Funny that before I completely minimized my Southern accent, people from other areas would sometimes ask me why I talked like a black person.

I used to speak like a rural North Floridian. Still do when I am angry or very tired. While the BEV dialect does exist in rural North Florida, more so than in most places it overlaps heavily (and vice versa) with how white Southerners speak due to the cultures blending and co-existing for so long.

North Florida has a very distinct accent, even as Southern accents go. Sometimes I can’t identify other regional or foreign accents very well, but I can always tell a fellow North Floridian in a few words.

(In fact it is so specific that a woman from Valdosta, Georgia, which is just 40 or 50 miles up the road was able to tell that I was from Lake City, Florida, just by my accent.)

I don’t feel that speaking with a Southern accent (or not) gives me any more authenticity one way or the other. “Real Americans” is a pernicious and terrible concept.

I learned standard American English to avoid people thinking I was stupid; I use the rural North Florida accent when I want people to underestimate me.

Both are how I “really” talk and both are authentic and valid parts of who I am.

I would be perfectly happy if every show and every movie I ever watch existed in a parallel world where women and LGBT people had already achieved radical equality.

I’d much rather have that in real life, of course. But failing that, if it existed in entertainment only at least it could lead the way like Uhura on Star Trek and provide some better entertainment.

I just can’t watch shows (especially) any more where women are just orbitals of the main characters, the “real” characters. Mad Men, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad – those are completely out for me. I just cannot do it. My mind recoils. Even if they are “historically accurate,” whatever that means.

When I find a show like Lost Girl where two women spend longer than a minute talking to each other – it’s like my brain does a happy dance. Even if at times the writing is forced, the dialogue is stilted – but it’s two interesting women! Doing things! And not just orbiting some (as is the case) usually-incredibly-boring guy.

Not that I think every show has to have a female protagonist. And not that I think every guy is boring. No. But in the main, shows like Breaking Bad et. al have been done oh-so-many times before. Come on, do something original. Lost Girl is at the least original.

And when the succubus Bo kills the creepy-but-realistic rapist near the beginning of the first episode– what a great scene. It was wish fulfillment, in the best of the ways. Not that I think all rapists deserve death. But if I saw something like that happening, I’d leave the guy in a pool of his own blood and certainly not care if he lived or died overly much – so I understand. (And not to get kudos from the woman I “saved,” because it is the right thing to do. In fact, I’d prefer that she never know who I am if something like that happened.)

All that said, shows like Breaking Bad were on TV during the 1950s. We can do better now.

I would no more ride a bicycle on an American road than I would strap a dead chicken to my chest and go swimming in the Everglades.

I’m a very alert and observant driver, but it’s difficult to watch for cyclists – the roads are just not designed for them, and often they violate every traffic law in the book making it even more difficult not to run them over by accident.

Bike lanes actually make things worse in most cities. There is no good solution that wouldn’t cost a trillion dollars at this point.

Economics for the most part is more scientific than it was a decade ago, which is to say that it’s now about as scientific as reading a pack of tarot cards rather than haruspicy.

I used to think economics had physics envy, but I think that is just an excuse for obfuscation. Obfuscation was the goal, not the result – obfuscation to conceal the fact that it was a proto-science fully captured by neo-liberalism.

Renault ships a brickable car with battery DRM that you’re not allowed to own.

A few years ago, a friend told me how absurd I was being for contending that DRM would inevitably limit physical products and their uses.

Well, it was inevitable and now it’s happening more and more. If a corporation can do something, it will. It’s as simple as that, really.