If the only way you can call Millennials “wealthy” is by ignoring student loan debt and the housing crisis and pretending that being automatically enrolled in an employer-sponsored program is an indication of high success, then maybe you shouldn’t pitch that article.

— Alex Brown 🐀 (@QueenOfRats) June 24, 2021

I’ve been seeing a spate of these articles lately that are like, “Millennials are just as wealthy as Boomers were at the same age, as long as you don’t count student debt, housing costs, and health care costs!” And they write that as if it that makes any sort of sense at all.

That I’ve seen so many of these pieces and claims is a sign that there is probably some sort of semi-coordinated propaganda operation underway. I’m not sure from where, exactly, or why, but just FYI you don’t see that many articles appear at the same time in the mainstream press without some think tank or other org spewing out press releases en masse and hoping outlets do the barest rewrites and then publish them.

That anyone believes that balderdash is amazing, but the think tanks wouldn’t do that if it did not work.

Read the comments to this article and then try to tell me that liberals haven’t gotten vastly more prudish over the years.

Those people sound fucking ludicrous, like some mix of 17th Century Puritans and nuns from a 1950s boarding school. I totally cannot tell which comments are parodic and which are not, but my suspicion is that none of them are an attempt at satire and, alas, all are in fact some actual attempt at condensed thought.

Are these people aliens?

Interesting. I’ve had sex with a woman where I’ve never even gotten hard. It worked quite well!

What the hell kind of fucked-up weirdos we got going on here?

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Why You Should Lift Heavy Weights, Even if They Scare You.

That piece is aimed at women, but it got me thinking about something that I was stupid not to realize until now. In the back of my head is always the thought, “The worst that could happen is that I could just die.” And for me, that is a comforting idea! I realized tonight that’s just not true for most folks. I mean, I kind of knew that intellectually, but thinking about how people seem so intensely afraid of so much I more deeply internalized the realization that “The worst outcome is death” is not much of a solace to most everyone else.

I think part of me being that way comes from where and how I grew up, and then becoming a paratrooper. But it’s definitely part of my psyche. I’ve never been particularly worried about or afraid of dying and I am sure that changes my risk utility function a great deal. That mentality is really freeing to me personally. Guess it’s not to most others.

I’m still gonna make fun of you moron lockdown lifers mercilessly, though.

WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as delta Covid variant spreads.

The World Health Organization on Friday urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other Covid-19 pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe.

No fucking thank you. Most of what the WHO propagandists are spouting is pure lies. Not gonna do it, unless I am legally ordered to, and even then I will resist. It’s time. If you are vaccinated, it’s your absolute duty to resist this insane and unethical nonsense.

Meanwhile, AstraZeneca, Pfizer vaccines effective against Delta COVID-19 variants: study. And the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are still nearly 90-percent effective against the variant, as long as people receive both doses.

But I fucking told you that the lockdown lifers would be searching for any reason to keep us all indoors, masked up, neutralized, pacified, confined to prison countries and controlled. It was as predictable as beta decay events from a hunk of U235. You really do have to ask, what are they playing at here? Does this have a single thing to do with public health?

No, it does not.

I’m so glad there are more and more people rejecting the lockdown lifer creed of hiding inside forever until all is “completely safe.”

There’s going to be a big push in the next few weeks as the Delta variant becomes more prevalent to force us all back indoors, cowering in fear, flinching from the light, and we should be uncompromising in standing against this utter insanity. We should resist with any means at hand. I know that many people crave the sense of living in a siege mentality, of hunkering down as the threat amasses outside. It’s their way of feeling powerful.

But it’s a coward’s form of power, a loser’s last bastion of feeling potent and virtuous. It’s a rout and retreat framed as a victory, “defeating the virus.” Motherfucker, you ain’t defeating shit except your own life and your own well-being.

I do wonder how much of this was a trial run for the pod life and the greater social control that many feel will have to come about to combat climate change. I bet quite a lot. But that matters only a little. What’s relevant is we mock and defy this mentality and dogma wherever it manifests, because it does and will aim to eradicate all that is best about life and the world. This desire for withdrawal and attempting to force it on everyone is nothing but an intensification and re-justification of the long-term liberal war against pleasure itself.