J Marotta

Like, my dad would take the kids to a place like this when my mom worked nights and would sleep on the weekends. We’d often get 7-11 hot dogs after.

Also glad to know this wasn’t just some dream of an awesome place that never existed.

I have incredibly fuzzy memories of playgrounds like this! How many existed in Nassau County in the late 1980s?

(tl;dr: once you use a high speed national rail system, you get angry that we spend so much time driving and money on literally everything else)

Hey, I’m posting about this right the heck now!

In my more conspiratorial moments, tend to think romanticizing Route 66 is a ploy for all parts of the automotive industry and oil industry to sell more products.

Cars 1 and Cars 3 are propaganda films.

Eminent domain issues? Yeah, that’s one that’s hard. But we can pay above market value for this specific use, as a one time cost.

How do we pay for it all? Maybe start fewer pointless wars, cut police and ICE budgets (ICE to zero), and have the added bonus of less brutality? I dunno

Something something freedom of the open road?

Road trips are miserable and it’s high time we admit that.

Rail travel not being profitable is a concern but that’s why the government subsidizes (tho my preference is straight up nationalize). Also, it’s a public good.

Rail travel is inconvenient? Buddy, you can keep your F150 and take it to Costco when you feel like.

I think the arguments against national high speed rail are, charitably, somewhat ignorant.

The US population density being low is a real concern, but China has similar issues and seems to have resolved it (start by connecting higher population density areas).

Several years ago, we went from Oslo to Bergen and a number of points in between, with only trains and ferries. We saw some beautiful countryside, and the trip took maybe 8 hours. My kids old could play in the trains playscape while the wife and I had beer.

For real, though. When you go somewhere with reasonable public transportation, you get a little bit more angry at the need to drive everywhere, and deal with all the associated costs.

This is also the future leftists want.

This is the future leftists want.

Also the only actually-good vegan bakery I’ve ever been to is running a special.

And I have tickets to Stop Making Sense at AFS tonight!!

Everything is horrible, it’s true.

But my 11yo has an archery tournament today, and my 15yo is going to an air fryer party (which seems to be exactly what it sounds like).

I’m making shrimp stock and my hand is healed enough that I don’t quite need the bandages anymore.

That’d be fun to have as a work mug...

Whoa! Where’d you get that mug?!

I’m also looking for an excuse to use a gif from the Italian movie, Zombi 2, in which a zombie punches a shark in the nose!

I’m not posting politics today. Yall mostly know where I stand (equality and justice for all, no exceptions; nationalize a whole lot of industries; more public transportation).

Instead I’m putting it to skyline: I want to use a Coach Z gif at work, but which? “Good jaerb” is too obvious.

Friends, Romans, dudes: lend me your ears.

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess which was dads Sicilian side and which was moms “throw a dart at the British isles but Ireland most recently” side.

Peasant stock with middle class aspirations in other words.

A salesman of some sort (textiles or finished clothing?).

Owner of a couple of failed luncheonettes (including one on or near the former WTC site), then a bank vault guard at Chase Manhattan.

Still caffeinating so I read this as “butthead tree snake” and wondered what it ever did to you.

Not that I admire Andrew Tate, really. The guy is proudly ignorant and a symbol of all that’s wrong with modern masculinity.

I just wish I had a dash of the same level of confidence when warranted.

Frankly I’m a little jealous of someone who can say something as dumb as “I’m too smart for books; my brain works better with constant high energy stimulation” and not wonder why that is unusual. Not think “maybe there’s something wrong with me?”

Anyway, I’m in therapy partly to address the constant self-questioning and endless examination.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand the people who can just say stuff like this and not just endlessly re-examine it.

If it wasn’t for the sex trafficking, I’d swear that everything this guy says is an extended bit.

I’d say OP should say this to my friend Deanna, but