I wish I could personally punch in the face whatever fucking idiot at Google made a quoted search such as “fucking idiot” not be a true verbatim search.

Way to make your search engine worse, for the users who need that functionality the most.

I work really hard in my media consumption to make sure that I find films, books and other artwork that feature or at least include women as fully-realized, self-motivated characters.

It’s not easy, and it’s getting harder.

I’ve just never seen any reason at all to ignore half the human experience. That’s what I watch movies and read books for, even as non-social as I am – to partake in human experiences and ideas that I otherwise would not get to learn about.

I don’t feel like I should get a cookie or deserve congratulations for this. I feel like those who don’t do this are shortchanging themselves and lead a very desolate cultural life.

And truly, if you are not interested in watching a story about a woman, or have no women heroines or those you admire then I probably (almost certainly) want absolutely nothing to do with you. It means you are a misogynist prick in the most common case, or at the least culturally blinkered and thus also uninteresting to me.

When I was in an early grade, a classmate noticed me reading a Judy Blume book. I was already a much more advanced reader than this (was reading adult textbooks and National Geographic in first grade), but it was in the classroom so I picked it up.

It was good; I kept reading it. Then a classmate said to me, “That’s a girl’s book.”

So I said, “That’s good, because I like girls.” (Was not affirming a hetero orientation, just meant this in a general sense.)

Note I had not read any feminist theory then, and certainly no one around me in redneck North Florida would admit to being a feminist. I likely knew the word even then, but probably only had a vague idea of its true meaning.

However, I was already and always have been a pragmatic contrarian, and would frequently call out things I thought idiotic which lead to many fights and visits to the principal.

This time the classmate shut up, not really knowing what to say, and I kept reading the book.

Who knows how much is nature and how much is nurture? But I sure was at an early age ignoring and refuting bullshit that didn’t seem correct, and that really kept me distant from my peers, despised by many teachers, and I am sure made my parents contemplate burying me in the back yard.

Some things that are almost certainly true but that almost everyone now highly doubts, and nearly everyone will call you crazy for believing:

1) Humans face a much greater chance of extinction than nearly anyone acknowledges; this lack of acknowledgement is mostly due to hubris.

2) Eating meat from formerly live animals will in less than 100 years will be seen as nearly as monstrous as killing a human being.

3) If (and that’s a big if) humanity manages to avoid extinction and technological society continues, we or our much-different successors will attempt to leave the solar system, and likely succeed.

4) Creating an AI is absolutely inevitable, and that may mean the extinction of humanity.

5) We will succeed in “uplifting” animals to human intelligence and beyond.

6) If humanity does avoid extinction, within 10,000 years human bodies as we know them now will be no more.

7) In the future, there are really only two alternatives: Nearly no one has jobs as we now think of them, or nearly everyone is in slavery.

8) Sometime before we relinquish physical bodies altogether, changing physical sex will be as easy as wishing to do so.

And for those who doubt the extinction risk of humanity, ponder this.

Ninety-nine percent of the species that have lived on Earth have gone extinct, including more than five tool-using hominids.

Why would you think humanity would be any different at all, especially with all the amazing tools we have now with which to kill ourselves?

Another thing about short-term trading. You only care about the stupid. Don’t listen at all to most of anything. Just prick your ears up when something really, really dumb is happening. That’s where you make your money.

For instance during the late 1990s, every schmoe in the universe was piling into Yahoo and Amazon as Henry Blodget forecast them hitting absurd highs. I wanted to jump on that stupid train and then jump off before it crashed.

So I did.

Over the course of about two weeks, I quadrupled an already rather sizable pot of money, bailed out well before the top and then stood back and watched admiringly as the inevitable crash occurred.

How much was luck and how much skill? Who knows? I was in the right place with the right money at the right time and I made use of the opportunity. At worst, I would’ve lost a little (less then 5% of my capital) – money I had to lose, by the way.

But as it was, for the first time an account of mine went from five figures to six. And that’s why I only really pay attention to the dumbest things I can find.

This song has joined my tally of all-time favorite songs. Ignore the audio problems at the beginning; the sound person fixes them quickly. Kate Miller-Heidke is just awesome. I love when she uses her opera voice (former opera singer). And three percussionists!

I’d just assumed before watching this that the waver in her voice that helps make the song so great was a studio effect. Nope. It’s her (she’s not lip-syncing). Amazing talent.

I will no longer be doing any blogging of any sort about politics on this (or any other) blog.

It just makes me angry and there is nothing I can do at this stage, anyway. Corporations control the media and the government, and that is only increasing.

Only a huge crisis, far more calamitous than the recent financial implosion and subsequent Great Recession, will bring about any change at all.

Thinking about any of it, writing about it, or even noticing it wastes my time and fills vital brain space with useless garbage. I am by most accounts a pretty smart guy, but I’ve come to recognize that there is only so much information I can process and make use of, and that as I focus more the distractions are killing that focus.

Politics for now is a worthless ritual battleground. It and the scope of thought allowed therein is completely controlled, just as much as in any dictatorship. Voting means nothing; protesting means nothing (especially the way it’s done now). These are just relief valves the mandarins allow to make the hoi polloi believe they have a little power.

Wake me up when the revolution comes.

Remember a few posts ago, about trading Zynga? Look at its range today.

I would’ve made a lot of money. Easy call. But that’s really the secret, as much as there is one. Make the easy calls, and don’t be emotionally invested. Bail out when you are wrong, and automate the bailout.

If I’d been trading today, I would’ve made about $5,000 in an hour.

So tempting to do again.

Looking out the back door at our new place today, at first I thought I saw a dog, then realized it was a coyote. Very surprised to see one in broad daylight in an urban area.

It was quite far away, but here are some photos I managed to take with the NEX-5N.

I’d be day-trading the crap out of this stock if I were still in the game.

High volume, large float, large short interest? Oh hell yeah.

That means there’s a lot of stupid people doing a lot of stupid things with that stock. And the stupid is where you make your money.

The thing that makes day trading easy – for me, at least – is that you don’t have to be smarter than everyone else, you just have to be smarter than two things: your own dumb emotional instincts, and about 60% of everyone else trading in that stock.

And to be perfectly blunt, I can be smarter than 60% of even very smart people with one hemisphere tied behind my back.

And I’m so humble, too.

I didn’t choose the redneck anti-government paranoiac conspiracy-theorist racist North Florida life, the redneck anti-government paranoiac conspiracy-theorist racist North Florida life chose me.

Not quite as catchy as the Tupac variant, I know. And I am no longer remotely that guy, and indeed I never really was as I seem to have been born a contrarian by nature – though in some ways one cannot help absorb some of the cultural Weltanschauung all around them, at least for a bit.

But really, that is very near where I grew up and it resembles closely the mental climate in which I grew up, though my Dad and his friends were far too poor to carry the nice guns those folks are toting.

I’ve stopped reading about two dozen or so sites now since they’ve gone to a non-blog magazine-style format. I’ve stopped reading another dozen or so because they’ve implemented “Read more” or “Continue reading” links where you can’t see the entire article without clicking through.

At this rate, soon I will be able to read nothing.

That’s okay – as the internet becomes more corporate-controlled and more about social BS, it becomes far less useful to me anyway.

I’ve hired a lot of people in my life. I’ve been in management or partial-management positions since I was 23.

And I can tell you that if you insist that every person hired – whether it be receptionist, file clerk or janitor – have a college degree, all that means is that the very minute those degreed individuals find a better job more aligned to their skills and interests, they will be gone often without even giving notice.

And then you will be stuck.

Does it really make any sense that every job requires a degree? Especially since as from what I’ve seen most colleges teach very little useful (that is to say, you get out of education what you put into it, and most 18-year-old kids have no idea what the hell is going on).

I just can’t understand this outlook.

The older I get, the more I realize that the crappy part of aging is not the weird physical pains, the wrinkles, or the receding hairlines but the slow process of realizing that none of the things you wanted to do with your life are actually going to happen. It’s that moment when you look at your surroundings and realize, This is it for me. This is as far as I’m going to get. You look at the goals you had and the things you wanted to do and you realize that not only are they unlikely to happen, but they’re unlikely to happen because you aren’t good enough to accomplish them.

I like the site, but frankly I find this sort of view and approach to life idiotic.

Perhaps it only applies to people who when young (in academia, in the writer’s case) thought they were going to be stars in their field?

Being a star in any field is as much serendipity as it is skill and dedication. If you go through life expecting to be a star, you will always, always be disappointed.

My life is a fucking gift; I grew up poor in the sticks of Florida. I thought by the time I was 30 I’d either be dead or in jail. If my 15-year-old self could see me now, he’d be awed and impressed I think – by the things I have done and by who I am.

I love my current life and I make it better all the time. I work at it. I have an ensorcelling, unbelievably lovely, vibrantly intelligent and questing partner. I have few friends, but one close one who is one of the most clever, loyal and interesting people I’ve ever met. She is the bee’s knees.

I’ve been to interesting places. I’ve done things few people have done. I’ve consorted with fascinating and beautiful women, all of whom were supposedly “out of my league,” but shit, I have my own league and have never had any problems finding teammates to play in it.

I’ve learned about what I’ve desired to learn about. I’ve explored and been awed by nature and the universe; I’ve seen and done things few people get to see and do. And I plan to keep doing so until the day I die.

As I said, my life is a gift. Every day that I get to do the things I want to do, to read the books I want to read, and to spend time with my partner – a great day. I’m so very lucky and I know it, and when I read something like the above I really savor it. I hold onto it and realize what I have and how far I’ve come.

However, if I spent all my time whining about how I wasn’t a star yet, and might never be, then I imagine my life would indeed seem pretty miserable, and going downhill as I got older.

Sounds terrible.

I’ll take my quiet, wonderful life with time for what I want to do, not the one worrying about external expectations and my status or not as a star in some field or other that in reality few others care or know about.

But that’s just me.

I have generally enjoyed this series, though one part of it bothered me enough that I almost stopped reading it.

First, it’s a generally very gender-equitable set of books. Even most far-future (which this is not) sf seems to be content for some reason with 1950s gender dynamics. But many of the most powerful people in the books are women, and it’s telling how far we are from that ideal we are that I’m a bit surprised (both as a result of my own cultural training and how 1950s-compliant most sf is) when an admiral in the Martian navy for example turns out to be female.

All that said, there is one part of the book where a major character states that the only reason two men want to be friends with a female space marine is that they want to sleep with her. Not a reason. The only reason.

Never mind that she’s intelligent and fearless and incredibly loyal and brave beyond all measuring. Never mind any of those things. It’s her vagina that makes them want to get to know her.

Oh, bullshit. I am so damn tired of all of this, and all those who believe it.

Even after people disprove it so many times in their own lives, they still insist on believing it for some reason. Why, just why? It’s so limiting and so stupid.

Not that finding a friend attractive is wrong! It’s not at all. It’s human. I find many of my female friends very attractive. And hello, that’s for a reason! It’s because they are fucking awesome!

And on purely the physical side, I have a not-that-close friend in St. Pete who looks like some illustrator’s cartoon of an attractive woman. But that’s not why I befriended her, and I cannot stand to be around people I don’t like even for one second (as anyone who has met me surely knows).

I know I am atypical and not the best example, but still I just can’t understand why people who seem otherwise sane believe that men and women can’t be friends*, and it not be about sex. If sex happens, such is life. I can think of worse things than friends having sex, you know?

About the books, if you just ignore that part I mentioned, the first two are pretty good if you go in for that sort of thing.

*And I intentionally didn’t use the odious phrase “just friends.” Some of the best times of my life have happened with “just friends.”

I could’ve been this guy, a true isolato, but more than anything this piece made me recall someone from my childhood whom I haven’t thought about in years.

Believing I was an Alien was a natural conclusion for someone that continually failed to find a place to belong. Concluding I was an Alien was yet another way my identity as an outsider was re-inforced. No wonder I couldn’t relate to humans, we weren’t even the same damn species.

When I was ten, I informed everyone who would listen to me in my fifth grade class that I was an alien and would one day return to my home planet.

I think some of these kids actually liked me and even after that some of them still attempted to befriend me in sort of amused befuddlement, so perhaps they weren’t as bad as I thought then.

Anyway, that’s how I acquired the nickname “Alien” that lasted for a few years.

About this time, I met a girl who I really liked. Well, much more than liked, to be fair. I think she also quite liked me. Neither of us really knew what to do with that, though, being 10 and all.

Her name was Anna. I don’t really want to know what happened to her, as after that year I never saw her again. She moved away. I want to believe she did something amazing and that her life is as glowing as she was.

She wasn’t the prettiest, nor even the smartest, but there was something ineffable, indefinable, about her. I am always tempted to believe that the cliché of love at first sight is ridiculous, until I remember Anna. I loved her fiercely the very first moment I saw her and heard her speak.

And if you think someone that young cannot love, then you are very wrong. It diminishes the humanity of a person that just because they are young (and I was no normal ten-year-old, not by a long shot, for that matter) to believe that emotions at that age are not real, and not fully realized.

Anna had the quickest wit of anyone I’ve ever met. She seemed aware of everything going on around her at all times. And she just seemed so alive, in her too-big tennis shoes and funny socks. There aren’t really words for these ideas, not in any language. The grass got three shades greener when she walked across it. The sun borrowed energy from her. That’s how it seemed in my mind at the time. That no one else seemed to notice at all just boggled my young mind.

Anyway, this story does have a point.

Children have their own lives, which adults rarely understand and really are better off not knowing about. It’s always been that way and probably always will be.

One day my grandmother and I were walking through the grocery store, the usual weekly shopping trip. We turn down an aisle and I see Anna.

We were quite friendly by this time, having talked on the phone quite a bit even after school and such, so she greets me warmly. Except she doesn’t use my given name.

She says, “Hey, Alien, what’s up?”

Anna said just about everything with nearly unbridled mirth. It was like she was constantly laughing – not at you, or anything in particular, just that she found the universe amusing in the most amicable way and wanted to share it, to help everyone else to see it.

That barely contained mirthful joy behind her laughing dancing eyes is what I noticed the first time I ever saw her.

So in the aisle Anna and I chatted for a bit but my grandmother was getting impatient so we said our goodbyes.

I noticed the confusion on my grandmother’s face as she said, “Alien? Did she mispronounce your middle name?”

My middle name is “Alan,” as I am sure most reading this know.

I said, “No, Gran, she didn’t mispronounce my name. It’s a long story. You wouldn’t really understand anyway.”

My grandmother loved me, but she cared a great deal about being normal, of fitting into the routine. Anything that disturbed that normalcy was a threat. She never would have understood me being “Alien” or anything about that.

Anna, though — she liked me more because I was Alien in the sense of an appellation and as an accurate descriptor of my relation to the rest of humanity. When Anna saw me more clearly she liked me better – the first time that had ever really happened to me. I’d like to think she felt that reciprocated when I looked at her.

I am very glad I was Alien to Anna, wherever she is now.