dear diary,
lotsa folks use chopsticks, especially when they got a hot bowl of rice in front of them
i knew of these strange utensils since childhood, but,
because of culture i never bothered and was never encouraged to attempt their use
that changed about twenty years ago
i made some friends in places i'd had not been to before and they thought it amusing that i could not and was reticent to learn how
it did not help that i was a total rookie at manipulating the sticks
after a short period of putting up with folks making fun of my shyness
i took it as a personal challenge to learn the use of these totally unfancy sticks
i watched preston as he casually picked up a single peanut outta a bowl full of stuff
i watched ms hakima accomplish the impossible with noodles
so i learned
and i learned
and i practiced many times because rice is a staple of mine anyhow
so tonight dear diary, i gotta tell you that i was impressed with me as i found that i am now able to snag so much on a single stab that it was difficult to fit it all into my huge mouth
and forget that technique of holding the bowl at an angle and just shoveling it in, i am too dang good at this
still
at the end of the bowl
when i'm picking at two/three grains at a time
i toss those sticks in the sink and fetch me a good ole american spoon
made in china
sold at walmart
dear diary,
there's this thingie called the internet
it's terrible for the young folks, because it exposes them to reality far too soon for their growing and impressionable minds
it's terrible for middle aged folks because who the heck isn't jealous of those giant mammaries or that red lamborghini?
but dear diary, it's terrible for old folks too
we've lived a very long time and done just about everything on the list
but the hankering to do it a just one more time is fuel for the idiocy being taught by the same folks who tinker with the internet and keep it incendiary
which is another word for, "flaming diary"
dear diary,
gonna chaos today
gonna chaos hard
dear diary,
it has become more frequent, and concerning
my sleep is fitful, i sometimes thrash so violently i must extract myself from the sheets that restrain me
i abhor the dreams i have
but then a night like last night occurs, and in my dreams i see written upon the walls where writings often appear, rhymes i have created that tell of joy and love and peace and flowers growing and lil puppies that don't pee in the living room of the shack
and then i awake and it's gone
i remember the poem, but not the words
i remember the puppy, but the dog doesn't exist
i am empty, both yin and yang
i do not want to sleep, dear diary
not if i must dream
dear diary,
trigger warning, this article discusses online predators
i highly recommend going to the substack link and reading this there
all i have included are small snippets from the same
https://themamattorney.substack.com/p/the-dutch-took-down-the-motherless
American Predators Keep Underestimating Europe
No, Motherless was not “just a porn site”
First, some foundational context. I’ve seen some rhetoric online that said motherless was “just a porn site.” No, it was not.
Motherless recorded nearly 82 million visitors in March. Its core audience was American.
The third most popular tag on the site this past week, after “teen” and “amateur,” was “incest.” Over 1,000 videos under that tag were viewed 60 million times. The single most viewed video the week before it went down was tagged “incest” and “rape,” alongside “school girl” and “sister.” That one video had 4.2 million views.
This is what was operating in plain sight, on a domain anyone could type into a browser, generating revenue, surfacing in search results.
It was not the dark web. It was the regular web.
The CNN investigation that finally triggered the takedown documented a wider ecosystem of associated Telegram groups distributing non-consensual videos and what survivors describe as drug-facilitated sexual assault content. Offlimits, the Dutch online abuse expertise bureau, received roughly 142 reports covering 12,000 videos on the platform this year alone. Twenty-five of those reports involved children.
This is documented criminal conduct.
Tolerance Is Not Permissiveness
Joshua Lange is the founder of motherless, inc., a NY corporation with original servers in Texas. He’s moved his entities and servers around the world, trying to find safe harbors and escape liability.
Then he decided to host his servers in the Netherlands.
The Dutch “tolerance” reputation is the real reason he went there. He was looking for permissiveness. He believed he was buying it.
He was buying something else entirely.
Americans have a picture of the Netherlands they got from rumors about Amsterdam. They picture coffee shops selling cannabis. They picture the red light district. They picture sex work that is legal and a drug culture that is open. They hear the word “tolerance” attached to all of it, and they assume tolerance means “anything goes.”
That is not what tolerance means in Dutch culture.