Watched Oppenheimer today in 70mm IMAX. Was worth it to see in that format. It’s a bigger than life tale so seeing it six stories tall only makes sense.

At one point Oppenheimer says/implies that even though the atom bomb didn’t end up literally starting an uncontrolled ignition of the atmosphere that destroyed the planet, the advent of the nuclear weapon would nevertheless likely conclude in the annihilation of the world anyway.

With smartphones, though people are loathe to admit, we’ve also managed to accidentally arrive at an event of nearly the same import. And we’re just as poorly-prepared for it as when nuclear inferno bloomed in the New Mexico desert in 1945. Just as we were not ready for the implications of nuclear weapons, we are not at all savvy at evaluating at Level 1 cognitohazards as we have no framework for thinking about them outside of science fiction (which is why I very intentionally used the term “cognitohazard”).

But we live in a science-fictional world now is the thing. Smartphones compress the world in a way that is novel in human history and transform the entirety of the human collective meta-nous into a very different place than even the internet did. The effects of this — though Ian Welshian type idiots deny it — are absolutely enormous. We’ve set off an uncontrolled chain reaction in each human’s mind and that is going about as well as you’d expect.

We live in apocalyptic times, in the ancient Greek sense. That is, a malign revelation is occurring as our minds are tampered with by unaccountable and unknowable techno-deific entities that we have no defense against. Denial of this only increases their power. Their agent is smartphones and their method is subjugating, hegemonizing and homogenizing the human mind with the false idols of convenience, simple answers, and puerile propaganda.

Our cognizance is ashes before these forces, a new nuclear fire obliterating minds screen by screen.

Is good posture overrated? Back to first principles on back pain.

Good posture advice is mostly nonsense. The keys to avoid back pain:

1) Don’t be obese or overweight.

2) Work out frequently and correctly.

Tada, chance of back pain much decreased!

(Spoilers) Does ‘Pet Sematary’ have the deepest bag of true scares?

Pet Sematary is the only King book that is written as a true Greek-style tragedy. It’s also some of his best writing and is one of the tightest novels ever penned. Unlike a lot of King’s works there are no pointless scenes, nothing is wasted and it all connects in a devious web of despair.

And that last line…damn, friends, that is some deep fuckedness there.

If you’re contemplating suicide, don’t read Pet Sematary. If you’re not contemplating suicide, you will be after you read Pet Sematary.

What is something women often do to men but complain when men do the same thing?

Some good and mostly-true ones in there. I’ve done nearly the same thing on a date long ago, when I was more of a jerk:

The one I’ll mention is what I’ve talked about before: most women do not handle rejection well, particularly more attractive women. If you reject an attractive woman who is not used to it, often be prepared for all sorts of wild accusations and lies to be thrown at you and told to your friends (if she knows them).

Not every woman does this, of course. But all too many do. I think her take is accurate regarding why women do this, though:

It does happen at least partially because men are stereotyped as unthinking sex-beasts, so the rejected woman in question then believes that there must be something really wrong with her that a man turned her down. Come on, we’re just tired. Sex is work. Too much work often. That’s all it is.

Women can get away with being much, much creepier and abusive than men can.

To be clear, when I complain about it I want women to not be able to get away with it, not for men to have more ability to be creepy. I want women’s “creep privilege” to be revoked and for “creep equality” to be achieved.

Right now, women can and do get away with things easily that in men would be 100% considered abuse.

Great line from S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed:

“She wore the expression of a person who has prepared themselves for the most awful thing they could imagine every day of their life.”

Trump indicted in investigation into efforts to overturn 2020 election.

This is a bad headline. It should read, “Trump indicted for attempt to overthrow the US government.” That would be an accurate headline.

The media in the US can never write the truth because it is not neutral. And the plutes’ bootlickers don’t want to offend someone who could potentially be in power again in 2025.