Before breakfast, I was glancing at the headlines from the Times newsbox in front of the diner, when the local homeless guy came out of the laundromat next door. He doesn't do laundry, so presumably he'd gone there for a little warmth. Winter has been teasing Seattle for a few weeks.

Oh, 'the' local homeless guy? The city has tens of thousands, but the neighborhood by the diner lacks the financial base to support two panhandlers. It's only the diner, the laundry, a few bodegas, and some subsidized housing nearby. And the newsbox, where I'd been standing, in front of the diner.

And one homeless guy. He's a skinny black man, wrinkled and wispy, who doesn't talk much. Doesn't even panhandle much. He just walks around, and sleeps on the sidewalk.

I eat at the diner two or three times a week, and I've seen him so often there, he's become my favorite bum. I like him because in all the many times I've seen him, he's never been a bother. Almost nobody I actually know can make that claim.

So he came out of the laundry, and slowly hobbled past me. He didn't ask, but I carry a five loose in my pocket in case I see him, and seeing him, it was his. He said thanks, which is more than he usually says to me.

A middle-aged white couple came out of the diner, and the bum didn't say anything to them, but as they walked past, the man said, "Get a job", and the woman laughed.

Idiots have been telling bums to get a job for as long as there've been bums and idiots. I said it, when I was young and dumb and mean.

You could almost understand someone high on 'freeloader' and 'bootstrap' bullshit from Republicans saying "Get a job" to some young stoner who at least he looks like he could work for a living.

But my favorite homeless guy is old, graying, frightfully skinny, and walks with a limp, slightly dragging one foot. You could knock him down with a nudge. What's the point of saying "Get a job" to someone who so obviously can't? It's like telling a man in a wheelchair to get up and walk.

The bum didn't say anything. Pretty sure he's heard "Get a job" once or twice before. For him it's a fart in a shit-storm.

The stupid couple got into their pick-up truck and roared away, because of course they're pick-up truck people.

Hmm. I've seen that couple at the diner before, and now I've seen their pick-up truck. Real nice truck, too. It would be a shame if anything happened to it, the next time I'm at the diner for breakfast.

You don't see many newsboxes any more. I still read newspapers on paper at the library, but it's been years since I bought one from a box. When they cost 25¢ or 50¢, I plunked coins into the slot, but a paper costs $2 now, and the boxes still only take quarters. Even among us old people who might think about buying a newspaper, who walks around with eight quarters in their pocket?

Fat guys should never go out on a limb, but here's my prediction:

Twitter will be flickering and intermittently dark within weeks, and not many, and maybe sooner. Coding so complex needs to be tended by people who understand it, and Twitter doesn't have many of those people left.

It's not going to totally vanish, of course. Eventually Elon Musk will sell Twitter at a huge loss, and someone more competent will try to revive it, but Twitter will never again be what it's been the past several years.

Mr Musk is making the world a better place.

And now, the news you need,
whether you know it or not

• Probe of Baltimore Archdiocese finds more than 600 clergy sexual abuse victims

This church-sanctioned and -sponsored perversion has been going on for so long — two thousand years and counting — there's no more plausible deniability. Anyone who attends a Catholic church is complicit.

• Climate confusion and complicity at the New York Times

FAIR takes the Times to task for that horrible op-ed where they let some numbnuts conservative 'solve' climate change.

• Eli Lilly feigns conscience after fake tweet damages stock price

• Whoops: Cable giant Cable One accidentally sends rival email saying their top priority is killing community-funded broadband

• Site of the Compton's Cafeteria Riot in the Tenderloin is now a historic landmark

There is already a plaque at the site commemorating the riot, which was placed there in 2006. In 2017, the neighborhood was named the Transgender Cultural District, and the year before, the 100 block of Taylor Street was renamed Compton's Cafeteria Way. But that was not the name that The Transgender District had originally proposed for the street.
"They wanted it to be Compton's Cafeteria Riot [Way]," Transgender district executive director Aria Sa'id told the Bay Area Reporter in 2020. "But the city did not want to have the word 'riot' in a street sign."

• Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito leaked 2014 anti-contraception ruling to evangelicals

• While crypto bro scammed clients, reporters scammed readers

• Is the world ready for mass migration due to climate change?

And it never stops, never stops...

• Walton Hills officer let drunk driver go minutes before crash that killed man and mother-of-5

And it never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops, never stops...

• Republicans are about to take their revenge on Joe Biden

And it never stops, never stops, never stops...
Links I liked

• Rosenhan experiment

• Fish fossils show first cooking may have been 600,000 years earlier than thought

• "Something unheard of, surpassing all belief, unless one should see it oneself"

• Pig-Pen

• Impossible color

Mystery links
"Like life itself, there's no
knowing where you're going"

• click

• click

• click

♫♬ Mix tape of my mind ♫

• "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" by Tears for Fears

• "Star Trek suite" by Jerry Goldsmith

The End

• John Aniston

• Jim Bohannon

• Carol Leigh

It's the first obituary I've linked for someone I'd met. Carol came to some of the Black Sheets literary functions, and we weren't pals or anything, she wouldn't have remembered me, but I knew her by face and didn't hate her. If I know you and don't hate you, you're a top quality person. Adios, a lifetime later.

11/20/2022
Tip 'o the hat to Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.
Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S, Wynn Bruce, and always Stephanie...