What the hell is wrong with America’s establishment liberals?

What, indeed? The idea that Russia — even if they did some successful hacking — had any real influence on the election at all is fucking ludicrous. It’s absurd. It’s something little kids believe about the big bad bogeyman hiding under the bed.

Clearly something horrifying has happened to America’s great liberal intellects. One moment they were yapping along in the train of a historic political movement; now, ragged and destitute, they wander with lolling tongues in search of anything that might explain their new world to them.

Before the election, I didn’t think it was possible to be more disappointed in my fellow liberals.

Damn was I ever wrong.

And also, game theory: something that nitwits think makes them sound cool.

The problem with role models is they teach you roles.

-Joe Hill

The technocrat approach is to not support fundamental research because it is assumed that the directions to proceed in and the end goals are known and achievable from concerted predictable directed effort.

Obviously wrong, but that’s the belief. It’s also one of the reasons (though not the main one) that the humanities are devalued.

Interesting that research shows that the most successful, creative scientists are more involved and interested in the humanities and the arts than less productive ones.

This is not surprising — or rather, it’s only surprising to technocrat imbeciles.

I’m jumping a lot all over the place from things I’ve read over two decades, but ya’ll motherfuckers are smart. I can jump from mountaintop to mountaintop here. The valleys can take care of themselves.

I’ve often said that I lived like I was in a dystopia as a kid. Here’s why I say that.

As early as kindergarten, I was getting myself up in the morning to go to school. My mom didn’t do this. She never got up before 11AM. My dad had already gone to work — he usually left at 5AM when he had a job.

I’d make my own breakfast if there was anything to eat. Often there was not.

Sometimes, I didn’t have any lunch money so I didn’t eat lunch. Later this got better after my grandparents started helping, but that was still several years away at that time.

I didn’t have a real alarm clock so I had to guess when to get up. Perhaps this is why I can rouse myself nearly whenever I want to now within a few minutes. One time though I woke up at midnight, scrounged some breakfast together and got fully ready before I realized it wasn’t actually 6AM (when I usually got up).

And usually in the morning I’d get on the bus at around 7 AM for the hour and a half ride to school, and get home around 4:30 PM or so. That ride was pure torture. Cold in the winter, torridly hot and humid in the summer and I was beset by bullies for many of those years.

When I look back at a five-year-old getting himself up and ready for school with no assistance, I am amazed. How did I do that?

I raised myself in a very real sense. No one was paying any attention to what I was doing for the most part. No one helped me very much. No one woke me up in the morning or even noticed when I got home from school, even as a five-year-old.

I taught myself to read. I taught myself to tell time. I taught myself to tie my own shoes. I taught myself to identify animals and to find things I could eat outside (relatively plentiful in Florida, thankfully). I taught myself how to use the computer (my dad wasn’t patient enough to teach me). I did things no kid should have to do, ever, and I didn’t even know it. They were just things I had to do.

When I say I was raised in a dystopia, that is why. (I misspelled “dystopia” and the Firefox autocorrect wanted to correct it to “topiary.” No, I was not raised in a hedge, thank you.)