Stories matter

God, The Leftovers is so brilliant it’s an embarrassment to other TV shows.

And Carrie Coon…well, Damon Lindelhof said something great about her that is so apt. I’ll just quote it.

Carrie has to know that that’s a comedic reading, but Nora would not want to be laughed at in that instance — she’s so frustrated. And that’s what I think is really interesting, for someone who is so clearly in control of her own life, she keeps doing these crazy things — whether it be hiring a prostitute to shoot her in the chest or getting the Wu-Tang tattoo or locking all the doors in her house as if Kevin is going to try to get in a window. She does all these irrational, unreasonable things, yet she seems completely and totally sane and under control when she’s essentially behaving like a crazy person. I don’t know how Carrie does that. I think that if you were to ask most people, “Do you think that Nora Durst is crazy?” They would say, “What? No!” But I would like to read you from the list of 10 things that Nora Durst has done and ask you that question again.

Carrie is such a wonderful actor that she’s doing all these deranged things yet she brings you into her own world so skillfully that it all seems reasonable. But if you actually think about them for a moment they are all FUCKING INSANE.

Also, there has never been such a good show that deals with the issues of why the stories we tell matter, what they say about us, and what us listening to and believing in each other’s stories gives us, takes from us, and obligates us to be and to do — and to hope for.

Fabius

I read the Fabius Maximus site because it often has cleverly correct ideas and conceptions of the world intermixed with ludicrous, absurd or offensive ideas. Sometimes, I am not sure which is which — and that is exactly why I do continue to visit.

Like in this post.

The whole idea of “beta males” is an absurd oversimplification of something occurring to the social realm as society and its relations changes. I just skip over those parts.

However, these paragraphs are stunningly perspicacious.

For centuries every generation of the West has been a journey into the unknown, with social change the only constant. We have consistently stumbled our way to success, with the occasional failure like those of the communist and fascist nations. That those were intellectual experiments should worry us, since we too are making radical changes based only on ideology — abandoning our successful strategy of incremental changes.

The most common reaction in comments to this series is that “nothing much will change.” That’s delusional. We have had the current social system of romantic love and nuclear families for an eyeblink of time in humanity’s long history. It is no more natural than the many other systems our species has used.

Something that I’ve been concentrating on more lately is the persistent denial of the huge social alterations that have occurred in my lifetime and immediately before. Many people insist that nothing has changed or that if it has changed, it doesn’t matter, or that I’m just delusional.

I think because I’ve never been strongly connected even to my own society and culture that it is easier for me to perceive these shifts, and also because I’m never quite “in the moment.” Wherever I am, I am always elsewhere too. Watching and not immersed.

Regardless, the obliviousness to enormous social alterations is something I’m very interested in sociologically. That someone else has noticed that in a different context is heartening in a way.

Circle R

“Regulations” need better branding.

I propose we call them “protections” instead.

Instead of building regulations — building protections.

Instead of fire regulations — fire protections.

Environmental protections.

Safety protections. Traffic protections. Etc.

No, it won’t solve the world’s problems. But semantics matter. It influences people more than I think we want to believe.

Here’s to all the protections we enjoy so that some rich men can’t eke out a few percent more profit at the expense of all our lives.

Omnifarious

Ah, Omni.

I had a subscription to that magazine starting when I was nine years old. I begged my grandparents for it. After that, it became a Christmas gift.

That means I read it from 1985 until it closed its doors in 1995. Even as I started reading it, I knew that at least half of it was unalloyed hogwaysh and hooey, but what I loved about it is that it presented a future that I’d actually want to live in.

Well, this article said better than I can why I loved it.

By coupling science fiction and cutting-edge science news, the magazine created an atmosphere of possibility, where even the most outrageous ideas seemed to have basis in fact.

I learned how to lucid dream from Omni. I was exposed to ideas and ways of living that I never otherwise would’ve encountered in my very small, extremely conservative hometown. It more than any other single publication changed my sense of the world and of myself.

Omni was a huge part of my childhood, and a catalyst for learning to be a different person than everyone thought I should be, and wished that I were.

Platter

I am mutating

What’s weird is that up until my 30s I had a gap between my two front teeth. It wasn’t huge, but it was not small either.

Now I don’t. No gap, no cleft, no discontinuity. No dentist repaired it. It’s just not there any longer.

Also my jaw has gotten more prominent and changed shape, which I’m guessing is why my teeth moved.

Nope, not taking HGH or anything else. Never taken steroids, either.

I think I am mutating.

Where’s my superpowers?

Bound

The 2016 election in the US and the recent UK election both show one thing: that older people are bound and completely determined that the younger generations will be denied any of the benefits or advantages they themselves enjoyed.

Why? I don’t know. At this point, given that almost all of the initiatives championed by Corbyn and Sanders et al. would also benefit older people, it seems mainly like spite.

That says it

The magic money tree

People lately have been fond of saying about funding government programs that there is “no magic money tree.”

But the thing is, for a sovereign nation with a fiat currency…there kinda is.

Like all magic, it can go wrong — but we are so very far away from that in the UK and the US.

Or rather, it already has gone wrong, by way of the magic money tree’s bounties only being distributed to banks and to the rich.

See the graph in the post below for reference.