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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 9, 2024

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i went to highschool in the USA in the 90s: there were mutiple parties every weekend at various houses of kids whos parents were out of town, when the weather was good we'd sometimes have huge keg parties just out of town in a sort of nature area. something like the moon tower party in dazed and confused. not infrequently, people would get a hotel room to hang out in. pretty typical to go to multiple stops on a friday or saturday night.

even i, described once by a friend of my girlfriend as being a "cool nerd", knew multiple people who could get me weed, beer or liquor. friends of a friend would rarely show up with cocaine or acid, and i knew of older people using heroin but never saw any.

this type of partying was by far the main highschool social scene, i would guess 40% of kids were part of this including most of the athletes and popular types.

looking back, it seems like a major factor was parents constantly going out of town and leaving the kids in charge of nice single family homes, kind of surprising how much that was happening