Hindsight is 2023

Musings

Pop some popcorn and strap in

• You know, until there is a public option for health care in the US the pro-life abortion debate doesn't have a leg to stand on. Think about it.
• That also applies to "until everyone who is willing to work can find work that will support them and a dependent" the pro-life abortion debate doesn't have a leg to stand on. So Krysten Sinema getting rid of the $15/hr minimum wage? Anti-life if anything.
• In fact, let's say that some woman winds up having a child she can neither afford nor that her body can handle. Chronic illness plus social censure and a dead-end series of jobs... uh.... kid might not have a mother in 8 years
• When I was growing up people always said things like "don't talk about politics, religion or income at the dinner table" and "Politics is not healthy to get into, let's talk and think about something else." Problem. That's not how a democracy works. In fact, from the day you're born til the day you die in the United States, YOU are one of the politicians. That is, by definition, how a democracy works. So refusing to do your job and then whining about the conditions is like shooting yourself in the foot and blaming someone else. Therefore every bit of judgment you pass on any politician at all you should also try on for size on yourself, and on the people you live with, work with, and vote with.
• It's hard to wage war and it is hard to wage peace. Possibly harder. How do you wage peace? I mean, start a website like this one, see how easy it is. Really easy. Super easy. Totally.
• You really want to create another Israel in the United States, culture-wise? Picture this. I recently without even looking for it found an article about how Israel is starting to discriminate against Muslims within Israel (it's from Jerusalem, articles like that always seem to come from there, also, Jerusalem sucks). So in an ensuing discussion with a family member of mine, I tentatively asked if the news coming out of there is any worse or better than before and if there's been more decrying Israel lately than usual. They said yes, and also that they had seen several of these articles, many of which were spinning the situation into something completely different than how it actually is going. I asked why? They said Israel's economy is booming and people are therefore both jealous and feel threatened, and also that this is nothing new for Israel. I'm not an impartial reporter and obviously have a bias so I'm not even going to try to tell you about the news articles mentioned. You can likely find all the anti-Zionist and pro-Zionist news articles you like, and be driven crazy. I will, however tell you what decades of that shit has done to Israelis within Israel. Looks like a military watering hole combined with a refugee camp but with everyone sporting a nasty case of PTSD. Also, fun fact, if we don't bring bad actors to justice in the US and very quickly, we'll find out what it's like to live in Israel but bigger. I give it two more years. Then I'm breaking out the Bamba. wait Osem's been bought out by Nestle, think I'll go with leder (apricot fruit leather thing)
• Nothing exemplifies Feminism better than a bra burning. As opposed to women's rights. You ever hear about how ballerinas often don't have a large cup size for bras? This is because the grueling high-impact exercise and precision balance movements required in ballet necessitates as little alterations to one's center of gravity as possible. Frankly, doing ballet or any high impact exercise gets more and more difficult the larger the bra size you wear. Guess what qualifies as high impact exercise? Running. Sports. The very same people trying to do away with mandatory high heels, which makes sense, also tried to do away with bras, ostensibly to "free women." But one certainly increases mobility while the other decreases it. If anything, if Feminism made any sense (ever), it would have tried to get people in female bodies better, more supportive bras for all the situations could run into throughout the day, at a cheaper price. I don't care if I'm beating on a dead horse at this point. Women's rights is good, Feminism just needs to die. The very thing intended to empower women has in fact done the opposite, as mentioned in elaborate detail in Hindsight Is 2022.
• After much thought, here is my personal viewpoint on freedom of speech as it relates to books. Banned books really piss me off, for the most part. Like, people could easily kill themselves without getting the right information at the right time. Especially youth who can't get mentors, help, or resources in any other way. All that controversial hot-button topic type stuff is often exactly the kind of stuff that teens literally need. I speak from personal experience. I couldn't get that kind of stuff growing up. Honestly, I should not be typing this right now, not due to suicidal ideation but due to straight up bad information and lack of access to information leading to extremely poor choices. So generally speaking, do not ban books. I don't care what your supposed ideals are, they could kill someone if you deny them access to needed information, do not ban books. But there are several exceptions: 1. please ban books that provide weapons of mass destruction or methods via which you can make them. For instance, I don't think the Anarchist's Cookbook or assorted methods to make your own fully-automatic guns need to be spread around. I also don't think black magic is something you should publish, since that kind of knowledge just (frankly) needs to die. So in other words left-hand-path occult stuff? Should be illegal to publish. 2. please ban books that are so disturbing they actually cause mental illness in the reader, a statistically significant proportion of the time that they are read according to studies done with sound science. Thankfully I haven't read any books like that but I bet they exist. Yikes. So that's my take on things.
• Come to think of it, bringing infant and child mortality rates back to pre-Industrial-era rates due to refusing to vaccinate your kids is morally and ethically the same as a late-term abortion. Technically it's out of the womb so that's murder but late term abortion is also still technically murder. Also, messing up a kid or teen so bad they commit suicide, or abusing or neglecting them so they die, is also technically a late term abortion. But there's no help for kids or teens that haven't converted to the religion of choice in a lot of areas, so it really has less to do with the abortion and pro-life issue and more to do with wanting to keep a religion going and maintaining the cult. So it has absolutely nothing to do with selflessness or kindness or the kids/teens in question and everything with the crouton that wants to earn brownie points from some Deity or other for themselves. Ironically... I am pretty certain that this hypocrisy is against most religions.
• One of the things that makes me extremely, murderously angry is mistreatment of kids. But lately I've had another realization. Maybe it's unethical, callous, unfeeling or cruel. Maybe it's wrong. I don't know. But it also makes me extremely angry, on a fundamental level, to see people get emotionally wrecked from personal infertility when there are literally millions of homeless and orphaned kids out there in an underfunded, shitty, overcrowded adoption system. What is the deal with wanting a child that is "yours"?! As if you can't be a good parent or have a wonderful family if you don't reproduce your own DNA? I have never understood it and I don't like it. Nonetheless having grown up in (as mentioned previously) a place where most parents actively hated their children, I can say with confidence that regardless of how you wind up with a kid, if you are a good parent that counts for way more than anything else.
• It's taken a long time to figure this out but here is what I want from my readers. Wasn't sure how to phrase this or even if it should be said but here goes. I don't ask for perfection. I don't even think that's healthy. The only thing I want is for the reader to be human, in the good sense of the word, and humane, and humble. And I would like to be that way myself also. What really freaks me out these days is how few of us there are left! And by "us" I mean people who are halfway decent human beings, trying to muddle through the day to day without being "that guy" or the bad guy. I consider myself a halfway decent human being, I try to do the right thing. Where the hell is everyone else?
• Enslaving other people means enslaving yourself also. This is because in order to keep people enslaved, against or in conformity with their will, there has to be a bond between you. No one wins. Everyone loses. Indentured servitude and a caste system are slightly less awful, but still awful, versions of this basic principle. You know what else? It gets worse. Schools will teach their students the usual stuff for basic literacy and to make functional, economic-propping-up-units in society. Alright, great, but who is going to do the work of ensuring those students survive? Realistically, what human beings need in order to survive is quite different from what a school teaches you. And what that boils down to is simple: either you do the work to make sure that you survive, or someone else has to do it. And if someone else is doing so either against their will or in shit labor conditions, that is either slavery, or indentured servitude, or some version of a caste system. Therefore the more of these specific subjects you can learn, master, and DIY for yourself and your family, the less someone else has to do it, and the less likely it is that that someone is working in shit labor conditions. Here's the basic list: farming, construction, medicine, getting and keeping running water and electricity going, sewage management, civil engineering, education, communication, home economics (a whole slew of different stuff there), environmental and land management (aka what the old timers just called "husbandry"), transportation. There's more, a lot more, and it essentially boils down to how self sufficient can you get. I think a major oversight of previous generations of folks is that they thought Gaia was a passive golden goose that they could exploit to save themselves the effort of practicing good husbandry, and that's a major reason why we got the Dustbowl, and now global warming. Another one? Gender roles. Wildly inefficient, wildly ineffective, the men and the women never understood each others' field of study and work purview and it gave us the Boomers, Goddess damn it (the gender roles that is) plus added to all the other societal problems we have today. Another major oversight? Scorn for science, education, and technology. Fucking oops. Anyway, I have found in my own experience that a lot of this self-sufficiency type of stuff boils down to what's called grunt work, scut work, or menial labor. And it sucks. There's no way of sugarcoating that. But it provides a strong foundation for automating the boring shit later on, or making it faster and more efficient in a way that makes the most sense. Also, if you take a closer look at the personalities and lifestyles of the people who have never done such boring scut work, you quickly learn they didn't escape hardship either. It's just a different kind of suckage. One way or another, you deal with bullshit. It's better to be able to look yourself in the mirror with respect after all is said and done. Ironically, in hindsight, the easy way proves to be the hard way, and the hard way proves to be the better way. Double down on trying to do what you gotta do and it's usually better than praying and hoping and wishing for easy success.
• A lot of stuff on this website has been written about the futility and stupidity of racism, sexism, and other -isms. Here's more. Anyone can look like anything at any time. Anyone can appear to be something. It's just the mask you wear, or the mask you are born with, or the clothing of the soul. Who really gives a shit? What I am more concerned with is who are you, really? What's your mind like? What's your heart like, where does it live, what kind of shape is it in? What are your hopes, goals, dreams? Do we really want to just scrabble in the dirt our whole lives trying to climb over other human beings to achieve our goals instead of perhaps doing something more worthwhile? This endless parade of "who looks like what" and "who is worse than us" and "who is more or less perfect" is infinitely degrading
• I really can't think of a better way of pushing people from religion, any religion, than being cruel and judgmental about it. How do I know? Well, I wanted to be Universal Unitarian when I was a kid. Ohhhh that went out the window. A major reason why the religion section of this website is the way it is - I think I may have seen just about every way that people could screw it up
• So we have one guiding principle as a country in this United States of America, or so I think. Compassion. Right? Well here's the thing. It would behoove certain members of this country to follow some basic common law rules of conduct as well. Most importantly this one: don't do anything that renders you intolerable to the rest of the human species, let alone your fellow Americans. Amen, amen. We came up with this particular common law rule of conduct - I'm guessing - somewhere along the line when we realized this country is so ridiculously diverse even within its smallest enclaves that in order to avoid people killing one another over the slightest offense and having it degenerate into a full-on battle royale it would behoove us all to have some fucking tolerance. In fact a lot of tolerance. So therefore the common law guiding principle that we have going on - or used to - is "tolerance." It might be hated but it keeps us all alive and out of prison. Got a problem with that? Okay, have some leder.
• 5/1/23 I see where this is going and it's not good. This country has two options for the future: 1. Each citizen that has been complacent up til now about bringing literal criminals to justice because they are family, or friends, or otherwise "immune to justice" can take those criminals to court and get them as much prison time as possible. They can stop being complacent and apathetic about the issues they face and actually put up a heck of a fight, but intelligently, such that only those who deserve it get punished and not the innocent. 2. Extremists form mob mentalities and many, many, many innocent people die. It will look a lot like Israel in its worst days. You likely have never seen anything like that. Metal detectors at malls and schools. Terrorist attacks no longer being noteworthy news, just your average day of the week. Constant prejudice perpetuating itself from generation to generation without logic, compassion, or common sense creating a nearly eternal war (note: this is far more common in countries surrounding Israel, its erstwhile "reputation" - fake btw -edit 5/8/23 painful as this is for me to admit this reputation may no longer be entirely fake, and frankly I'm fine with people in Israel tossing in prison stripping of Israeli citizenship and stripping of all right to work in Israel any and all offenders who make even the smallest bad rumor about the place true, seriously to those who do that if they do "fuck you for dishonoring the sacrifices of my family*" - notwithstanding). Random violence. Bombs. Trash on the streets, stray animals not being controlled, corruption, nepotism. No such thing as due process or deliberating about issues to reach a common ground in political discourse - if you shout the loudest, you win the debate. The average house of the rich: wall 8 foot tall around the place with barbed wire on top. The average house of the poor: trailers with corrugated metal roofs, we can hope they have air conditioning but that's not guaranteed. Barbed wire fences everywhere. Government stops being looked at so closely because most of folks's energy is consumed by trauma, survival, and stress, compounding the problem. There is not the kind of civic discourse or charitable/volunteering involvement that Americans take for granted here - bruh, you will get informal chatting but any town hall (heck any family reunion) there degenerates into pure chaos and shouting in an instant. The volume of people's voices: loud. "Fuck it" mentality - common. People are by default brash, rude, in your face and they don't care what anyone else thinks at all; selfish and also both careless and lazy by American standards but normal by Israeli ones (Interestingly, you'll often find the opposite at home where Israelis are kind and tender and caring, but on the streets hell no). And when I said I am extremely polite by Israeli standards I really wasn't kidding. Don't get me started on the driving. Most of the violence and terrorism dealt with proactively by a drafted Israeli Defense Forces, who walk the streets with open semiautomatic rifles just to protect the place - they're the reason why the citizens can also walk said streets without dying. They are all so young; 18-22 years old for the most part, that's when the draft takes them, men and women. Closest parallel culture-wise that people in the States can identify: take your pick of ancient Sparta or the Marine Corps boot camp. You can glorify that kind of manly shit all you want, trust me, it won't fly with someone who is a veteran of the Yom Kippur War. And all avoidable if people stop being so fucking complacent that they think it "can't happen" if they don't bother with the justice system, personal activism, and growing some fucking balls to confront these issues head-on. No, it seems to just be people fleeing the issues from state to state and also complaining about things on the Internet. And I can blame all of this on several things. The Republican party, for actively weakening everything that makes this country a secure place to live in and also quite literally turning us into a third world country in many locations within the States. The Democrat party, for raising a ruckus but not really doing anything to help aside from get the left-wing hysterical and angry enough to start turning Communist. (EDIT: I think this is actually a Texas thing. It seems folks in other states have Democrats that actually do their damn jobs, yay everywhere but here) Everyone on any part of the political spectrum TOLERATING CRIME AND TURNING A BLIND EYE TO IT. Also not voting. I don't fucking care what your reasons are, is potential disaster not a good enough incentive for you to turn up at the polls or vote by mail?! Tolerance is good but like, there's a limit. Of course, going too far into Communism is also bad, so don't do that. Why? See Hindsight Is 2022
• 5/3/23 The last refuge of the inept: traditional bloodlines/racism. How can we empower ourselves when we've given up on ourselves, our dreams, our lives, our ambitions, and our souls? Well, there are a couple options here. One is to start taking responsibility for our own lives. But no, clearly that's just not something that's DONE. Another is to drown in self-pity and whine loud enough so that someone gives us what we want, a very popular option. But that's still not good enough. No, we need to find something to be proud of and/or blame for our circumstances that is entirely out of our control. Yes, I know what it is! Our genes! (facepalm) There's another one, and that's our luck. Despite the fact that fate and karma do probably have a say in things, not to mention the Deities, and also "magical thinking" aka willing things to go your way and then making it happen (which if done wrong; by making yourself benefit by harming the innocent and also by actually having it work; is black magic but that's another story), but realistically speaking anyone who lives and observes things can see for themselves that there is a certain amount of chaos and randomness in life. Why did you avoid getting hit by that bus and that person didn't? Why did you avoid getting cancer or heatstroke? Why did this horrible event happen to that completely innocent person? And if you say "oh karma" that negates the suffering of all of the totally innocent victims of assorted crimes because "they deserved it." Um, they did not all deserve it. It's not possible. Why? Because I know a few of them, and they didn't. Yet despite this inherent randomness that mocks Einsteins statement that "God does not roll dice," people like to prance around as if they were the ones that gave themselves all their blessings in life. I hate to break it to you but you do not control your own luck. No one does.
• 5/6/23 You know, I didn't think I could get even angrier about the existence of racism. Okay, I am, hooray. And let me explain exactly why. We have global warming going on. We have a pandemic that is still going on in various places. China is busting a gasket, Russia is, uh, don't wanna even talk about Russia. Environment is having problems, I'm trying to keep my family safe and a lot of people are doing the same. Politics everywhere are ugly, crime done out in the open seems to be de rigeur if you're rich and/or famous enough, there's a lot of chaos and it's not even the fun kind. But in the middle of all this, we have to have people going "hey you know what's really important?! Skin color! Get upset about it! Get really mad!" How about... no?
• 5/10/23 Are Gen X the first real casualties in the war against injustice and evil? Could that be why they're so burned out? I mean, sure Millenials whine about burnout but I'm suspicious that the people who are being the most quiet could be that way just cause they don't have the energy to speak up anymore
• 5/14/23 Just in case I didn't make this explicit before: The Deities did not cause this set of disasters. Human beings, criminals, caused the origins of this disaster. But it didn't have to be as bad as it was. It was the complacent people worldwide that made what could have been a minor blip on the radar into a total catastrophe. And I especially blame the complacent people in the US, who clung to family ties, so-called compassionate mercy, so-called tolerance, and misplaced loyalty as if they could excuse sheltering literal criminals. Fine, you want to coddle the criminals? You're almost as guilty as they are. Not doing anything still counts as culpable negligence in this case.
• 5/23/23 Hey I just realized something. Minimum wage jobs with no benefits and crap work conditions promote illegal immigration. That's because only desperate people work these jobs. In fact, that's ensuring a cash flow for a lot of people who are richer than they should be on the backs of indentured servitude. And... a lot of the people complaining the loudest about illegal immigration, I think (it's just a hunch) are the ones looking the other way when it directly benefits them or someone they know. Same deal with people complaining the loudest about "cheap goods and manufacturing from (wherever) displacing our jobs." Well... where's everything they buy come from then? Homemade? Are they valuing the local farmer's markets and chambers of commerce? Uh huh.
• 5/23/23 The world is full of evil people who have convinced themselves that since they're willing to do what other people won't, namely, evil, they have a leg up on the competition and can get whatever they want. Good people do not understand this and therefore they don't bother learning how to protect themselves and their families. It's been played out over and over. You want to change that? Understand that cowardice and idiocy are a lethal combination for anyone who isn't evil. Because evil behavior in itself can unfortunately give people more power than they should have even if they're every bit as stupid and cowardly as everybody else. Is it worth it to be evil then? Well obviously not in the long run, or even the short run given the damage it'll do to you internally, but there'll always be idiots who want short term benefits no matter the price.
• 5/29/23 Lately I've been thinking about some of the people I've known. Anti-semites, conspiracy theorists, literal neo-nazis, anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters. It occurred to me that there will probably always be people like this because there isn't enough of an emphasis on educating people about the scientific method, logic, proof, and evidence in legal proceedings. In fact there is literally no education about the legal system in the United States and our science education is paltry (in most K-12 that is). Also, even if we do get that in the future, there will always be a subset of really stupid people who feel ashamed of being stupid and instead of facing the problem and putting themselves through more education and more school at a slower pace for a longer time, they will gravitate to dumb shit like that so they get to feel good about their intellectual superiority wthout any kind of actual effort. (and a lot of them become teachers in my experience, specifically anti-capitalists anti-government conspiracy types... yep) Therefore, people will not see the truth because they don't know how to find it and think if it sounds good enough and looks good enough then wow, it must be real. It must be the truth. Belief must be the truth. Truth after all is kinda boring but why have that when SHIIINY!!!!! So I was thinking that this is a good quote. "Don't let a little thing like the truth stop you from ruining your life."
• 5/30/23 Contemplate this grim fact: the Civil War had very few known female casualties directly as a result of the war unless you count deaths from childbirth or STDs (sigh… soldiers). The Coronavirus pandemic didn’t discriminate, and the US didn’t protect women then. And now folks are gleefully banning sick pregnant women from getting medically necessary abortions, even in cases where the fetus is dead. So what, we’re proud to kill women now? Guess what you guys, this kind of policy and thinking isn't a throwback to the Antebellum era or the "good ol' days" of the 1800s. No, think more Dark Ages. Or even Biblical era, except those so-called "directions" are not even what the original Bible said. Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, and Greek are the language of the originals. "Lost in translation" is a significant thing.
• 6/3/23 The monopolies are out of control here and worldwide. They need to be broken up, significantly so. This is harming everyone and stifling innovation and the environment, and creating de facto monarchies. Monarchy? Monopoly? There ain't no difference. Also, the deregulation of industries is a dumb fucking idea. I'll be the first to say that our government is too bloated and needs a lot of stuff cut out of it to improve its efficiency (why do we need like three different government agencies to accomplish one thing?!) but it's pretty clear that GOVERNMENT TOO BIG IS BAD >:( leads to situations like we have seen in the East Palestine Ohio train wreck, the pandemic response in the US, and India's issues with well, everything. India is a modern libertarian's paradise, they should all go visit it. (And for the last fucking time, that is not what Ayn Rand meant. They're a diatribe against Communism and a praising of individual thought and freedom. But all these Ayn Rand fanboys sound the same these days and that says it all. Peter Keating clones all of them.)
• 6/3/23 Hey kids, you want a good book that will get you called a leftist if you quote it out of context? The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. With luck you might even get called a Communist, LOL
• 6/6/23 It's kind of weird to think about how the unrestricted usage of one's personal free will and freedom can restrict those same things to such an extent in others. The entire purpose of a democracy or any kind of government is to restrict freedoms and free will to some extent in order to prevent people from going too far; crossing too many boundaries. But if a government and its people don't restrict the right freedoms and actions, heaven help you.
• 6/15/23 At this point whenever anyone gets all hyper about labeling human beings based on superficial bullshit, in my brain I immediately translate whatever label they're trying to use (femalethem, purplebluered, polka dotted, gaystraightblah, waa wAa wA wAA wa) as "human human human human human human." Like I'm supposed to actually give a shit about how for instance your new friend turned out to be a transgender straight Black person with hereditary dwarfism? That's nice.
• 6/17/23 In Hindsight Is 2022 I rambled for a while about why Feminism is a stupid, fucked up movement that actually hindered human progress, human rights, and women's rights especially but I didn't really summarize the biggest deal in the whole mess. It is this: science is the best tool we have available to us as a species to determine the truth. There is no scientific rigor whatsoever in the arguments by both Feminists and Chauvinists. We need well-conducted scientific studies to determine once and for all: what are the exact differences between men, women, and other genders (yes, this is biological fact, ask your doctor, hermaphrodite and other genders do exist) mentally, physically, emotionally and biologically? The Feminists in the 60s and 70s had the opportunity to create such studies. They did not. Instead they hammered on feel-good unscientific platitudes that sounded good and were for the most part completely unsubstantiated by scientific evidence.
• 6/17/23 Thing about the US these days - all the wrong people are brave. All the wrong people are cowards. Picture this, we have a lot of people convinced that the asshole Trump and his family are the big bad, and that the loudest jerks on social media or in prison on the far left wing are the big bad. Either through ignorance or wilful disavowal of responsibility people are just not looking at the pyramids of equally guilty people that brought these people to power in the first place. And also at themselves, who were total cowards at noticing the signs of irredeemability in their closest friends and associates. There is so very little sense of personal responsibility in any of it. For instance, mad at Trump and other Republican politicians? Stop being friends with and/or married to people who support those things. Mad at the police? Become the police. Hate schools? Homeschool. Don't like someone who is so far gone (either left or right wing these days ironically) that they exist on handouts from everyone and refuse to even try to get a job? Don't live with them. Hate politicians? Mobilize to vote. These are solutions, and I'm tired of hearing people bitch and moan about how "powerless" they are. Spend a week in my shoes. You'll learn "powerless."
• 6/20/23 Israel is where political correctness goes to die. Yet if you were to be say, some kind of far-right Fascist Trump-loving idiot from a rural backwater in the US, or the far-left equivalent, and think you'd fit in there, boy would you be wrong. You can't cross the line in Israel, "the line" being hurting anyone innocent. They have this thing about not harming civilians, women, or children. And by this "thing" I mean you'll find yourself in jail or shot if you try anything funny. Or worse. I don't think it's quite clear to anyone in the US: Israel is entirely composed of veterans of their military. That includes the women. And the thing is? They're not proud of this fact.
• 8/20/23 If you live in the US you probably are upset that shit is fucked. What you probably don't know is that in Israel shit is always fucked and has always been fucked. The problem is that they seem to have gotten used to it. A little of that is good over here for the sake of mental chill but not so much that you develop the levels of apathy that exist there. I think in the US people don't really get that we have way more chances to fix things here due to beliefs that are less entrenched and stupid than the ones over in the Middle East. Keep agitating for good change and don't get complacent, and shit will no longer be fucked. Keep doing that and it will continue to not be fucked.
• 8/22/23 Personal experience: there is no one, bar none, that is as selfish as a diehard Communist. They want the world to work together, and, naturally, for it to revolve around them. So they can give "their all," namely the bare minimum, while everyone else ensures that they get all the money and free labor that they "need." Right. It's all bullshit. They sell it to themselves and to everyone else with so-called compassionate love. No, it's just greed for control over others. At its opposite extreme you find Totalitarians who want, ironically, to do the same, for the same motivations, and with the same ugliness within. Don't waste your time with such people or give them your best. Reserve it for those who deserve it.
• 8/26/23 Nobody judges a poker player by the hands that they are dealt. The bodies and conditions we are all born into are the same.
• 8/26/23 Over the past few years we've seen many folks sneer at other folks and go "you aren't huuuuuman, you're evil." But what it has boiled down to recently is avoiding placing the blame for actual evil (deliberately harming children, the innocent, the good) on those who deserve it, and displacing it upon human beings who - how dare they - are not perfect. It's cowardice pure and simple.
• 9/12/23 For those of you out there who are sick and tired of seeing people do the easy thing instead of the right thing, over and over despite seeing what happened to previous generations as well as themselves and refusing to learn from their mistakes, if you are feeling ashamed to be human right now you are not alone. I'd especially like to "thank" the racists and bigots who decided to make a big deal out of superficial crap for turning me into a racist. Against the human race. Maybe there's like 20% of the population that are worth the effort. Maybe.
• 9/13/23 Late stage capitalism implies that capitalism always ends at a crummy, crappy stage. It does not necessarily, not by definition. Unlike Communism where evil is rewarded via the rewards and punishment system built into its code from the ground up (see Hindsight is 2022 for a very in depth explanation). No, we got to this point where capitalism got corrupted via people simply not doing the right thing - not enforcing regulations in the marketplace, not enforcing regulations to prevent the rich from profiting off of the poor simply because they are poor, not working to understand how the system works so as to keep it running smoothly. When Communism fails it is inevitable. When Capitalism fails it is the fault of the people within the system. End of story. Don't @ me with late stage capitalism or other Communist talking points. Fuck around... you'll find out, and I just won't be near you when you reap the consequences.
• 9/18/23 All things considered there's only one thing I miss about Judaism, and that's the ego death. All this conspiracy theory stuff? Yeah okay, it makes Judaism sound like something glamorous, perhaps forbidden fruit, or like, powerful and mighty and foreign and exotic. No, all Judaism really is is telling the humans in it "you ain't shit, you ain't shit, you ain't shit, you ain't shit" and it is pretty liberating to not feel compelled to be perfect or ascend to some higher plane of existence or whatever. Plus there's on the whole slightly less egomaniacal behavior as a result. Slightly less.
• 10/5/23 At this point there's only one major logical reason I can think of why Russia's government is continuing this war. Reducing Russia's population. Considering that country's historic sexism, and the fact this might have caused an unsustainable birth rate, that makes sense. Secondary reasons might include profit for Russia's oligarchs somehow, blind stupidity mixed with nationalism, and need for more farmland due to certain disasters (the USSR and its collapse) rendering all land not only unusable for farming but also poisoned - again, see large population. Just guessing, but I'd bet on it.
• 10/24/23 After all this nonsense regarding empathic overload, psychic attacks, and even outright black magic, and even hearing about Bible-thumping Christians creating prayer groups to be "prayer warriors," I've come to a conclusion. As I stated on the main page it's a form of rape, or mind flaying if you will, and it's been considered an abomination for well, a very long time. Many years ago, the same thing probably happened, but with a different religion - mine (disclaimer, I don't think *all* Witches back then did that sort of thing, not even close, but very likely at least some of them). And I think it led to the Witch burnings. Or was one of many factors leading to them. Ironically, no Witches I know of do this sort of thing because they understand karma and its consequences. Now, the people living down to the stereotype are... apparently in an assortment of other religions.
• 10/29/23 You may be familiar with what I wrote about Feminism and Chauvinists in the Hindsight is 2022 section. Here's another insight. You can absolutely count on both Feminists and Chauvinists to throw extreme amounts of hate and cruelty on people who are feminine. At least in the United States. For whatever reason, whatever's stereotyped as feminine is seen as some kind of weakness by that bunch, and they shit on it every chance they get. As an example, justgirlythings. Who cares if you personally don't like everything on the list? What's it to you if someone else does? (There is one significant ethical problem with them (just one) - it's mostly just white chicks and that actually bothers me, but that's bout all.) Yet you can see abusive bullying all over the place. Just two examples, College Candy article duckduckgo search. I'm mostly ambivalent about the infamous Papa Furanku video, saying that cause I think it's hilarious at least. Misogynistic, and crossing the line? Oh absolutely but I appreciate it for the piece of art (and piece of work) it is. Regardless, these have viable comfy suggestions for enjoying yourself and getting suggestions to become airborne with my lady bits instead of figuring out how to spend a lazy afternoon (and you know, enjoy myself, heaven forbid) is a pretty good reason why we can't have nice things
• 10/29/23 The current and most recent "version of Christianity" I've seen goes a little like this. Have unconditional love for everyone? See the entire human race as your family? Be merciful to all and turn the other cheek? Thumbs down. Feel better than everyone since you're Christian and therefore nicer and morally superior too? Thumbs up. See the problem here? I ran this by my husband to see what he'd say since he's the Christian dude, and he said that turning the other cheek should be done to a point but there has to be a hard limit defined on a case by case basis. Which is quite vague, and that's where I think a lot of the problems come from.
• 11/2/23 More on Feminism (see a few points above). I've written a lot about it. But another truth about it hit me today. If I haven't said it already thanks to memory issues in which case sorry bout that. Modern-day Feminism is just a remix of chauvinism. Look closely enough at each and every thing said or done in the name of modern-day Feminism, unpack it, and in most cases you'll find it in there. Women don't need men. Women need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Women don't need makeup. Women are degrading themselves by being feminine. Women are born worthy of the most profound respect. Etc. Now flip that around to "men" and the male equivalents and it sounds a little different, doesn't it? Men don't need women. Men need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Men don't need to work on their looks. Men are degrading themselves by being masculine. Men are born worthy of the most profound respect. Hmmmmyeah ok
• 11/14/23 I've already said this in many different ways but it doesn't seem to be getting through, so let me try this. We don't need a hell in the afterlife when religious people have so generously created one here for us. With which to be really motivated to convert to their "one and only right and true way" religion, whether that's Islam, Christianity, TERF-laden Goddess Witchcraft, or something else. Now we are in pain. How do we make the pain stop? Why, by converting to the "one and only right and true" religion, of course. Why should we convert to this one religion? Because it's perfect, merciful, and full of unconditional love and will make us have all our wildest dreams and fondest hopes come true. Well, I doubt the first bit, but the second bit will happen because it will make the bullying stop and gain us a support network. Plain and simple. I'll be blunt if you want a religion at least make sure you're trying to be a good person with it? Maybe?
• 11/29/23 I'm ok with restricting, even completely cutting off all trade with China. Outsourcing most of our manufacturing there has made us stupid and has also held us back with respect to technological progress, even progress in other areas. I'm not the only person that thinks this, I'm sure. You can talk "economic progress" all day long about how trade with China supposedly benefits us but at the end of the day, knowledge and experience is more valuable than cash, and we lost out to them. Plus, imagine what this place would look like and how different it would be if we actually manufactured things that required scientific literacy and/or specialized knowledge. Just saying. To make this clear, however, I don't have anything against non-CCP-supporting people in China.
• 12/22/23 If there's only one thing you teach younger generations, let it be this: nothing that was done to you has ever been, nor will ever be, sufficient justification for harming the innocent. No other justifications apply either. It simply is not right and that's final.

*Shit is personal. My family history: they tried to do the right thing. And by "tried" I mean they damn well worked hard, did the best they could to do the right thing, and did not harm the innocent. A whole lot of personal sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears went into that. I know that much about my family history and I try to honor that by doing the right thing in my life also.

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