Where opinions are ferocious and weird
“You are poor because you made bad choices” is a fairy story sold by people who don’t want you to look at their books.
It is massively to their advantage to convince people that being rich and being poor are a result of personal choice.
Remember that thing that parents did, when they caught us smoking, and said “you wanna smoke, then let’s go crazy!” and they made you smoke twenty or fifty cigarettes until you puked tar and realized it was a shitty idea?
Continue reading “The Cigarette Solution just might work!”
If you plan to dispose of or dismiss people, one of the marginally more clever tools is to start out calling them “heroes.” It makes the disposal super effective, because you can call it “sacrifice.”
Continue reading “Heroes be damned?”
I think it’s totally legit that if a leader threatens you if you investigate him, that you absolutely must investigate him.
If you want to follow someone worth a damn, find the person who is not only open, but encourages people to check their work.
Just a reminder — the only reason US citizens don’t have mutual equal access to the best medical care and education available on the planet is because someone is benefiting from having a large portion of citizens essentially stupid and disposable.
Continue reading “It’s Money-Related”
Just a little reminder to anyone who might have forgotten:
Unless you are talking about lowering yourself into a pit toilet, the phrase you’re probably hoping to use is “waist-high,” not “waste-high.”
Continue reading “Waste Not, Want Not”
I think it’s significant that so many people are bizarrely willing to support a “devil’s advocate” as if this is some sort of valid position and yet no such energy is offered to the good-side advocate. The “angel’s advocate,” if you will.
Continue reading “Bringing Balance to the Passive-Aggressive Force?”
Post-mortem predation for dogs won’t start for several days — they have to be pretty desperate.
Post-mortem predation for cats starts within the first 24 hours of death.
Continue reading “Kitty Bites”
I would not say that I believe in reading entrails to ascertain whether or not the future is bright. That said, however, I think the future could be made brighter depending on whose entrails are selected.
These statements do not contradict each other.
Our culture seemingly worships the heroic/crazy notion of “Well, it might NOT work, but if it does, wouldn’t that be great? Sure, the odds are long, but let’s roll the dice! Don’t tell me the odds, let’s just do it because it should be done, because it’s right and just and heroic — even if we fail, the work is good. We are a team and that means we help each other, we don’t leave a teammate behind, we act together, we play together, we drill together, we are a team. As long as we are a team, as long as we all look out for each other, then we will win. We might not win the cup, but we’ll win friendship. We might not win the prize, but we’ll win our own self-respect. So, damn the odds, damn the faceless authority, damn all those who mock and crap on us. We might be underdogs, but we know that what matters is that we found each other, that we are a team, that we are moving forward!“
Continue reading “But what if it does?!”
I am both a diver and a zombie movie fan, so when I try to remember “Nitrox,” and I instead keep remembering “Trioxin,” then that is a hilarious thing.
“Send more divers!”
Most of us fantasize about fighting in the Great Zombie War. We just make assumptions about which team we’d be on.
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.
Continue reading “Mysterious Unexplainable Clouds”
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.”
Continue reading “Painting the Door Hinge a Bright Shade of Orange”
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.
Continue reading “Three Basics for Multiple Partner Relationships”
The dismissal of gods is an act of profound humility and an acceptance of an astounding perspective.
Continue reading “Thou Art Dismissed”
Never trust a prophet.
Continue reading “Propheteering”
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.
(Also, the chicken craves attention.)
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.
Continue reading “Faith is an Indicator”
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.
Continue reading “A Battle Of Ancestors”
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.”
Continue reading “Not all Bootstraps are Equal”
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.
Continue reading “Homo Sapiens ELE”
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!”
Continue reading “Show me the Metric!”
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 own bills, you can make your own rules.”
Continue reading “I Think the Needle Needs to Point in the Opposite Direction.”
With Spider-Man, everyone knows “With great power comes great responsibility,” but maybe that’s good to start out, good for kids.
Continue reading “A Variation on a Theme”
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.
Continue reading “Read Responsibly”
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 and conclude “Oh gosh, I didn’t want to do that!”
Continue reading “Religious Discrimination”
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.
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