Ah, someone else from my benighted past!
A burglar? Never saw him as a burglar. Maybe a rapist, as he was très creepy, but not a burglar.
This guy was a terrible, terrible bully. I beat the absolute crap out of him on the playground one day after he pushed me a little too far. I made him eat dirt. Another day in the principal’s office – nothing unusual there.
Ah, the memories.
And another! Wow. The last time I saw this dude, he was like five years old.
I grew up in a classy place, yes?
One area where I partially side with some of conservatism is that I don’t believe in the “feel good” mantras parroted by people like this.
“Sure, just eat whatever you want, it’ll be ok.”
Fuck. That. Noise.
That’s how I hit 200 pounds as a 5’ 8” guy with a small frame.
Even then if I hadn’t already been exercising some restraint, I would’ve been more like 300 pounds.
So, yeah, eat whatever you like and spend the last 20 years of your life with diabetes-caused necrosis as your feet rot off in a hospital.
Sounds like a good fucking plan.
Tell you what: you do that, and I’ll do the other thing.
All coffee tastes exactly the same to me – like something no human should ever drink.
Paying $7 for a cup of it seems like a Bernie Madoff-level rip-off.
I can’t tell the difference between a cup of instant coffee brewed with musk ox vomit and the most expensive, most artisanal yuppie cup.
All taste exactly the same to me: like foul poison.
The last three times someone has talked to me in public, a woman I did not know initiated a conversation with me.
While it is fine, and I don’t mind, if I did the exact same thing to a woman alone in public (as I was), I would be looked at much more suspiciously and might be accused of mild harassment.
I find this hypocritical and completely shitty.
I am not blaming women, as I understand the constraints under which many live under reference interactions with strange men.
It’s interesting to be really terrible at the things civilized society values most, and to be really good at those it values least.
I don’t mind being a misfit, but it does impose certain constraints.
Soraya Chemaly: Why I’m a Feminist With a Big, Fat, Loud EFF.
And I’m a feminist with a big, fat, loud F U.
I don’t understand a great deal of human behavior as I seem to have either been born sans the compulsions that produce it, or they are channeled in such different ways that they bear little similarity to their typical expression.
Tattoos I don’t get. What’s the point, and the purpose?
Misogyny is another one, and any sort of status-seeking or status-confirming. You’re either superior or you’re not. Discussing it or “proving” it incessantly seems to me to be status-diminishing at best to status-destroying at worst.
Most human behavior at heart seems to be about status signaling, and to the extent that I have to do it to fit in, I utterly despise it.
I think it’s easier than me because I don’t have the seemingly-visceral and atavistic response to being alone that most humans do, while at the same time not suffering (I hope) from the typically-accompanying psychopathology.
I’m either broken or can’t be broken. I am not sure which, nor do I much care.
Female porn stars are psychologically as healthy or healthier than other women, according to a new study, which challenges widely held views about women in the adult entertainment business.
I’ve always thought "regular" work was as exploitative, if not more exploitative, than porn. It’s only our anti-sex mania that makes it seem any different.
Interesting demonstration that many of the most important technologies start out as toys – personal computers certainly did, and there are many others. Hell, I bet the first bow and arrow was some “useless” kid’s toy in 100,000 BC.
Surprised this hasn’t happened already, ad blocking tools being attacked.
Because someone’s right to make a buck trumps my right not to see bullshit I don’t want to see, and didn’t consent to see, all on a computer that I own, over a connection I am paying for.
Capitalism. What a system.
I’ve carried a pocketknife nearly every day of my life since I was eight years old.
Never got into any trouble about it at school. Where and when I grew up is gone now, though; a different world.
If I could, I’d rather carry a Bowie knife like one of these on my belt, as I did nearly every summer for years when I was younger, when it was still possible.
I don’t have any desire to carry a gun, but knives are so very useful, unlike a gun which is only really good for one thing. And it’s so much harder to kill someone or yourself accidentally with a knife than with a gun. To kill someone with a knife, you have to mean it.
Knives are generally useful tools, unlike guns. Here are some things I did with my Bowie knife that I carried nearly continuously from age 10-15:
1) Cleaned fish.
2) Cleaned deer and birds.
3) Pried rocks up to look for bait (not the best use of a knife, but it was a cheap knife).
4) Trimmed fishing line.
6) Made my own fishing poles.
7) Shucked mussels.
8) Defense against feral dogs in my area.
9) Trimmed limbs for uses such as water rise measuring stakes (one place I lived was prone to flooding).
I am sure that I am forgetting many more. I miss my big Bowie knife. Wish it were acceptable to carry one of those beautiful ones around these days.
The book that most exceeded my expectations: The Emperor’s New Mind, by Roger Penrose.
Even though its conclusions are almost certainly dead wrong, it’s interesting and mind-expanding throughout. This book caused more deep thinking in me than any other.
The most disappointing book: Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.
An overlong, boring hodgepodge of ideas that I either learned and/or occurred to me independently by the time I was twelve. My reaction on finishing this book amounted to, “That was all? That was fucking all? 700 pages that seemed like 7,000 for that?”
While the 1950s were far from ideal – especially for minorities and women – this makes them seem by comparison a bit better than I’d previously credited.
It now takes two and a half incomes to produce the same standard living that one income did in the 1950s.
It shows how much poorer relatively we’ve all gotten in relation to our so-called betters, especially when it comes to the really important things in life such as health care, education and housing, where most of the cost increases have arisen.
We had quail today for Thanksgiving.
It’s the first time I’ve had that since I was 15 or so. This time it wasn’t hunted, but bought at the store. It tasted exactly the same, though, as quail is not all that domesticated.
It was damn fine, and a great Thanksgiving.
It is indeed fun not being dead.
I honestly hope I never witness anything like this happening, because I know I’d probably kill the person who did it and go to jail for it.