About work, I feel exactly like Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation, with rare exception:

“I once worked with a guy for three years and never learned his name. Best friend I ever had. We still never talk sometimes.”

Sounds like the ideal work environment to me.

Men and boys, what’s the hardest pill you’ve had to swallow?

When I realized at 9-10 years old that girls and women are valued just for existing and that boys and men are only valued for what they can achieve, create, dominate or otherwise control (even if it’s just money). That was a depressing revelation. But it’s no less true now than it was then.

I realize that women don’t play life on easy mode by any means; they certainly have their own challenges. But the idea that I as a male wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit to anyone unless I made that happen against all odds was something difficult to contend with, I won’t lie.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Ah, America: Where a woman is assumed to be a child until she’s 40, sex is the worst thing that can happen to anyone, being a participant in a mass shooting is now passé (and not nearly as horrible as sex), and where you can get casually mown down by a lifted truck that weighs 7,000 pounds with zero consequences to the mouthbreathing owner of the thin blue line sticker-festooned pollution-spewing useless-for-hauling murder barge.

If there was something wrong to do, we did it. All of it.

Why do people automatically associate men who hit women back in fights with cowards?

Because men are vastly stronger in the upper body and many men know how to punch well and hard, and most women do not. And most women have no fighting skills even apart from their smaller strength and stature because they did not grow up in the violence-drenched male world. Also, taking a punch or protecting one’s self when attacked is a skill in itself (ask me how I know!).

My partner is pretty strong and has worked out for many years now. She’s probably stronger than 95% of women at this point. But she’s still only stronger than ~10% of men. And thanks to natural testosterone I — no genetic marvel — am at least twice as strong as she is, probably more if I went all out. And because I know how to punch and my arms simply weigh more, I can throw a punch with 4-6x more force behind it than she could.

She could punch me and hurt me a bit. I could punch her (which I’d never, ever do) and potentially kill her in one shot bare-handed if I hit the right place. That’s in no way equal. And that’s why men are rightly seen as cowards if we go around punching women who could easily be restrained or just stopped another way.

How are not everyone absolutely freaking out about death?

I was dead for an infinity of time before I was born, and I will be dead for another infinite time after I bite the big one. The first infinity was just fine. No problems at all. I assume the second infinity will be too. So I am not worried.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Scientists put Jared Diamond’s continental axis hypothesis to the test.

Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel in the Gödel, Escher, Bach of anthropology. It’s just some shallow clown without a damn clue what he’s talking about bloviating endlessly and without a shred of sense or evidence. But don’t believe me — believe an actual team of anthropologists.

The researchers discovered that these environmental barriers do not consistently favor Eurasia over other continents. This finding directly challenges Diamond’s assertion that Eurasia’s geographic orientation provided a unique advantage in the spread of agricultural and other critical innovations.

Instead, the study indicates that the facilitation of cultural spread by geographical and ecological conditions is a global phenomenon, with no clear bias towards Eurasia.

Guns is one of those books that sounds right if you’re a complete dumbass. Which most people are, so that explains its popularity. It is pseudo-intellectual balderdash designed to appeal to those poor souls suffering from white guilt. That’s all.

I am not laying out a complete strategy here and eliding very, very, very much, but the Russian army could be substantially defeated with a few weeks of AGM-88 HARMs to take out air defense radars and then 100 A-10s tearing up shit. The Russians just don’t have that many Verba (and similar) MANPADs and those won’t even take out an A-10 most of the time. The Ukrainians will never advance much in de facto drone-constrained trench warfare without CAS. And they aren’t going to get that, sadly.

Also sadly, I believe this is a deliberate but cynical strategy on the part of the US and other Ukrainian “allies.” They correctly ascertain that tying Russia down indefinitely in Ukraine with a trickle of just enough equipment and ammo will weaken Russia while preventing it from attacking the Baltic states and Poland.

As such, it’s working. But it’s not what we should be doing.

Why You Can’t Get a Table for Six at a Restaurant.

Restaurants for the most part have really gone to shit post-pandemic. It’s like they want to lose money — and business. Even fast food places now charge insane prices and have lower quality food (and it was already pretty bad). Higher-quality establishments now make it difficult to secure reservations if you have more than four people while also charging absurd prices and deposits. And often even with a reservation, there’s a significant wait.

I don’t think there’s a single explanation for this. Part of it is just the general expansion of the scam economy to every aspect of life. Another is that MBA/HR type thinking has overtaken everything.

There are just no places in the US that groups larger than four can meet easily anymore. Restaurants are private establishments and can do whatever they want. But this will hurt most of them more than it’ll help because if I were trying to seat six and they turned me down, I’d never go there even with four or two. I bet that’s going to happen a lot more than these establishments think it will. But as usual, most people can’t strategize even one move ahead, much less two or three.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

A lot of the words I like to use are listed as “archaic” or “obsolete” in the dictionary and some aren’t even in there at all. That’s sæd.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

In all seriousness, we either embark on a billion-year quest to conquer the galaxy or we go extinct.

Those are our two choices as a species. There are not any others.

A whole lot of Boomers (and some others, but mostly Boomers):