it doesn't exist, but it isn't always there by default.

One last bomb blast from your IT guy - do not come at me with some 1GB 800-page PDF full of tiny text and full color pictures and complain about anything because you are asking for trouble if you expect to work with files like that. You just are.

PDFgear - Free PDF Editor Software & Online tools

Annotate a PDF in Preview on Mac - Apple Support

How To Edit a PDF on Mac—Three Fast and Free Ways | Smallpdf

PDF online - FREE | Adobe Acrobat

PDF OCR - Recognize text - easily, online, free - PDF24

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