I guess I should start getting stuff out of my head rather than letting it
just spin around driving me crazy forever, and a gopher log seems like a
good place to do that since it's technically "out there" yet no one will
ever read this.

First:  Today is, or rather would have been, my dad's birthday, may he rest
in peace.

Second:  I like to call BBSs (other than this one), and I usually do that on
my Commodore 128 using a custom terminal emulator I made myself.  This means
I'm usually calling Commodore BBSs and, generally, I've enjoyed the 
conversations more on these "commie" (Commodore) boards more than the PC
boards.  But recently these boards are getting flooded with "Look at me, I
got a C64U and I'm on here!" messages.  I only have a limited amount of time
to call boards and I don't really want to read 90 of these when there's so
much more important things to talk about.  I'm hoping the excitment and 
novality of the C64U will settle down so that people can start using them to
talk about something other than the machine itself.

Third:  On the subject of "more important things to talk about" I am finding it
difficult to get into the usual topics on these boards: Computers, projects,
general geeky stuff because the whole world is basically falling apart, 
America is over, the ghestapo is murdering citizens in the street with 
"absolute immunity" and anyone who has the power to do anything about it ... 
well doesn't and just grandstands, uses harsh words, "ICE: Get the fuck out", 
etc... Maybe rather than trying to earn political brownie points on social 
media rather than ... oh, I don't know ... ordering your city, county, state 
law enforcement agencies to arrest armed, masked, gangs of murderers.  Sorry,
this is a run-on sentence and not well structured and if I wasn't using a 
line editor I'd probably take the time to fix it up but, you get the point.

Now, I know, there's going to be some out there that are drinking the coolaide
and think that these "good men (and women)" are just doing their job and are
under attack by the "radical left" but I have nothing to say to those of you.
I have nothing to prove to you, because you're so far gone it's hopeless to
try to bridge that reality gap.

I am not unaware (okay, double-negative, I *am* aware) that echo chambers 
exist on both sides of the political spectrum and I do my due dilligence to
fact-check and verify information and keep just opinion-based content intake
to a minimum.  For example, after the Renee Good shooting one video I saw was
going off listing all of the bad things ICE is currently doing and one 
incident was a man who was trying to mow a lawn being abducted.  Well this 
did happen but it didn't happen then.  People don't mow lawns in MN in 
the winter.  So, the timing of release of factual information, can be 
disingenuous (am I spelling that right)?

Same shit happens on the other side.  The "internal bleeding" of Johnathan 
Ross was a story from last summer.  Which, may have been true, I don't know,
but if you just read the headlines you assume (and who wouldn't) that it was
the result of being hit by Renee Good's car, which he wasn't.

So, here I am thinking ... we have a full on civil war in the works here.  I
don't want that, no one should want that but it does appear to be upon us.
A resistance needs to be coordinated, a revolution needs to be organized, 
and this isn't going to happen on TikTok, X, YouTube, Facebook, Blusky, or 
any other centralized, corporate run, social media platform.

All of the old protocols of the internet, the free and open modes of 
communication, still exist.  USENET still exists, IRC still exists, EMAIL 
still exists, BBSs still exists, GOPHER still exists.  Anyone can start their
own web site on a free hosting platform like neocities or could even just 
grab a crappy PC from a thrift store, plug it into their router, and install 
Apache and suddenly you have a web site, an online presence.

Of course all of these have roadblocks: easily tracked IP addresses, ISPs 
that might shut you down if the right powers-that-be told them to.  So there 
are other technical hurtles to overcome.  And then there's the invisibility 
issue.  On the "socials" you get eyes, both the ones you want and the ones you
don't, but you get eyes.  If you want to carve out a small chunk of the net 
where you're free to speak, free to try to gather with those yerning for 
freedom, well that's all well and good but who is going to know about it?  And
if you told anyone how do you know that some percent of them are not the very 
ones you're trying to resist?

*sigh*, I digress.  If for nothing else but just because I know no one will
ever see this, I'm shouting into an empty tunnel.  I just had to get stuff 
off of my chest.  I just feel like we need to do something more important and 
useful with our tech than just being "retro" or getting a hardon for the 
tech itself.  It's like ham radio operators that only use ham radio to talk 
to other ham radio operators about ham radio.  We are, mostly, BBSers using
BBSs to talk to other BBSers about BBSs.  We all already know everything we
need to know about BBSs, let's see if we can actually make a positive 
difference in the world with any of that knowhow.
.