Gimbrone [none/use name]
In storage I have a real Mao suit. I was in China and asked one of the girls where I could find one. The next time I saw her, to my surprise, she had two of them. In an even bigger surprise, one of them actually fit me.
They were 100% authentic, she said they were her grandfather’s and he didn’t wear them any more. There were no tags or care markings on them.
I have to dig it out next time I’m at my Mom’s house.
People would literally dox their name and address in these massive yellow pages.
White pages. The yellow pages were for business listings. It’s how you’d find a plumber, or a furniture store. Blue pages (a thin strip in the middle of the phone book) were government listings.
And it wasn’t “doxing yourself”. Everyone was there. It was a proud sign of adulthood when you got your own listing in the phone book.
If someone had moved to a new city, all you had to do was go there and look them up in that city’s phone book. Presto, reconnected with your lost friend.
Never heard of 28 gauge.
12 gauge is standard, 20 is for kids or people who don’t like recoil, 10 gauge is for hunting elephants or some shit. 410, for shooting snakes in the top of the head maybe? I’ve only ever seen one in the wild.
The name for this is “busman’s holiday”.
I quit playing flight sims in the early 2000s when I read an account written by someone who was in Canada’s Air National Guard. They were playing on a recreational server and wiping the floor with everyone. Because, obviously, they’re professional fighter pilots. Imagine playing poker with Doyle Brunson or basketball with Kobe Bryant to consider how fair that is.
It’s pretty obvious that old-fashioned text forums are going away. They are already full of bots, and AI is going to make them completely worthless. The only way to interact will be with verified other humans, which means the end of anonymity and a Chinese-style internet with real name verification required to post anything. This also means stray outside the guardrails they set, you are permanently banned for life because your real identity is connected to your posts. No alts, no ban evasion, nothing. Facebook already requires real names, and the last time I tried to use Paypal, a service I had an account with since 2000, it blocked me and stated, “upload a picture of you holding your ID”. Well, that was the end of my Paypal account. Youtube is next, and Google close behind, since a Youtube account is pretty much a Google account.