I thought the same thing when I was looking at the first volume! It was a really weird time to grow up in. I was about 12-14 when my friends introduced me to BBSes. We had a main one that was really small and you could only stay online for a short period of time every day for free, so we would try to catch each other there after school. I can’t remember how many concurrent users it supported, but maybe it was 8. There were a few bigger ones we would use too after our minutes ran out. The news paper had a BBS as well that supported a lot of people, but it didn’t have fun games or other kids to talk to, so that one was boring.

There were women that used the BBS regularly. I went on a blind date with a girl at a pizza place. Her friends were there too and it was about as uncomfortable as a blind date can be. I also became friends with a girl at my school from the BBS. We talked online and realized we had some classes together. I was surprised she was into such a nerdy hobby at the time because she was a cheerleader and a “cool kid.”

The craziest BBS memory for me is that, 10 years ago, someone at my work recognized me from a BBS. A lady stopped me when I was walking to the break room and said she knew me and my friends from back in the day. I didn’t remember her or all the details of the BBSes that she was talking about, but she threw out names of a lot of people. She was one of the older teenagers that hung out online. Some of those kids would have IRL meetups at pizza places and stuff. We didn’t really interact much online with the older kids, but we knew a little bit about them and they knew about us. You definitely wanted to talk to everyone and figure out who they were and if they were someone you could be get along with. New users were exciting.

I miss that old era. I remember the day that our main BBS had a connection to “The Internet”. I didn’t know what it meant at the time. But I think it basically connected you to IRC or something similar. You could join hundreds of chat rooms and talk to so many people. It was overwhelming. Up until then, I only talked to people in my city/area code. Sometime later my family signed up for an internet provider (never AOL thankfully). There was a period of overlap where I would log into the old BBS after using up my daily minutes on my family’s dial up internet plan.

Tildes sounds intriguing. I will check it out.

I love that you have old BBS magazines. What a weird wave of nostalgia that was.

Isn’t it weird that only the white people in The Simpsons are yellow? There’s other races that aren’t yellow. And the Simpson’s world mirrors the real word; a large number of yellow people migrated from Eastern Europe to settle in Springfield.

I guess it’s better than the Doug universe, with people being either Caucasian or blue or purple. Very weird choice of representation, Nickelodeon! 👀

In some countries Christmas is a national holiday. It’s simply the name of a holiday that affects everyone in my country (USandA). Because of that, it’s both a secular and religious holiday. So do what you want with that. Celebrate by worship, by spending money, by seeing family, or do nothing and enjoy the quietest day of the year (in my city, at least).

And not to mention that Christmas isn’t even a real holiday; the Christians just co-opted and modified all the solstice holidays of every culture they conquered. The only “reason for the season” is to indoctrinate. Merry Christmas!

8/10. I would definitely find a use for this stick on an adventure.

If you’re using Windows, Edge is an option. You already have the Microsoft telemetry watching you regardless of using Edge, so you might as well use it if you need chrome for testing or a specific website.