All these “ideas” about how to keep bullets out of kids and other people who have not consented to having bullets put into them are starting to sound a lot like how to keep unwanted dicks out of people -- treating both bullets and dicks as a kind of uncontrollable natural force. Like a rogue wav...
Sometimes there is extraordinary beauty in even the meanest of things.
It does not make the beauty less for its birth, nor the horrors better for their act of genesis.
It reminds us the Universe is more complex than we expected.
“Atheists can’t be trusted to operate morally,” basically means “If I weren’t being threatened by eternal damnation I’d be a complete bag of dicks, and I can’t imagine anyone else doing better than me at self-control, either.”
When we agree on the same religion, we are agreeing simply to paint our...
I have come to the notion that there's a lot to be said for gratitude and for apologies and for kindness when it comes to multiple partner relationships.
If it helps any, awesome. If it doesn't, also awesome.
Gratitude
I think it's important to express it where it is sincere. Some folks apprec...
The dismissal of gods is an act of profound humility and an acceptance of an astounding perspective.
To a mind conditioned to needing a superior being, dismissing gods is simply an act of arrogance, because to such a mind, there must be a superior and the dismissal leaves a power vacuum that onl...
Never trust a prophet.
A prophet's job is to convince you that you are worse off than you really are, and to use that feeling to convince you to act in such a way that it benefits them.
So never trust a rich prophet, especially. They are even more scoundrels than your run-of-the-mill prophet....
Talking with some folks is like playing tic-tac-toe against a chicken at the county fair. The chicken only knows a couple simple rules, but keeps beating you because you don't understand that the point of the game isn't to beat the chicken...
...but to keep you playing at a quarter a pop.
In a world where a claim to "faith" protects one from scrutiny or accountability, those who claim to faith must be considered likely to want to avoid scrutiny or accountability.
To believe in a supreme creator requires no outward change in appearance or manner. To make noise that one believes in...
The biggest advantage to private bathrooms is that no one tries to tell you “You don’t belong here” because private bathrooms are for the person occupying them. This notion that bathrooms must be sex-segregated seems a bit silly and old-fashioned anyway.
In the future, people will shake their head...
Americans pride themselves on being able to "lift yourself up by your own bootstraps," and to succeed based on "your own efforts, will, wits, and determination."
But this is a phantom. An illusion. A fairy tale.
Consider inheritance.
The fact that inheritance is a legal "of course," based on n...
Vaccination ruined the child coffin business. Just ruined it.
Won’t people think of the child coffin business before they decide to vaccinate their children?
I’ve been fascinated the past couple years casually studying Extinction Level Events.
At a gross level, these are events triggering, or short periods of time describing situations where there have been rapid die-offs in the history of the planet.
This planet has experienced quite a few mass ex...
I don’t think “what’s your metric?” qualifies as a threatening question when someone says “things are way better now!” or “things are way worse now!”
I think it makes for a much more interesting conversation.
For example, I know people who think “gas prices” are a metric for whether it’s b...
Adults tell children “No, you can’t do that. Stop that. Put that down. Don’t put that in your mouth. Only one cookie. No ice cream after eight. No watching five episodes of Battlestar Galactica in a row” and when kids object, adults tell them “When you live in your own house and pay your o...
With Spider-Man, everyone knows "With great power comes great responsibility," but maybe that's good to start out, good for kids.
What I would like to see is something more along the lines of "With great power comes great need for transparency and clarity of understanding of expectations, represen...
Once while reading a book on the way to work, I almost walked into a telephone pole. I don’t know if it was actually a telephone pole, but that’s what we tend to call them.
I say almost because, as some sort of luck would have it, I was stopped just prior.
I was stopped just prior by one of th...
Telling someone “Just because you can’t do things to other people in the name of your religion doesn’t mean that you are experiencing religious discrimination” rarely is the “QED” of the argument because it presupposes that practitioners of said religion will stop what they’re doing an...
In a society where claiming one is an atheist results in one not being considered “trustworthy,” one cannot depend on claims of religious affiliation to indicate “trustworthiness.”
The most successful viruses out there succeed by pretending to be valuable to the cells they invade.
Sometimes I try to solve my problems as if they are a supply chain issue -- with many elements contributing to the success condition, and many elements contributing to the failure condition. It's not a magic bullet, but it reminds me that any selling one-stop solutions is probably selling snake oil....
I suspect the most outrageous liars are the ones who ostentatiously declare how willing they are to be "under oath." It's like watching a child declare "Check -- I'm not crossing my fingers!"
I recall hearing this aphorism as a child and it has always stuck with me: "The Lord loves to make liars o...
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