2) The phone numbers were in a little ad box in the newspaper one time.

3) Most people seemed to bounce around to each BBS but there were communities within each that also seemed to stick there. I expect that was partially due to relationships that people had with the sysops.

4) It was a small East Texas town, so people were generally friendly. We were just kids, like 12 years old, having political discussions with adults. People would also trade or offer up gear they had. I remember inviting a high school guy over to my (parent's) house to install a 28.8k modem for FREE because he had upgraded to 56k. He just gave it to me for nothing. As far as I knew people just treated each other like people. I don't recall ever knowing I was being excluded from something because of my age. For a while there were monthly meetups at a local pizza place.

5) I wasn't interested in programming back then. I remember a lot of talk of hardware, mostly modems, one guy trying to convince every Amiga was the future, file sharing/warez (I downloaded Duke Nukem 3D from a BBS in 5MB zip files), chess and other games over FidoNet.

Can someone tell me what the current thinking is on how we'll get over that gap?

But, it just seems to me that some of the 'vulnerabilities' are baked in from the beginning, e.g. control and data being in the same channel AFAIK isn't solvable. How is it possible to address that at all? Sure we can do input validation, sanitization, restrict access, etc. ,etc., and a host of other things but at the end of the day isn't it still non-zero chance that something is exploited and we're just playing whack-a-mole? Not to mention I doubt everyone will define things like "private data" and "untrusted" the same. uBlock tells me when a link is on one of it's lists but I still click go ahead anyways.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/insert-data-from-...

>I've let many of my most meaningful friendships fade.

At least you acknowledge that part and aren't bitter at your friends that it is somehow their fault.

>but it doesn't feel like when I was in college and hung out with a crew of 10+ people on a weekly basis

And it won't, ever again. They'll get married, move away, have kids, whatever. Just like if you played a sport in high school, or were in the band, that same group of people will never be together doing that same activity again after the last time.

>curated events and meaningful connections for men who don’t want their friendships to atrophy post-college

Except you acknowledge above your role in the "atrophying" and while you can say you didn't/don't want that to happen, you still allowed it to didn't you?

>The goal is to get people in the same place on a consistent basis.

Isn't that called the gym, the range, the golf course, softball/kickball/pickle ball team, bar, etc? I've struggled (still?) with exactly this thing as well and don't have any good advice. I will say it feels related to the notion of wanting to have a significant other but never leaving the house, you gotta put the effort in. On the bright side I read an article about a couple that missed neighborhood connections so started having coffee on their porch on Saturday mornings (or some consistent day of the week) and eventually neighbors walking by started saying hello, then stopping to chat, then bringing their own coffee, and then it became this whole neighborhood thing. So I guess I'm saying don't lose hope that you can't change things in your situation.

As you pointed out it's hard to determine why Bare other than it isn't Node.

1) Kitchen dish towels. The white with blue herringbone kind you see in restaurants or cooking content creators. I bought two dozen of them (~$1.65/each) and keep them all around the kitchen and use them with reckless abandon (some for drying, some for wiping spills, etc.). Having plenty of them means I can use one per day for general use and not run out by the time laundry day comes.

2) Deli containers. Picked up 48 in 8 oz, 16 oz, 32 oz sizes with airtight lids. Completely changed how I prep food and save leftovers. Almost entirely I've switched to using these over what hodgepodge of tupperware I have accumulated over the years.

Much of TX energy infrastructure is above ground poles running along the highways. I don't know what the lifespan is of those but I wouldn't be surprised if many of them could be classified as antiques. If they aren't being regular inspected/replaced, they are likely to go down

Also, the energy companies can sell electricity to other states, and I won't be easily convinced that during this event they stopped doing that (because profits). Lastly, see previous winter event and direct recorded quotes from energy companies about how much money they were making by increased prices and I think there are several reasons why this keeps happening in TX.