Downtown Denver stinks... literally and figuratively.

I travel to Denver for business multiple times a year. I just got back last night after a four day stay. I never really leave the downtown area as I am pretty boring on the road. I work, go back to my hotel and either read, work on some geeky side project, or watch an Astros game (thank you mlb.com and T-Mobile).

So I don't know Denver the city, just the downtown area in which I stay. I'm sure a lot people will tell me it's a lovely place and I'm sure there are parts that are, but man does downtown remind me so much of San Fran.

If it doesn't smell like piss everywhere you go, it smells like pot. I haven't seen a homeless person shitting in the street yet, but I have seen and smelt evidence of it happening. The homeless aren't as aggressive as I remember those in San Fran being, but they're getting that way.

I was on the 16th Street Mall shuttle one evening, heading to Union Station and the Whole Foods next to it. The missus wanted me to get some local honey for her folks. Cool, but what a trip. I'm pretty sure the dark liquid stains on the floor were someone's spilled coffee from earlier in the day, but I wasn't 100% sure as the bus smelt like piss.

I saw two young, relatively healthy looking white dudes at one stop. They both had the stupid dreadlocks tied up in a knot. They were filthy and I'm sure smelled like shit, but I was on the inside of the piss smelling bus and they were sitting on the street. They had a sign that said they were "Hungry, broke, and traveling." One was eating a big slice of pizza. The other looked pretty out of it. They had a dog and a decent sized bag of kibble. I felt no sympathy for them.

What really makes Denver stink (and most city "downtowns") is the business women. Two got on my bus. They were, like most "successful women" today, in their 30s, slightly overweight, and wearing too much makeup. Both appeared to be single. On top of it, these two wannabe Bathshebas were fully in the tank (they stank of beer) and whining about their male coworkers incessantly. Their language was crude and full of F-bombs. At first I was very embarrassed for them until I realized that no one else really noticed (or cared). They all had their faces in the phones, were lost somewhere in their earbuds, or were even more effed up than these two trollops.

Where have the Good, the Beautiful, and the True gone? It's not in Denver!

Update:

Well, Vox is right on time with this.

The Filthy Pigs of San Francisco

For those that don't know, gab is an alternative social media platform in the vein of Twitter. I guess you could call it a sort of micro-blogging platform (although I think that term is out of vogue nowadays). Their motto is "Speak Freely" and they really mean it. Unless you're posting stuff that is illegal (primarily according to US law I think -- e.g. child porn, etc.), there is no censorship by gab. This of course means there exists some extremely uncomfortable and controversial stuff there (for example: Jew hating, racism, all the flavors of NSFW content, etc.), but with the muting and blocking features afforded to every user, you can filter things to your liking fairly well. You can't do that in Twitter.

When it was revealed that Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, posted an only after the fact ominous message to gab, the media and their techno-leftist enablers pounced. They smeared gab (yet again) as an alt-right/Nazi home base of sorts and placed responsibility for the shooter's actions on gab. Setting aside the fact that pretty much every shooter, murderer, bomber, rapist, etc. in the last 6-10 years had a Twitter or Facebook account, all of gab's integral service providers -- almost in unison -- decided to drop gab as a customer. Not only was it nearly in unison (they were hours apart), but the amount of notice afforded gab made it effectively impossible for them to NOT go offline for an extended amount of time. They're offline now. Completely no platformed. They were Info Wars'd.

It's appalling what has been done to gab. It's unfair, but more importantly it's down right scary. The techno-leftist in their ivory towers of Silicon Valley have WAY too much power and are no longer afraid to brazenly exercise it. This is only going to get worse.

Here are some of the better takes on the whole situation from some of the alt-media types. Have a listen. Oh... and just because I link to someone doesn't mean I agree with everything they have ever said or will say. Damn NPCs.

Styxhexenhammer666

Timcast

Sargon of Akkad

Dave Cullen

Finally... here's @a (Andrew Torba - CEO of gab) nicely demonstrating the hypocrisy that exists with Twitter. It's amazing.

I ran across this piece today in The Guardian (blech). The author starts off by lamenting the fact that he and his family (wife and two kids) find themselves more often than not sat on the couch, each of them staring into their phones. He decides that this is bad and commits to figuring out how to fix it -- at least for himself. Instead of exerting some self-control, he decides to park his smartphone and sort of replaces it with the venerable Nokia 3310 (2017 re-release).

With his new Nokia in hand and its lack of modern distractions, he finds a whole new world where he discovers that he can concentrate on TV shows and books and EVEN HIS KIDS. Sad. This reminds me of a quote.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
-- George Carlin

And that's apparently what we have today... large numbers of zombies on their phones. And it's making them stupid. Of course, with today's culture of blamelessness, it's never the individual's fault. And these large numbers of stupid people are making this blameless view of things acceptable.

• It's not my fault I can't keep my room clean. I must have some disability.
• It's not my fault I can't keep a job. I must have ADHD.
• It's not my fault I'm fat. Damn you McDonald's and Starbucks' Fatty-Double-Chocolate-Triple-Sugary-Syrupy-Creamy-Frappucino-Sauage-Bacon-Bacon-Baconator
• It's not my fault I can't be an adult, show some spine, and control my smartphone usage (including my kid's usage as well).

Geez.

Today's over the top use of the phrase give back annoys me. It implies a certain world view typically related to those ideologies of the left. It assumes that the successful in this world somehow owe their success to the unsuccessful; that the wealthy owe the poor for their wealth; that the educated owe the ignorant for their knowledge; that the free in one society somehow owe the oppressed in another.

Disagreeing with this concept or even just questioning its validity or propriety can quickly bring down the wrath of the shrieking drone-class of the default left who often lack the intellectual depth to discuss the topic any further than the periphery. I prefer to use words like charity, generosity, donation, or even the more modern gifting.