The question is from Brandon - What advice would you give someone graduating from high school?

This question is a cross between what it says and what I'd like a chance to do if I were 18 all over again. It would be cool to have nearly 60 years of accumulated knowledge crammed into an 18-year old head. Let's go.

Yep, go to college

All the people out there making noise about how college isn't for everyone and that becoming a plumber or joining the army are good solid alternatives, you know the ones I'm talking about, those people are anti-education conservatives who went to college themselves and who plan on sending their children. They are trying to cover for the inability or unwillingness to make education affordable to the masses like the social democracies in Europe do—the countries that aren't sending half their tax revenues to defense contractors. People who go to college make more money, have longer life expectancies, and are happier than the people who don't go.

DO NOT JOIN THE MILITARY!!!

I am a vet and I do not hate the military, but it is not a job program, nor is it safe if you happen to be female. One out of three people who enlist do not finish their service with an honorable discharge. The usual pattern for that segment of enlistees is a general discharge for some sort of misconduct, health issues, weight issues, or incompatibility with military life. For those who don't complete their enlistment, all of the wonderful benefits described by their recruiters are no longer attainable, including the educational benefits.

Exercise and Eat Right Starting Now

Don't wait until you get out of shape to start exercising. Make going for a walk or run and going to the gym a habit starting right now. Just get used to the idea that you need 30 minutes to an hour each day to take care of your body. I'm not telling you that you can't eat pizza. I'm saying don't eat a whole pizza. Also, if you never worry about your alcohol consumption, then you are doing it right. If you do worry about it, that's a very good sign that drinking is not right for you. Weed probably isn't a better alternative. You need to get used to getting high on life.

Start Practicing Gratitude

Every day for the rest of your life, take a minute and write down three things you are grateful for. Your list doesn't have to be deep and philosophical. Did you find a good parking space today? Write that down! Did someone treat you nicely today? Write it down! Make it a habit to be continually on the lookout for things to be grateful for. It will do more for your outlook on life than anything else I can think of.

Vote Democrat

The Republican Party is a front for the top 1% of Americans on the wealth scale. They've discovered things that fire up white people and made that what they pretend to represent, but what they are really about is maintaining a system in this country where the richest people get richer and the rest of us fight over the scraps. I'm not saying that the Democrats are perfect because they are not, but they do not preach white supremacy, the subjugation of women, and the perpetuation of the war machine above all other government functions like the Republicans do.

Avoid Debt as Much as Possible

Go to a state-supported school, preferably one that has reduced tuition. Start a habit of saving money from your very first paycheck. When you want something, start saving for it instead of borrowing money. There is a huge difference between what you need and what you want. Internalize that fact and let it guide your spending habits. You may want a fancy car, but what you need is reliable transportation. You may want a big screen TV in your dorm room, but all you need is the laptop you use for school.

Miscellaneous Advice

• Use protection. Kids are great and I love mine, but unplanned pregnancies change your life.

• Wear sunscreen. Kurt Vonnegut was smart AF and he said that so I am going with it.

• Stay close to your family. If you've made it this far without too much trauma, that's awesome. Family is the best mutual aid society ever developed.
  
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My Internet friend, R. Scott Jones, asked - What's one place you've traveled to (or perhaps an entire trip) that changed you? Tell us how you changed because of it, and why you think it inspired that change.

I've lived for all but a very short period of my adult life in the same southern military town where I went to high school. Most of my vacations have been to the beaches or mountains of the same state I live in. My military service took me to places like Texas and California, but never out of the United States. Then, over a period of three years during the beginning stages of the US war in Iraq, I became a traveling fool. My activism against that war took me to college campuses and demonstrations all over the US and Europe.

The way that happened was a matter of luck, politics, and maybe a tad bit of exploitation. I learned a lot about group dynamics, organizing, and the far left as it exists in the United States. I was a member of a tiny little community group in Fayetteville, NC, protesting the death penalty and other social justice issues. Then 9/11 happened, and George Bush and Co. decided to attack Iraq because 19 Saudi Arabians attacked the US. My son was in basic training in the Navy on 9/11 and was on the way to report to the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower after completing Navy Nuclear Training when the first bombs fell on Baghdad. He was home on leave and went to a demonstration against the war and held a sign that said "No Blood for Oil." He was interviewed by an AP reporter. When he reported to the ship, he was brought up on charges and convicted. It was bullshit because even members of the military have free speech when they are off duty, out of uniform, and not purporting to represent the government. Thousands of GIs did it during the Vietnam War.

I was pissed about the way he was treated and told the story at a small gathering of activists I attended. In attendance was an instructor from the University of NC-Greensboro who was a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO). He led the student group there and had ties with the national headquarters in Chicago. He approached me and asked if I would mind coming to his school to speak, and I agreed. I didn't know that I was being auditioned. When I spoke at the school, members of the national cadre were there, and they liked what I had to say and how I said it. Before I knew it, speaking invitations started pouring in. I was eager to represent Military Families Speak Out, a national organization I was trying to organize for, so I went to every place I was invited.

They asked me if I wanted to go to Paris to speak at the World Socialism Conference on an anti-war panel, and I agreed. I didn't even have a passport and had to hustle to get one. I was there for nine days. My roommate was a man named Shuja Graham, a former Black Panther given the death penalty for the death of a correctional officer in a prison riot, later exonerated, as he was not actually involved in the murder. I'm a former prison guard myself, but Shuja and I got along just fine. I met leftists from all over the world and started to see some of the nitpicking differences for which that strain of politics is known.

I didn't do much classic tourism, other than visiting Notre Dame and the Seine one afternoon. I spent much time talking politics and drinking. I went to a demonstration organized by the French League of Communist Revolutionaries and bought a Palestinian scarf from the Italian Communist Party, whom I later learned were Stalinists. My hosts, the ISO, were Trots, disciples of Leon Trotsky, an early Communist thought leader assassinated on Stalin's orders. Most of my far-left-leaning political friends back home belonged to an organization associated with Maoism.

When I returned home, I continued to speak out and travel, eventually going to Italy and Great Britain on ISO-sponsored trips. As the anti-war movement grew, some activists got lots of press, like Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq who gained fame for camping out in a ditch outside of Bush's Texas ranch. Another became known for appearing in Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 911. GI resistors started getting attention and invitations to speak. People organizing against the war competed to see which well-known person they could get to come to their demos. Factions developed. It was distasteful. The ISO cadre, whom I had come to look upon as my friends, suddenly wanted to dictate to me where I could and could not speak, depending on the politics of the organizers. I was outraged because I was on one team, Team Stop the War. That was my goal. I wasn't trying to grow anyone's membership or advance some nuanced understanding of far-left politics. I just wanted for kids like my son to quit being sent to die in Iraq.

Although I remained very much against US policy, I made the abrupt decision to quit traveling and speaking after making one last trip to Atlanta for an event that had nothing to do with any political group. Thereafter, I attended meetings of the same hometown organization I started with and went to our tiny demos happily. My adventures on the national and international stage were enlightening, and I got to meet a lot of military families and hopefully discourage a few young people from joining up. My adventures with the ISO, of which I must stress, I was never a member, were enlightening, if for nothing else, to see a small slice of American culture that most people never experience.

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The November Ask Me Anything blogging challenge is going well. Today's question is once again from @annie@social.lol on Mastodon. She wants to know, "What's an important lesson you've learned about relationships?" As a happily married guy, albeit in marriage number four, I feel fully qualified to share my expertise on this one. Anyway, relationships also include friends, work, and more.

High School Sweethearts

I got married the first time to my high school sweetheart. I was 18, she was 17. We already had a baby and had another one pretty quickly to boot. Today, all four of us are doing OK. Getting an early start on children made me a young grandparent able to do plenty of stuff with my huge collection (13) of descendants. Although the marriage didn't last long (three years), it did not ruin my life in any appreciable way.

Don't Marry Someone You Meet in Rehab

I don't really need to explain this one, do I? Also, ten-year age gaps create certain realities, many of them not positive. 1/10 Would not recommend!

Even Good Relationships Can Wither

I think it's fine, healthy even, to have interests and hobbies different than those of your partner, but interests and hobbies need to take second place in a marriage. The most important thing in a marriage is the other person in it. Taking them for granted or assuming that all the hard work is in the past is unwise. That's all I have to say about that.

Good Relationships Have Requirements

It is quite possible to be true to yourself and also put your partner's needs at the top of your list. My relationship with Wonder Woman works because I have respect for her needs. I know what things are important to her, and I accept that without argument. She does the same for me. She kind of had to train me, and I had to allow myself to be trained. I don't think either one of us has extravagant demands. We have evolved into a couple that spends most of our time together. Most of what we do, we do together. I don't go running with her, but I do go to most of her races. When we are at home, we spend most of the time in the same room, often within an arm's reach of each other. We always kiss goodbye, including before work, at lunch, and before sleeping.

Work is Hit or Miss

In the job I retired from, I made several friends that outlasted my employment. A couple of them have lasted more than 20 years. We've done things socially, been to each other's houses. I've watched them get married and have kids just as they've watched my family grow. I believe in being friendly with the people I work with and finding out about their lives. I had the same boss for many, many years, and the guy was so disinterested in everyone who worked for him. He didn't know anything personal about his employees, and I just marveled at his indifference. Most work relationships don't evolve into friendships, but I think it's important to humanize my co-workers and not see them as cogs in a machine.

Organizations

I'm an outspoken and energetic person. When I'm in a group of people with a common purpose and something needs to be done, I don't mind voicing my opinion about the direction we take, nor do I mind stepping up to do the work. I don't know how to be any other way. The upside to this is lots of people appreciate you. The downside is a lot of people resent you. I don't like being resented, but what I like even less is a group of people staring at each other, waiting for someone else to make the first move.

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In the continuation of the Ask Me Anything series, today I am tackling a question from Annie, first answered by Keenan, Estebanxto and Kerri Ann - if you could instantly change one internal pattern/thing about yourself, what would it be?

This is an easy one. I would turn myself into a natural people person on the spot. I'd love to live in a world where relationships were easy for me. I can come across as personable and friendly, and there is a large part of me that truly is that way, but it takes so much effort. I make the effort because I enjoy the rewards and reactions I get from being that person, but my god, it takes so much energy and concentration. Left to my own devices and true nature, I'd silently do my own thing, content to be left alone most of the time.

For a long time in my life, I acted very taciturn, rarely showing much emotion other than irritation. I was pretty gruff. It was all to keep people at a distance because I was so clueless about how to deal with them. I grew up moving once or twice a year, and my first 14 years on planet earth were spent always being the new kid. I didn't know what it felt like to be settled or to have long-term relationships. As an immature new kid, I felt like I always had something to prove, and if it backfired, my natural inclination was to angrily withdraw.

In early adulthood, I dealt with substance abuse and mental health issues, both of which I sought treatment for, and after a myriad of struggles, finally got on top of. When I finally entered long-term sobriety, I realized that I absolutely needed people in order to be healthy, and that's when I decided to drop the gruff, grouchy, grumpy nature that I had always used. I was 43 years old. At work, I adopted the attitude that I would have were I self-employed instead of a civil servant. I really concentrated on being friendly and approachable and started thinking about how other people felt. I was at that job for 20 years, and I'm still friends with people from there. All of them will tell you that I had a mid-career personality change.

In my personal life, I decided to start sharing the things I loved, which at the time were 12-Step meetings and riding my bike. I'd spent the last decade heavily involved in activism, always struggling against the things that made me mad at the world. Bush's wars, Conservative attempts to punish LGBT people, criminal justice inequality and more were things I organized against, but it had taken its toll on me. I stepped away from that and directed my energy into being the guy who was just grateful to be sober another day. When I realized I had a talent for endurance cycling, I became an evangelist about it to people who were interested, constantly talking people into attempting challenging bike rides of greater and greater distances. I met Wonder Woman at one of those rides.

I finally learned how to make small talk. I adopted the role of a nurturer and started trying to make people comfortable, whether it was on a bike ride or at work when I went to help teachers and administrators with various computer problems. It was about this time that my grandchildren started entering the world, and I found that to soften me up a bit as well. I remember explicitly training myself to smile more.

Today my problem is maintaining that friendly persona. It takes a lot of energy and sometimes I run out. "What's the matter Lou? Why are you so quiet?" is something I hear with regularity. There's nothing actually wrong. I just need some time to recharge my batteries and be still. By design, our home is a quiet place. It's relaxing. I have become an extrovert with introverted tendencies.

When I look at people I know who seem to be always on their game, friendly and helpful by nature, I marvel at how they do it. I wonder if it even takes any effort on their part. I have a coworker who can talk to anyone and keep a calm demeanor throughout it all. He rarely complains and is always there to help when asked. Someone recently said that the two of us were alike, and I took it as a great compliment. Maybe I'm getting better at maintaining a friendly outside when my inside isn't feeling it. I hope so. It sure took long enough!

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Question: Why do you have the politics you have today?

In real life, outside of my family and a couple of close friends, I rarely talk politics unless someone says something real backwards around me, in which case I speak up. I consider any endorsement of what passes for Republican policy to be backwards, so I'm not going to let anyone subject me to it. I don't go around preaching to anyone and all I want is the same treatment.

That's the root of my politics right there. It's the golden rule. I want to live in a society where people treat other people the way they want to be treated. Republicans want a two tiered system where there is a definite advantage given to white, native born people. They want to explain away the disparity in educational achievement and the rates of incarceration by acting like minorities are stupid criminals instead of using our joint national resources to bring about a better system. If I were poor (again) I'd want to be treated with compassion, not scorn.

Conservatives want a government that puts more money in their pocket and screw everybody who isn't like them. I want a government that provides for the common good. don't believe in a government that foster's an elite class who get to skip paying taxes on their yachts and jets. I think that the effective tax rate for people who live off accumulated generational wealth should be at least as much as the people who clean their houses.

In order to have the kind of country I want, the insane amount of money that gets funneled to defense corporations has to be drastically reduced. Our government has a vested interest in keeping people scared of terrorists, the Chinese, the Russians, Mexican drug lords. None of the money spent towards combatting that lengthens lives the way it would if it were spent on cancer research and improved medical care for everyone.

I want to live in a country with educated people because I believe education to be important. I worked in schools for decades and I know how dedicated teachers are. Republicans have fostered a narrative that schools are failing and it isn't true. They use any excuse to avoid spending money on education, preferring to give tax cuts to those who already have the most money. They want to give money to private schools that allow non-certified teachers to tell children that men and dinosaurs walked the earth together.

I believe in science. Only a fool would look at the rapidly changing climate and think the best thing to do is drill more oil wells, but that is the policy Republicans want. I want to drink clean water and breath clean air and I don't want to be told how spending the money for those basic life giving necessities sin't good for the balance sheet of some billionaire.

So there you have it. Those are my reasons. I don't think the Democratic party has the solution to all those problems, but they are a hell of a lot closer than the alternative. The two party system is terrible. There is too much money in politics. I hope we incrementally change the system to something that better serves more people, especially those that need it most.

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When Wonder Woman decides she doesn't need something anymore it gets tossed into recycling, or it gets donated. When I decide I don't need something right now, I place it aside because you never know, I might need it later. Therein lies a slight problem. She looks at my stuff with a rapacious gleam in my eye, and from time to time I get a wee bit offended and protective of my stack of eight different sizes of jeans.

One place I can hoard to my heart's content is on my computer. I have stacks of external hard drives full of, well, stuff - movies, music, 25-year-old website archives, multiple backups of photos. I also have accounts in iCloud, Google Drive, One Drive, Box and Dropbox with files on all of them. I have files I created in Microsoft Works, a program that was discontinued 15 years ago.

When it comes to music, of course I have a subscription to one of those all-you-can-eat services, where I can listen to almost everything but the ripped CDs I bought at coffee houses and bars in the far distant past, but I worked hard to download all that music from Napster and I just don't want to let go of it.

I've carried a smartphone around in my pocket since shortly after the iPhone was released. At work, I have always snapped pictures of bar code stickers we used to identify computers, the admin panel on printers, lights on switches and routers and all kinds of serial numbers. I have a career's worth of those photos that I only occasionally cull.

The 2009 iMac I used as a Plex server to watch movies hasn't been plugged in for four years, yet it and all the movies I ripped back in the days when Netflix sent you DVDs in the mail are still located in our family room. When I hear one of my friends talking about their movie streaming setups, I have to stifle the urge to bring them a hard drive to fill up for me. We subscribe to EVERY channel and don't have time to watch what we are already paying for, and here I am thinking of ways to get more.

I went through a collection of articles I'd saved today "to read later". It went back several years, and you could see my learning and interests patterns through different periods. I had dozens of saved YouTube videos on deadlifting and squatting from my power lifting days. There were tons of articles on stupid shit Trump did from 2105-2020 when I was building up my encyclopedic knowledge of his many faults. I had to trash a bunch of NYT and WaPo articles because I'm mad at them and canceled my subscriptions. I had automatically saved the entire blogging content of two of my favorite writers, Matt Birchler and Jarrod Blundy over the course of 2024 and had to eliminate all but the reference material from those prodigious writers.

Of course, I have every tech guy's obligatory box of various cables and connectors. You just never know when you might need a 30-pin iPod cable or s-video adapter. FireWire might even stage a comeback. Stranger things have happened. I think there's even a Windows 7 laptop, sans power cord, around here somewhere that hasn't been booted up in 12 years. We have an extra iPad that I keep trying to think of a use for, and I am still holding on to my last Apple Watch, thinking I might make it my nighttime sleep recorder. I've been thinking about that for quite a while.

Anyway, when Wonder Woman reads this, it may be my last blog post, so if y'all don't hear from me, you'll know she beat me to death for not getting rid of some of my very valuable personal possessions!

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Here are three cool things I've learned about recently.

1. Create a cumulative clipboard with Popclip

Popclip is an app that does all sorts of things with text you select, from sending it to different apps, to formatting it, looking it up on Google, adding it to your calendar. One trick I learned it can do is to create a list from things you copy to your clipboard, so that you can copy 10 different things and then paste them all at once.

2. Access Menu Bar Commands from Anywhere with Better Touch Tool

Better Touch Toolis an app that lets you create an infinite amount of shortcuts and automations with your keyboard, mouse and trackpad. One of the things I set it up to do is add the menu bar commands to where ever my cursor is located when I type the ⌘ twice. I don't have to remember any shortcuts other than that one to use all the available commands in any program

3. Use Raycast to Auto-Quit Apps

Raycast is a free keyboard driven app launcher similar to Spotlight, except it has superpowers and can replace all kinds of other programs on your computer, like your clipboard manager, your emoji picker and your window manager. One cool feature you can use on a case by case basis is to have it quit programs you aren't using automatically. Macs do a good job with memory management, but after a while your interface gets cluttered if you leave everything open. Just set Raycast to certain quit apps if they go 10 minutes without being used.

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