This is sort of like the difference between libertarianism and big “L” Libertarianism.

I kind of led with the chorus, there, didn’t I? What I mean is that the ideology of the “trans” is being used now to reify completely a conception of the world where all facts are molten and impermanent, where obvious fallacies are molded into the shape of the veracious and passed off as the genuine object.

It’s a way of inventing a reality that if you accept, then you are definitely an intractably-enmeshed neoliberal unhindered by any past reality of the world and have no chance of betraying this ideology.

It’s unfortunate a whole class of people is being exploited to achieve this but that’s the way now, isn’t it? Use anti-racism to bolster globalization, which most often harms minorities? Exploit the specter of nationalism to prevent any efforts of halting global climate change? And all perpetrated by “liberals,” too.

What is the most physical pain you've ever felt? Not necessarily the most gruesome injury but the cause of the most acute, intense pain you've experienced?

— Charlotte Clymer🏳️‍🌈 (@cmclymer) February 7, 2019

You’d think it’d be some of the stuff I did in the army. But no. The worst pain I’ve ever experienced happened this way.

My girlfriend at the time did not like sour cream. I do. Thus, she decided to include sour cream in my version of a dish and omit it in hers. Reasonable, I’d say.

Readers, she did not bother to check if the sour cream was off, and the taste of the other components masked said foul sour cream. I ate it all, the entire dish including the vile sour cream. You’d think this version of food poisoning would cause the usual stomach distress and multiple trips to the bathroom but that’s not what happened at all. Instead, for around eight hours it felt like multiple hot knives were being stabbed into my abdomen while Godzilla sat on me breathing plasma to heat those knives.

To say that it was painful would be an understatement. I thought I’d known pain before in getting beat bloody and having my ankles twisted in the sand on an army jump. This pain was a whole other dimension of suffering. Before when I’d experienced pain I wondered how something could be so agonizing that one would pass out. That day, I found out.

Though I did not actually pass out. I wish I had.

My gf asked if we should go to the hospital. I said, through gritted teeth, “No, because it’s in the wrong place for appendicitis and if it’s an aortic embolism I’d already be dead.” That’s when she mentioned the sour cream, we checked the date on the discarded bottle (six months in the past), and the mystery was solved.

I don’t believe anything could be more painful than whatever my stomach was doing that night because my entire universe was consumed by pain. I had maxed out the pain meter and then jammed the valve open.

Check the dates on your sour cream, people.

What an impoverished life people lead who read only those pieces they agree with and things they “know” are correct.

I once met a man who had summited Everest several times. I asked him if he didn't think it would be funnier to climb up, but turn around 50m before the summit, as a statement of moral fortitude and grown-up-ness.

I received a very blank stare in return.

— Ole Peters (@ole_b_peters) May 12, 2019

This is the kind of thing I do that no one understands why I do it. I have no desire at all to climb Everest but knowing you can do something is often just as good as actually doing it, and less time-wasting.

Not always, of course. Sometimes you have to reach the goal, capture the flag. But self-control and self-mastery is more than about reaching goals. It’s prioritizing your autonomy and your dominion over your own being and constitution.