The Blog Section Of The Site, 2024

January

• I do hope no one forgets that Kristi Noem is a bona fide genocidal terrorist. During the height of the pandemic, she and others like her in the South Dakota government clamored to open up the roads (closed at the time due to pandemic) to the Native American reservations there. This was at a time when neither vaccines nor sufficient treatments were readily available. Like I mentioned previously, my family consists of Holocaust survivors so this sounds very familiar. Morally and ethically? Well you know what the right thing to do here is.
• At this point in time I doubt I'm the only one questioning if the human race is truly redeemable as a species. But maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the question that's more worth asking and paying attention to is if the individuals you know have among them people that are worth dealing with the rest of this stupid species for. Maybe it's better to leave the weightier question of if the entire race is worth the effort to keep going up to the gods. I'd say the kids are worth fighting for if no one else. In terms of being worth fighting for, I'd say the kids are closely followed (as a group) by the medical professionals, then the emergency personnel and first responders, and then perhaps essential workers that do their jobs. I say this after seeing what happens when essential workers do not do their jobs or are not in a given place. I'm not saying these groups of people are "more worthy of life." I am saying they are more worthy of risking your own neck for, along with risking your own neck for your loved ones and friends, than for people you don't know who have not earned your trust. Blind faith in humanity isn't a luxury I have anymore.
• There are a lot of changes coming. I suspect we will see a lot of logical fallacies from people who have become too stuck in to get out of the ruts they're stuck in without being forcibly dragged out. Here's a very common one that I expect in spades, especially from people trying to be teachers, oy. It goes like so: "It's too complicated, and I don't understand it, and I don't like it. It also contradicts what I have been brought up to believe and/or what everyone else believes. Therefore, it's wrong." The challenge, I think, is in identifying people with this kind of antithetical-to-truth belief system before they are brought into positions of power where they can continue to delude themselves and harm others. And doing everything possible to ensure they stay out of positions of power until (if) they start to value the truth more than their own comfort.

February

• Call me out of touch, but I'm old enough to remember when religious people of any religion tried to come to a patient understanding of people of other religions because their own religion told them to. As long as the people they were interacting with seemed to be trying to be good people there was an element of tolerance there based on being religious. Where did it go wrong?
• Picture this, if you will. I envision a world where Christian people don't see everyone else as inferior, their enemies, sinful, "fallen," or any number of other pejoratives. Where they try instead of converting people, listening to where they are coming from, having respectful conversations, and putting themselves in the other people's shoes. In this world, recruits to Christianity (ironically) are more numerous, and more legitimate since people come to it out of a desire to be better people instead of fear and suffering. In this world, people know that evangelizing and "missionary work" is actually harmful and counterproductive, and that you get more flies with honey than vinegar anyway. I know this world exists because I've seen it. I've met Christians like this. Have they converted me? No. I'm not convertable, so to speak, though I respect Christianity as a valid path for some who like it. But I at least don't despise Christianity or the powers-that-be behind the religion thanks to them and their efforts. I at least can step foot in a church without terror thanks to people like them.

March

• Much as Catholicism has its issues, there are some things it got right, and the Seven Deadly Sins (in excess) is one of them. Guess what exemplifies the sin in excess of Sloth? Racism. There are few things, if any, as lazy as being a full grown adult that can hack it on your own, keep yourself alive, and all that, and refusing to stand on your own two feet. Instead, relying on the efforts of people who are already dead, and your own ancestors among them. And on people who will "work" for you who are just like you - lazy. Why even live at all that way? You're replaceable that way and you can't rely on your so-called friends; their words aren't worth the spit behind them. More importantly why would anyone ever willingly associate with such a person? Any indication of racism is the same as that person saying, "I am fully capable of making it on my own, but I choose not to. Therefore, I am now a parasite on you. If I give anything in return, praise me."
• Was reading through one of the guilty pleasure websites I like these days, Postfun and came across an article about the Hells Angels. Rules The Hells Angels Have To Follow As I was reading it, I started thinking to myself "This is familiar. Why is this familiar? Oh." About 15 years ago Israel's culture was very similar. Except with greater diversity and gender diversity since women as well as men got drafted at 18. There's also the fact that the country was founded out of desperation due to pogroms and the Holocaust - I do not know what the founding story of the Hells Angels is. The article is plenty vague, and I assume this is because you'd have to be a Hells Angels to know the full history. Of course, nowadays the rules of honor and integrity that used to be visibly part of israel seem to, in some part of the population (hopefully not a lot) have gone the way of Netanyahu's madness - into total bedlam - but this kind of thing, or something like it, is what the culture was built on.
• This Reddit post about Women who were actually tradwives pre-Feminism is interesting. Makes me wonder if everyone in Silent Generation, Millenials, Gen Z and younger folks have a lot in common - more um, inclined to have common sense instead of boil down the complex things about women's rights and economics (and other big topics) into idiotic debates about abortion and defunct economic systems like caste systems and communism, but no one hears about it as much because we're too busy, like, not caring what everyone else is doing
• Although initially this point was about just Tumblr, and Communism and why I hate both, this covers more than just those but every toxic movement. Every -ism, every armband-wearing tribe of people just waiting with bated breath to victimize a hapless outsider. They're just getting high off of other people. All of the self-imposed conformity, the "I'm so nice" signaling, the "love" for the in-group. Not only are these folks getting high off of social acceptance, it's not very damn likely that they're doing so out of the goodness of their hearts. In fact it's probably entirely motivated by selfishness. Don't join these cliques - you'll be replaceable, just like them.
• Lately Communism has been proving very attractive to younger folks. However, loving Communism now as a species is like going back to an abusive relationship saying "it will be different this time!" yet it somehow never is. Older generations are really dropping the ball, particularly people who actually are from or grew up in Communist places, because it's their duty to categorically prove why people who love Communism are horribly wrong. So if you meet that description, you might wanna get on it before Democracies start looking a lot like the first steps to Communist dictatorships where you're from.
• There are several ways to spit in the face of veterans of the military who have given you your freedoms. I am including them here to spread awareness of the problem. Thing the first: supporting the infamous ex-president. Canonically, he supports dictatorships, and has seriously failed to help active duty soldiers and veterans get what they needed - heck, he even got Mattis to quit. If you don't know who that is, that's the guy who trained Lloyd Austin, who is to a large extent responsible for the fact no one has gotten nuked in this Russia-Ukraine conflict. If you don't believe me, a civilian, about how "great" the former guy is and was for veterans and active duty troops, ASK THEM. Second way: discriminate against them when you are hiring. Third way: set off your own fireworks instead of leaving it for the city to put on a large show. PTSD isn't a joke, and if soldiers have risked their life for you in an area with bombs and/or gunfire and worse, it's supreme irony to be triggering their flashbacks, especially on July 4th, the day we are supposedly honoring the freedom soldiers have given us. Final way: to fail to listen to troops and what they need, and to fail to believe them. There's no reason to lie about serious shit like, for instance, the fact that the VA doesn't help soldiers like it should.
• Today I learned that Texas ranchers and ranching families will actually risk their lives for the sake of their livestock, especially their cows. They will go the extra mile to give these creatures the best possible quality of life, with total dedication, even at the risk of their livelihoods - the livestock die, the ranch goes under. In all honesty if I'd known this before I would not have ragged on Texas ranching traditions the way I have in sections like the Vegan Foods and other ones. I had a good reason, one that most Texas ranchers are probably not aware of: I'm most familiar with other states' ranchers and monocrop farmers, which mostly consist of inbred motherfuckers ruining the land with negligence, treating their families, children, livestock, and total strangers like slaves, and pretending to be "country" and "hardworking," which to someone from an Israeli farming background is actually insulting. You're supposed to respect what you grow, even if it's vegetables. But I digress. Consider this my way of apologizing. I'm sorry.
• You know how West Texas is considered relatively uninhabitable? Not to Israelis. They relocate there, this state starts being a net exporter of all the food. That's how it is.

May

• So, there's talk of a supposed civil war now. Amidst pro and con demonstrations for Israel/Palestine, or whatever. For the latter, yeah, peace is long overdue, and Netanyahu can go suck a dick. For the former, is now really the time? No matter which side of the political divide you're on, if you're deciding that now is a splendid time for some kind of civil war, you're working for Russia. Sit down, shut up, and get out of the way so soldiers can properly defend us instead of trying to deal with internal bickering.
• In any given human political, economic, social, judicial, or other system, given a choice between a number of tempting (or not) alternative systems with which to organize it, the way that makes the most sense is whatever method promotes the most merit and the most virtue in the largest amount of people, in even distribution in all subcategories of social groups. A somewhat rational way to determine this could be quality of life metrics for "merit" and amount of crimes committed as analyzing "virtue." I am not certain how to proceed in the most scientific way possible here. How this applies to Communism versus Capitalism, Oligarchies due to unregulated Capitalism versus regulated Capitalism, and even home life could be interesting to explore. I'm mulling it over now.
• Now DeSantis has made lab-grown meat illegal in Texas. Here's how I feel about it. Is he trying to kill the beef industry? We have the tastiest beef in the country. Why would you not clone it?! Or otherwise replicate its flavor in a lab? To eat into your profit margins as a rancher and stop you from earning more money? I mean, we all know the guy's a dud, but this is stupid even for him
• This conviction has been growing in me for quite some time and I feel like it has to be said. You cannot be hateful and intolerant of other people's religions and be Christian. I don't care what people think about this - I care what Jesus would think (yes, I lean very heavily Unitarian). Thinking carefully about what He actually died and lived for and believed in, and what He actually said, being an asshole about someone else's life and judging their entire life based on surface analysis, putting yourself in the shoes of your God and feeling you have the right to judge them, that's the biggest slap in the face to Jesus you could possibly do (well aside from war crimes, but hypocrisy and extreme disrespect are getting up there). You can't be any meaner to Him than that without courting a prison sentence. And that goes for every other religion and its corresponding Deities when you are being bigoted to someone else about it. Sure, I am Pagan and polytheist. I don't give a shit whether you worship the mushroom that sprouted on your lawn. Go and shroom and have fun, it's your life, not mine.
• Here's an idea I have had a hard time putting into words for a while. Traumas are not sufficient justification for morally questionable beliefs or behavior. You may have lived through or seen the worst case scenario of things. You may have a Ph.D. in the School of Hard Knocks. You may have seen the worst of what some of the human species has to offer. That does not give you the right to perpetuate more of the same on some stranger who randomly reminds you of it. If that means you have to work on yourself and your triggers or whatever else has mentally gone wrong for you, then you'd better get on it before you rightfully wind up in prison.

June

• Recently the Encyclopedia of Immaturity made its way into my grubby hands again after more than like 15 years and it jogged loose a tidbit. Cool members of Generation X (the uncool ones are as shit as Boomers) practically raised much of my generation part of the time without any desire of personal gain, but if a lot of Millenials are anything like me a lot of childhood/teenagehood's been repressed so we don't even remember. Um, thanks, guys? (probably not enough thanks) Seriously though I know I'm grateful and a lot of others probably are too
• Telling a female member of our armed forces that they can't do something is no trouble at all. If you're lucky we might be able to scrape some of your remnants from the ceiling after a couple of months. Unlike that last guy.
• 2pac was right. The hate u give little infants fucks everybody. We, as in everyone reading this, you and me, have a golden chance to break the cycles of fucking-up that have been perpetuated on us by older generations. We can for once not fuck up the life of those younger than us. Refusing to get vaccinated while claiming to care about children while your choice gets kids, people who can't get vaccinated for medical reasons, and the elderly killed or seriously ill is decidedly not how to do that. It is how to be a terrorist, a biological one so to speak. Getting involved with age-old feuds and hatreds which arbitrarily separate groups of people based on external factors such as gender, skin color, or whatever instead of what's on the inside and one's character and personality is decidedly not how to do that. Becoming a terrorist or otherwise deciding that deliberately causing harm to any innocent living being is somehow a marvelous lifestyle choice is decidedly not doing that. I can see this going one of two ways. My generation, Gen Z and Gen Alpha wind up learning from the incredible stupidity and evil of previous generations (Generation X being absolutely on the fence in my experience and running the full spectrum of ethical/not ethical behavior). Or, all of us wind up getting a new and improved version of Ok, Boomer-ing and canceled like I canceled the shit out of Feminism in Hindsight Is 2022 and like people worldwide sneered at it too. Your choice. Our choice.
• Re-reading the Sweet Potato Queens series and reminding myself that I am genderfluid has reminded me of something else. Dysphoria. Gender dysphoria to be precise. I had a shitload of that when I first read these books. People don't get what it's like, and it's like hearing every word spoken to you and every feeling you feel spoken to you in a foreign language. Nothing makes sense and something is always "off" but you don't know what it is. Figuring it out re-aligns your whole world and makes it come more clearly into focus. How's that for personal understanding?
• After reading Pinterest's dandy new "use your Google account to log into this" and lamenting how Google is monopolizing way too much I had an inspiration. I've said before that Communism makes it so the most evil by definition rise to the top. Well, Capitalism has the same potential problem because in such a system money is power and freedom and all kinds of goodies, and all, and therefore people who "make it" either worked really hard for a very long time or gamed the system way too much in order to rise to "the top," and gaming the system is way more lucrative than just working hard and doing right ergo corruption's built into this system too. So unregulated Capitalism is almost as bad as pure Communism, but you know what is a good first step to stop the evil schmucks from rising to power in Capitalist systems? #1: get money and familial connections out of politics. Entirely. Completely. Have part of everyone's taxes automatically go to a fund where each political candidate is paid for at a minimum amount for an internet presence and that is it. No money allowed in it otherwise. Have it illegal for anyone running for office or already in office to be directly related to anyone else who's been in politics in this country too. And there we go, less nepotism and corruption right off the bat. And having term limits on every political office no matter how big or small that make it so no one can be in politics for longer than 8 years, including making a switch from federal judge to local mayor or whatever. And having an age limit so no one can be over 55 and a politician. Also, of course, a net worth cap. No one person "needs" more than 30 million dollars in combined physical stuff, cash, and capital, and I don't care how important you think you are. As I've said before, that's being voted for without being voted for in a system like this, and that's another major driver in corruption and evil in a Capitalist society. All the excess wealth can go straight to a variety of desperately needed or otherwise really cool causes such as environmental remediation, a better education system, a nationwide online library, finding cures for wretched diseases, space travel, etc. And uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this sort of thing kind of what directly led to the Revolutionary War?
• If we get to choose our skin colors after we pass on, I choose blue. I would like to look like a Smurf.
• Let's all do our part to ensure the next generation gets dealt a better set of cards than we did. By that I mean more agency to use their own voice and their own choices, and the freedom and space to think for themselves and make decisions for themselves. We can learn a lot from everyone younger than us. I suppose we could go study dinosaurs and fossils too, if we really wanted, but then we'd be missing out on a good half of available wisdom now wouldn't we
• If you ever wonder how Palestinians can be so complacent about Hamas living there for so long without fighting that terrorist organization for (among other things) taking over hospital computers, using Palestinian civilians as meat shields, and other abominable behavior that only benefits Hamas and no one else, look no further than in the US where people turn a blind eye to antivaxxers punching doctors and sickening people, pro-life people causing pregnant women to not get adequate medical care in super pro-life states where doctors have fled due to fear of malpractice lawsuits, racists killing innocent people, conspiracy theorists hoarding necessary resources, and so on and so forth. Sure, there are differences, but fundamentally, are there?

July

• I've been wondering how to word this sentiment for ages, and I think I finally figured it out. The reasons why evangelizing about your religion, whatever it is, is actually bullying and shitting on other people are fairly simple, if numerous. Firstly, unless your religion is so unknown that people haven't heard of it at all til now, they definitely have heard of it before and probably have received the same message you're trying to spread before, therefore you're harassing them and maybe also triggering horrible memories of religious abuse. Secondly, you're presuming that a full-grown adult can't and shouldn't make decisions for themselves, so therefore YOUR (or your Deity's, and that makes your Deity really sound cruel) idea of how they should live their life is more important than their own personal choices, free will, and even happiness. Thirdly, you're making the assumption that you understand your religion so well that you're authorized to claim your Deity or Deities (or whatever) feel a certain way about things, but the other person isn't, doesn't, and that their judgment is inferior to yours. Also you're going out to bother and hassle people minding their own business instead of respecting their boundaries. People have work to do. They have lives of their own and their own shit to deal with. You're also doing this in such a pushy manner that even if the person does wind up converting, how do you know that person converted of their own free will instead of just peer pressure? There's also the fact that there are multiple ways of evangelizing, and many if not most of them don't involve mobbing people with pamphlets or invading their personal space and sanctuaries by knocking on their doors then staying around til they open the door. These include just straight-up being kind to people, which is something most religions have in common, and having heart-to-heart discussions with a mind open enough to listen, not just preach; a two way conversation talking with, not at. Finally: evangelizing is mean! There is a lot of mean in it no matter what religion it is. And I don't think the world needs more meanness, no matter how much you talk about "love" when the demonstrated versions of it are judgmental, cruel, and full of bigotry. You are better off just trying to be a good person and helping people and that's that - and I'm certain there will be more converts to your religion that way too, with the whole leading by example bit. People are not as gullible and stupid as they pretend they are and I'm actually pretty suspicious that the whole charade and house of cards is about to come crashing down
• It's the 4th of July, and I'm thinking about all the teenagers and kids and young people throughout the ages who were really interesting, good people before peer pressure broke them down into something they never consented to be. Peg Bracken mentioned that the great universal "thwack" comes to everyone, but she didn't mention that most of it comes directly from other people. It's a perpetual cycle of crushing the spirit of the youth that older generations do to younger ones. I think that religion is just the current flavor of bullying and if it's not religion, it could be something like for instance fashion sense, political clout, wealth, racism or whatever. Each and every human being can be better and do better and we know this. We all do, I'm certain it's embedded in conscience itself. All I'm trying to say here is don't be a dick when you don't have to and keep an open mind, and you'll succeed where 90% of the people I've ever known haven't. I'm just tired of hearing excuses for bullying people, especially in the name of virtue or honor or ideals or "love." That's not any of these things. It's a chimpanzee running around brandishing a stick they think is bigger than all the rest's. I'm um, going to sit this party out.
• If you're one of those people who wonders if justice is real, here's something. Have you ever noticed what happens when you lose somebody's trust? Once it's gone, short of divine intervention, you'll never get it back. So consider what happens in a world and a society where almost everyone's lost the ability to trust on a bit of a larger scale, because not only have they lost that ability, others have managed to make it past that barrier of coldness only to break that trust again. All I'm saying is that when we finally see the results of all this betrayal, it is not going to be pretty. You better keep your loved ones safe.
• I just had the weirdest thought process. Picture this: Jesus literally died for what he believed in, which was that people should love one another. That they should be kind to one another and maybe not such dicks. My family lore says that judaism had the jews killing the pagans in the region specifically because of human rights violations, and it was entirely justified. At the time of Jesus, it wouldn't have made sense for the christians to fight the Pagans but to try to coexist and I bet for a time they did just fine til churches (not just the Catholic one) got greedy for power. By definition, therefore, if Pagans and other religions are good people, the original version of what Jesus literally died for would have no problem with other religions as long as they're not well, evil people. I thought maybe if I put this on my site maybe a few less young folks and innocent people would die for what is nowadays called "Christianity" but isn't. But I'm not christian, and I don't want to be seen as Christian. and also, in my experience absolutely no Christians listen to a non-Christian. There's also the notion that Deity loves everyone that lives, and that supposedly this goes only through Jesus. That would make out a supposedly loving and merciful Deity stingy and ungenerous - does that even make sense? I say that is not possible. So that's what's going through my head.
• Please, can we maybe talk about something else besides how "important" skin color is? Am I the only person more genuinely disturbed by the (born human, chose to be horrible) monsters among us walking around looking like humans than by superficial bullshit like how a person looks? We could talk about kittens. Puppies. Good cakes. Food. ANYTHING else?! Then again I suppose if someone's that superficial I'd rather know it sooner rather than later. Save us both some trouble.
• The "you're going to hell" speech is actually a speech about how you're not mean enough, so therefore you are going to Hell. Here's how that goes. You're not mean enough to imagine that there's this tyrannical Deity who sends everyone who doesn't gargle its balls (or whatever appendage this Deity has) and absolutely suck up to it, straight to Hell. Therefore you too are also going to Hell. That is literally the logic of the fire and brimstone stuff.
• Looking at the Google Map or whatever of any given town in the US you'll tend to notice something strange. Multiple multiple churches in one town, even a dozen, in the smallest place. I've never met a Christian who thought this was strange, but having grown up Jewish I can tell you it's pretty odd. Why? You guys are all Christian! if you can't get along with each other, how can you call yourselves Christian? Seriously?! Are you just wasting time in all these churches? And oh yeah, where are the other houses of worship, you know, mosques, meditation halls, Hindu temples? You chase em all off with a shotgun? Man.
• If antivaxxers or other people with monstrous behavior are getting you down, read The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe and consider the old Texas saying "A coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero dies but one." You can watch people live out the plotline of that story in vivid neon lights repeatedly, and not necessarily due to plague either. You can, unlike them, attempt to meet your fate (whatever it is) with courage and honor. You can be burdened with the knowledge of life and its tragedies without also burdening yourself with being evil too, as that's a burden on not just others but yourself. Actually, not being evil is a kind of freedom that few people have the fortune to taste.
• Don't know how I didn't make this logical connection before but you cannot be antivaxx and pro-life. By definition, it is not possible. I honestly don't think it was ever about the kids at all, just about power tripping to make yourself feel like you are in control of your own life. So I really question what pro-life churches have been doing this entire pandemic while literal children were DYING OF COVID. Or, the Pope and the Catholic Church. Did any of them actually require the covid vaccine to get in the door? I don't think so. Did any of them make this logical connection? I hope.

August 2024

• This is probably not the last time I'll have to say this, but here goes. I don't have anything to do with evil entities like the Christian Devil or any Deities of questionable ethics, such as (for instance) the Egyptian Set, for the same reason I don't have anything to do with most religions, including the ones involving the Bible. I do not worship or work with any neutral Deities, Deities of questionable morals, ethically questionable religions, or any Deities that are anything other than only Good, truly Sacred, truly Divine, and actually Deities. And it's not because I haven't heard of say, Theistic Satanism, or various left-hand path or "empowering" religions or traditions in Witchcraft or the Occult. It's because I've seen religions used as a tool to empower yourself and bludgeon other innocent undeserving people, most noticeably what was called Christianity when I was growing up, then out came all the whataboutisms and the logical paradoxes to "justify" this unethical behavior. So to me, all this other stuff, it's all the same shit. No thank you.
• So, I've spent about the past 15 years figuring out how to be as self-sufficient as possible, at least in theory, in terms of material wealth. This kind of thing was actually done in say, Ye Olde England and many other places, in the Dark Ages, Middle Ages, and before then, and was often part of the domain of women. Men may have owned the land, but the women would likely process the raw goods from the land into food, clothing, even shelter. It's still like that today in some places of the globe. If you try to homestead nowadays and are any gender, you're looking at about a 12-hour or 16-hour workday every day, no days off, and that's with machinery and efficient farming techniques. So I think that anyone against industrialization and Capitalism should give that a try. Bon voyage! Good luck!
• What spurred that particular observation was watching an episode of How It's Made and seeing rows and rows of raw goat hair being spun into cashmere yarn by machines, and comparing that to personal experience of weaving, knitting, and one or two disastrous attempts at spinning. It's fun for about the first couple of hours but then it becomes a monotonous living hell, and many women have wasted away their ENTIRE LIVES doing this shit. Over, and over, and over. So seeing that kind of thing done in several milliseconds as opposed to several months to a whole year is a big deal, ok? So if you really want to live off the land or otherwise be as self sufficient as possible, yeah by all means be eco friendly, but automate the fuck out of it, and buy all the machines, and learn all the things.
• There's some study somewhere or news headline(s) which made a bunch of people in the Pagan community really excited. They got persuaded that hunter-gatherers actually work less than modern humans. I question whether any of these people have ever been on a camping trip, let alone one without food. My estimate, having been outside enough to contract Lyme disease (yay), is when you're getting set up for permanent or mobile camp, you're going to be working every waking hour and hoping you don't go to bed hungry. Hopefully you have someone to help; if not then it's gonna be really difficult if not impossible to do this alone. Once you're set up, you're looking at a few hours of leisure every few days, as it's not a matter of how many hours you work but how many hours per week you get to rest. Some of that leisure time might be spent waiting for the fish to bite or the stags to show up. So again, good luck.
• Racists are killing everyone's freedom and quality of life with their stupid bullshit, but most of all they're doing it to themselves. They are - literally - drug addicts, and if you've spent any time around drug addicts (and oh, I certainly have) you know that eventually their lives will spiral so far out of control that no one will be able to help them out of the wreckage and the mess they've created for themselves, and they'll be floundering in it. Same goes for all the other drug addicts who make orphaned toddlers have excellent behavior in comparison - bigots, ultra-religious assholes, tankies, TERFs, people simping really hard for Netanyahu or Hamas, etc. So don't get sucked in. Stay well away.
• I heard once that love is a stronger high than cocaine and more addictive than heroin. Supposedly there's a study on that somewhere. I wonder if there's a study on neurotransmitters somewhere that indicates that making other people feel bad will give a person a drug high? The behavior of power tripping assholes and of drug addicts is the same, that's why I'm wondering.
• Maybe it's all the Fight Club that I watched and rewatched speaking here, or all the Ayn Rand I read, but here's an idea. It seems that a lot of people nowadays are purposefully trying to be like that guy in The Magician's Nephew, the Magician himself. As C.S. Lewis said of that guy's efforts, "Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." So we're observing as a bunch of people are actively trying to devolve their own progress as human beings, and make our society regress, and generally go backwards instead of forwards, to the "good" (actually really shit, but ok, ignore history) old days. What if the rest of us just... stopped interacting with them? It's clear they don't want help. They want attention, but we don't have to give it to them. "We" being people who want to improve as people, as individuals, as how we live our lives and interact with other people. I understand this is an "us" versus "them" argument, therefore should be taken with a grain of salt, but look at it like this, it gives you a better and more diverse cross-section of the population than say, restricting yourself to one small group of people. There are people who want positive change and are willing to work for it everywhere. It's not possible to find them or help them if you're stuck dealing with everyone who's trying to actively hinder positive change. There isn't enough energy. Why not save your breath and energy for opportunities that are likely to show up later? You won't have any to spare if you don't. I'm speaking from experience. Nature abhors a vacuum, so what would you do instead? Why not focus on positive improvements in your own life, self, whatever else? Positive forward progress and evolution takes a whole lot of energy. Drop what you need to, you'll carry the rest by default.
• Prioritizing like that and figuring out what's truly the most important stuff in your life so you can drop everything else in order to focus on what's most important seems to be necessary from time to time
• There is so much stuff lately about "late stage capitalism" and the "radical" new notion that Communism will solve everything. Much of it from the newer generation. You know what generation tried it first? The Boomers. They got their wish, too, in a lot of cases. They got their Social Security, their Unemployment benefits, their pensions, raises, free or cheap college, draft dodging, legal abortions for every unwanted pregnancy, megayachts and huge houses, cheap fossil fuels, outsourced manual labor to factories in other countries for a service economy here, easy life that they "needed," and fucked over everyone else. Are the Boomers happy, now that they've gotten what they thought they wanted? Obviously not; look at 'em. Now the people they fucked over want a piece of the pie, and think that restarting this chain of events will result in a different outcome. You wanna know the really strange part? The very deregulation of Capitalism that these supposedly Communist people created due to sheer neglect of their duties (voting, research, community involvement, pulling their weight as citizens and at their jobs) is what is driving more people to Communism now. And I've finally noticed something about the "good" Boomers. They're too damn passive. And frankly the only people to really shut these Boomers up and make them quit their shit are people from their own generation.
• 8/27/24 You know, I forgot about more of the stuff the Boomers were into back in the day. Drugs, sex, rock and roll, but like, more of it and more excessive than younger generations have any idea of. Especially since it's the same group of people who are absolutely denying all freedoms, even harmless ones, to younger generations. Hey, there are perks to being this into music. Music and the scene it's part of and all of its pop culture and traditions and habits contains a whole lot of the history that people tried to bury. We're talking about the same generation that tried every drug they could get their hands on, every religion that they came across, every philosophy whether good or evil, every nutball idea, every sexual encounter, everything. This generation wanted freedom in EVERY way and they sure didn't get it, because they didn't want the responsibility that came with. Some of them think they have it now cause they're rich and they don't even realize all that money owns you as much as you own it. Yeah, I got their number. Look into it and so will you.
• 8/29/24 It's been my experience that when talking to anyone, but especially anyone who has been described by themselves or others as "dumb," or even someone who has made a bunch of dumb decisions in the past, if you treat such a person with respect and talk to them as if they're just as smart as the smartest person you know, and do not talk down to anyone no matter how "smart" or "dumb" you think they are (and frankly, you wouldn't have a clue anyway), they make an effort to make smarter decisions and think things through more. In fact it's been my experience that people will surprise you like this almost every time. I have no idea why people do not do this. Why would this not be promoted as much as possible?

September

• Communism is, at its most basic, a system where "from each, according to their ability. To each, according to their needs." By definition, then, Communism is a system that requires each person to parasitize everyone else and whoever parasitizes best wins. To work hard means to have someone better at parasitism stealing your hard work's fruits from you because they're better at stealing aka convincing everyone that they "really need" the fruits of your hard work and effort. To request little means you get too little. You can't bow out of a Communist system, therefore the more ethical you are while in one, the worse you fare. The most loudmouth, whiny, complainy, charismatic person who is as evil as possible gets all the money, power, influence, and success. In that respect, oligarchs and wannabe oligarchs like Trump and various billionaires and the most foul people in any Communist system have a lot in common. However, it did not have to get this bad in Capitalism: people could have fought harder for regulations and checks and balances on the unrestricted powers of the rich. Did they? No.
• I'm not the only Witch who feels this way now: Satanists need to get the fuck out of our business. Our holidays are not Satanist holidays. Our rituals are not Satanist rituals. It's bad enough having the Catholic Church and a lot of fundies coopt our shit on the one hand and insult it on the other, but to have the Satanists doing the same thing is fucked up. It's your pseudo-Christian religion, don't drag holidays like Beltaine and Mabon into it, or Pagan Deities like Cernunnos and Pan into it. Witchcraft is Pagan. Satanists are not part of Paganism. They're another flavor of Christianity and that's the way it goes. And let me make this clear: Wicca is not Satanist either. Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente may have been into some dodgy shit and they got famous for rebooting older Pagan mystery traditions, but they did not create those traditions. Nor did they get them from Satanism. * 9/4/24 edit: Technically, Mabon and Beltaine are seasonal holidays so gatekeeping the secular parts of these is like trying to gatekeep full moons. So I'd like to amend this to focus strictly on the religious bits of these. They're not Satanist. Don't use that as part of your religion if you ain't Pagan.
• Believe it or not, most human beings are psychically sensitive to some extent. It's why a lot of people join religions. It feels right to them, and it feels pure, so they go for it. However, lately people have been abusing their talents as psychically sensitive beings in an attempt to force others to also feel what they are feeling. And here's how the average Joe can sense it for themselves. 1. Check in with your emotions whenever they are truly overwhelming you. If you are absolutely drowning in them, feel those feelings and identify and label them. 2. Write it down in a notebook specifically for these kinds of observations. 3. Get online and check the news on multiple sites from varying political viewpoints and sources, or at least on one site you can. 4. See what matches, on the news, what you're feeling. 5. Talk to someone else and see what their mood is. Cross-check their mood with your own. 6. Practice until you learn what is really this sense versus what is just your imagination. This takes a great deal of time. 7. Don't engage in witch hunts. Deeply consider who is spewing what and why, and if you do decide to take any kind of action make absolutely certain you do not harm the innocent. Bear in mind that until the modern world figures out this kind of thing is real and actually happens, "plausible deniability" is still in play. 8. Understand that forcing others to feel your feels is a form of rape. Don't you dare do it yourself.
• People who send out bad vibes like that also have a tendency to send out other things they shouldn't. To send it all right back I recommend: the Hoodoo Reversal. You can find directions for it and for beginning in Hoodoo in Old Style Conjure by Starr Casas, which is a good book. She's quite Christian, but you do not have to be Christian to do Hoodoo. You just have to have a belief in a higher Power that's only Good - to adapt her book to your religion is your business but you can do it. If you are concerned about messing up here, it would be in your best interest to remember a (very paraphrased) thing that Scott Cunningham (RIP) said. People who do unethical things with this sort of thing tend to, for one reason or another, disappear and not be seen or heard from again.
• Here's my bitch about QAnon, and it's something I haven't said already. And I've said a lot. The #1 thing I hate them for, besides of course being terrorists and egregiously harming children and traumatizing them to "save the children" (right) is their constant harping on horrible shit. If you have PTSD then you already know, but that makes it way harder for anyone who has ever been victimized to realize a fundamental truth about life: the horrible shit is not the important parts of life. It really isn't. Bad shit in life is unavoidable but a major part of learning to cope is learning to gravitate to what's good, and learning that life's not defined by the bad shit but by far more important moments like proving yourself and reaching personal milestones and transcendent moments of goodness (think say, watching the sunrise over the ocean) and you can't do that as easily or even at all if someone is shoving garbage down your throat at every fucking opportunity. So yeah, with regards to them and their ilk, it's personal.
• There's this quote supposedly by Rumi: "Out beyong ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." I think Rumi was wrong. I think in order to have a functional world where people don't go out and commit war crimes against one another without any kind of recourse, there needs to be a world like this: actual wrongdoing that can be defined as "egregious harm to a human being," aka war crimes, torture, and actual evil that is of the "you know it when you see it" type needs to be punished by either death or life in prison with absolutely no chance of parole. Other wrongdoing that's qualified as a lesser evil, but still evil, needs to be punished by prison. And the rest of us can hang out together in that field. There will be no damn field if people take Rumi's shit advice. In fact, even if the field is an idea-creation, there will be no one to visit it (except for evil and shitty people) if people take that advice, because all the decent ones will be dead. Honestly if you're against this sort of thing then I wonder several things. First, have you actually experienced anything even remotely as awful as what would require such measures to be taken? Also, how much of that idealism is fear and cowardice? How much of it is laziness? And finally, if people actually take the advice of taking the pacifist road and therefore evil people swarm your world, how much are you willing to take in order to stand strong in pacifism? Even more importantly, how many weak and innocent people, especially kids, need to suffer and die for your pacifism to be fulfilled? Look, you take your road, whatever it is, but think it through.
• 9/15/24 Worldwide I don't think that a lot of people realize the greatest threat to everyone is dictatorships. Monarchies, such as the de facto ones of billionaires and multinational corporations, have also got to go. Both are direct threats to all humans on Earth. But right now I'll tackle one of them: China. It's been on my shit list for a while, but now it's on my shit list as in "you're going down" now for sending money to Russia. I also wonder just how much other sheisty shit it's been up to beyond its borders. One significant way to fight it is economically. Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Israel, and the United States can collaborate with their microelectronics industries and other industries. They can also open their borders to merit-based immigration. This would make a more significant threat to China than you'd think. Mainly because it would make all of these countries wildly, massively rich and therefore powerful. Frankly, if Palestine wanted in on this, I'd be ok with them merging with Israel, and I think a large chunk of Israelis would too. The rest of them? Can go to jail with Netanyahu and all of the terrorists from Palestine and the countries surrounding Israel as far as I'm concerned. There's no difference in quality of human there. Anyhoo, there could also be far easier travel between these places and that would also help. I'm so here for the commercial air travel industry to become eco friendly at last. Come to think of it the international travel, tourism, and education industries in general need that as well as to become accessible and affordable. It would promote peace.
• 9/15/24 You know what terrorists do to us worldwide? Give society an autoimmune disorder. Look at the Middle East, see what I'm saying? What we really should be doing is grabbing the terrorists by the scruffs of their necks and throwing them in prison for life (at least). What we ARE doing is turning a blind eye and then discriminating against everyone who looks or acts like the terrorists. Then wondering why things never change.
• 9/24/24 You know, Israel's latest policies are dumb as fuck. Yeet the residents of the Gaza Strip, who cares if they're sick and could die when moved, whatever LOL. Israel is starting to behave like the surrounding governments and countries' behavior to Israel back in the day. I don't know who is causing this, or who is supporting this and whoever they are, as I've stated previously, if Israel doesn't take those "Israeli" people and hold them accountable, there might not be an Israel. But let me tell you this is even more disappointing than it looks because here's what the surrounding countries have done since the 1940s. "A stated goal of 3% civilian casualty rate for the Israeli Defense Forces?! Horrible! Look at all the children dying on our side! And we'll put them in the line of fire too as long as it proves a point! We have a proud and noble tradition of causing ONLY civilian casualties on the Israeli side! And they're all definitely Jewish!" (For reference, the road signs in Israel are in Arabic, Hebrew and English for a reason - it's got Muslims, Christians, and Jews in spades as it's the Holy Land for all of the above, and it's got other religions there too... has for decades and possibly since the beginning) I'm not joking. Also, the United States military as far as I am aware does not have thie same adherence (nowadays) to causing as low of a civilian casualty rate as the IDF did back in the day. I am not sure if it's taught to each soldier in the same manner, or if it's even a thing. Because if it's a policy of "just do the job and get it done" instead of "do the job and do your absolute level best to get a civilian casualty rate of 3% or lower" versus terrorist groups, we have a problem, because most of our enemies as the US these days are terrorists. And they do bring their kids to work. If there's one thing you can count on, it's for people who are evil in one area to be evil in others. And one more insight for the road: the terrorist groups and governments surrounding Israel that want to kill off Israel are just as much of a threat to their home countries as they are to Israel. As I've said, they're willing to use civilians as live bait. They don't care about their home countries. I am fairly certain they just care about themselves.
• 9/24/24 This has been a long time coming so I'll just say it. I am not Muslim, and I've previously said I have never, not once been harmed or hurt by a Muslim. I have been attacked by very inaccurate bombs in Israel while I visited, but I didn't take it personally as I thought the terrorists doing so had neither any religion nor any semblance of humanity. I'm 99% sure that Islam does not condone any act of terrorism or harm to the innocent but I am not a scholar of Islam. Someone's got to pick the religion apart piece by piece and present that evidence in Arabic, English, Hebrew and all the other languages they can to prove that point, and they have to be both Muslim and a native speaker of Arabic. In fact a few people gotta do that. And they gotta do that for the Hebrew Bible as well, the Tanakh, and the English one for all denominations of Christianity. I'm more than a little stunned such a bunch of books doesn't exist already. The closest we've got is The Chronicles of Narnia!

October

• 10/7/24 This has been building up in me for about 10 years now, maybe 15. Maybe more. Do not punish people for good behavior. You'd think that people would understand the lessons of the past 4 years, complete with Oompa Loompas coming out to sing songs detailing the things we should not have done, but apparently not! I'm adding to Detecting B.S. as a result, and Ethics. I am fed up with the following:
• Allowing myself to have an open mind about various unusual ideas, lifestyles, and mindsets, only to be hit in the face with endless conspiracy theory bullshit or religious bullshit or political bullshit without a shred of evidence, and expected to swallow it wholesale. And pretend that it's true. And listen, and listen, and listen to all of it before I finally speak my piece only to be told "you wouldn't understand." Yeah, I would, you think you're the second coming of Christ and you don't want me to rip you off your pedestal. Awesome.
• Allowing myself to give someone the benefit of the doubt, only to have them betray me. Or, giving to charity because it could be the right thing to do, only for that charity to get so much support it stops doing its job because it expanded too fast.
• Allowing myself to be patriotic only to be hit in the face with literal Russian propaganda in the name of the Boston Tea Party, what a "true Patriot" is (pro-Russian), and sneering diatribes against veterans and active duty soldiers. Or, anti-Israel propaganda about how my beloved grandparents are supposedly evil. I know Netanyahu and his supporters are evil, I know many people in Israel have turned to the dark side, you don't need to tell me. I know. Not all of them have, not that anyone these days cares.
• Allowing myself to value virtues like freedom, truth, and honor while being surrounded by people who think that "freedom" is the right to be a terrorist, "truth" is the right to believe whatever you want to, and "honor" is the right to be a terrorist - in other words, that "virtue" is the right to do whatever you want, worship yourself, and feel good about it. Then they come up and spew their newspeak only I don't know it's newspeak and only a few minutes or weeks or months later, hey presto, the truth comes out about them and now I'm even more of a hermit than I was.
• Allowing myself to help people who then take advantage of my good nature or just treat me like shit
• Working like a dog only to get nothing in return, except for being poor, insults, criticism, and conversion attempts
• If you find yourself surrounded by mean, cruel, or just aloof people who do not talk to one another and then bemoan about how the world is "going to hell in a handbasket" and you've done any of these things, neither I nor anyone else care. Not now and not ever. You wanna know why we can't have nice things and the human race can't progress towards a better more positive future? That. You've trapped every good person into staying in their lane and not even trying to change anything for the better because every attempt to do so has been twisted into an action towards evil - by you.
• 10/13/24 Everyone is saying stuff like how Trump is "the problem." Trump is only a symptom. He's a problem, but he'd be nowhere if it weren't for a bigger problem. A certain subset of older generations, starting with a small chunk of Millenials, a larger of gen X, most Boomers and some older generations, that are: narcissistic, sociopathic, and Machiavellian. What made them that way? I believe Communism did. I believe Fascism and Totalitarianism did. Social Security: is Communist. Medicare and Medicaid: is Communist. Unemployment benefits: are Communist. Sexism and racism: are Communist in practice if enforced by the system and/or a family. The school system: is Communist. Lots of stuff in government jobs: are corrupt and Communist, and people work there who shouldn't because of "regulations." (Just look at the VA, how is it still going?!). If you are having a hard time understanding this then understand that "from each, according to their ability, to each, according to their needs" is in the end ALWAYS "from the slaves, to the masters, to the masters, according to what they want." Because if you are brilliant and unscrupulous in such a system, and know how to use people, all you have to do is pretend you "need" everything well enough and have no ability to help anyone else, but kill or otherwise silence every witness to the contrary and make a bunch of powerful friends who are in on this with you or at least loyal to you, you are set for life. So we have people who have benefited from gaming the system for way too long and now there's a chance it could all get taken away, so they're pitching the biggest hissy fit of the century in favor of whoever they think will make them keep those unearned benefits. See, Totalitarianism, Fascism, and Communism have one thing in common: unearned benefits that promote the success and power of the people who are the most evil and unscrupulous. China and Russia are simply further along that path than the United States is. Sure, these newspeak narcissistic-sociopathic-Machiavellian people say they "hate Communism" but if you know what Communism actually means you see they're just putting up a front. What we need is a system that promotes good by rewarding it with power and money, such as a very well regulated Capitalist one that enforces total transparency of corporations and businesses while keeping all monopolies to a minimum (and for heaven's sake a net worth cap) and well, all the stuff I mentioned on the Rights page and the Texas page, not a system that promotes evil by rewarding it with power and money, in the human population. On a smaller scale, the people who have been complacent and going along with these older generations are also a problem, because the only sane self-preserving response is to shut that shit down fast and that hasn't happened yet. Interestingly, modern subsets of religions also have been promoting the mindset of Communism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism within each religion, and yet that (if you read the originals or try to understand them) isn't even a part of those either!
• 10/14/24 To a certain extent, however small, everyone is responsible for one anothers' actions on this planet through our own actions or inactions. That's as Commmunist as I'll get. Everything has a consequence and a ripple effect. We don't live on spread-out islands or spaceships. We are all on one planet, we are all connected via cause and effect, and we are all one species. You want a bogeyman? Look around you but also in the mirror.
• 10/17/24 Sometimes I hear people complain about the poor living conditions under "capitalism" and then claim communism is the solution. They don't realize that two of the most likely causes of the poor living conditions today are a. Communism at every level of society, from the small to the large scale, from the low income to the high income brackets. People with the least work ethic gaming the system the most to give them the most unearned benefits, usually via literal Communism (use the actual principle "from each according to their ability to each according to their needs, I NEED A NEW CAR" and you'll see it everywhere). b. People not fighting to keep Capitalism regulated and free of filth. People seem to think that Communism is some magical solution to all of their problems, and that it will give them great living conditions as long as they work less than they do now. They don't realize it's a really huge family environment with three hundred million plus people, with who knows how many whiny spoiled little brothers going "MOOOm! My tendies are cold!" and no way to run away from the manchildren or stop working triple the hours because guess who provides the tendies - the more integrity you have the more you'll work, except for whoever pretends to be the neediest.
• 10/20/24 I think the biggest problem is the most hard to notice. Conformity's been shoved down a lot of people's throats for so long and they've been forced to do the same to others, and that's happened for so long that almost no one knows who they are. This is a problem for several reasons if this is you: a. you don't know how to be happy, truly happy, because you have no idea what distinguishes you from everyone/thing else b. you don't know what's real and can be easily led by the nose, thereby making you perfect for exploitation, c. you don't know how to love because you don't even know what you bring to the table or what you want, d. you don't know who you love for real because that could be a lie, just like everything else in your life, and e. nothing makes sense to you so nothing matters to you. So I imagine a lot of people are slowly waking up to that right now. Only solution? Introspection!
• 10/25/24 Personal experience with Communists or people who got really steeped in Communism. The ones I know don't barter. Whatever else they believe in, they regularly consume money. Lots of it. In terms of love and care for others, they will pretend to have plenty of it, so long as plenty of money is on hand. If it dries up, or if they get bored, they'll find someone else to play with... or get "radical" and start dumpster diving and squatting (i.e. getting those sweet material resources, just without money, big difference) and think they're brilliant for it. I think the only real constant that I've seen besides a love of money is pathological selfishness and total denial about it. "Everyone else works hard... for ME!" In that sense there's no difference between these folks and someone super entitled from a trust fund or a very rich family. None at all.
• 10/27/24 You know why libraries are so important? I'm talking both ebook versions and versions where you check out physical books since each fulfills a different set of needs. Because not every human being is blessed with parents that love them and teach them what they need to know. It just doesn't happen. But human nature being what it is, human beings need to learn everything in order to live a good life, starting with a good moral code and ethics and going all the way to logic, science, and all of the other topics of adulting and human education. If you haven't had experience trying to babysit toddlers or little kids you probably wouldn't get it, but they really don't have a clue about things like right and wrong, or even cause and effect, just some kind of vague understanding. It is important to learn these things for real if you didn't have parents that did that. That is where the library steps in. Books are not an adequate substitute for parents, friends, or a community that is nontoxic, wholesome, and allows you to grow into your best self, but if you don't have a nontoxic group of people like that, or if you don't have people in your life at all, it sure is infinitely better than nothing. In fact no matter how good the community a library helps it improve from the individual level on up. Libraries are not the Internet, either. It takes a lot more effort to write a book than to spew your emotional sludge onto the Internet for strangers (guilty!). And for the record they are technically Socialist, not Communist. That's how they work, unless you are paying for a subscription for library access, which I think actually detracts from your library experience because you get a too-curated collection. Picture what things would look like if we had 24/7 libraries with veterans as bouncers, everywhere, in every town no matter how small or large. Picture what would happen if people donated all the books they don't read in a year that just take up real estate in their houses, if they would donate resources to their libraries, and what would happen if people voted to willingly raise taxes to fund their local libraries. I feel so strongly about this that I'll say that the guru Amma says charging for meditation is like charging a baby for breast milk. I feel exactly the same way about libraries.
• 10/27/24 One other point about libraries. They aren't a substitute for bookstores and buying books. I'm sure the Socialist comment will be taken the wrong way. Frankly here's how I use a library, I read the books there and whatever I see myself regularly using or at least valuing and needing every so often at home, I buy. For instance, Sweet Potato Queens books. And here's how I use a bookstore: like a candy store. To my way of thinking any author that is scared of libraries taking away their profits probably sucks as a writer. One more point: libraries don't just get donated books, they also buy books and thus the writers get paid. This isn't Communist exploitation where writers are forced to churn out books for "the good of the people" aka whoever's the dictator of the week.
• 10/27/24 You'd think that giving libraries a whole shitton of money through taxes or direct donations would really help with the overall quality of the library. Problem. Sometimes they just remodel the building, or create other weird stuff that doesn't really help the community, or (and this is the worst thing I've seen) buy a bunch of really bad books-of-wokeness or books-of-fascism explaining how great it is to be one skin color while another is bad, or how conspiracy theories are great, or how (insert group here) is bad, or whatever books are popular for whatever stupid reason, or the usual pop science garbage that doesn't actually tell you any facts, etc. like seriously? I just want to learn electronics and other stuff for a better life. So here's a better way to go about it. Buy the books you think should be in the library. Donate them to the library. (10/30/24 If you aren't sure what books you could donate I stand by everything I put on this website; it's good stuff). For those of you who have gone to college, you know exactly how much of it was taught through the textbooks and how much was taught in the labs and lessons. I suspect for a lot of y'all donating your textbooks to a library can be a big old "fuck you" to the existence of student loans and overpriced college. In all cases everyone wins. Ignorance is a germ, this is a good way to stab at it.
• 10/30/24 Well, here's what I'm picking up on as an empath. "Oh, the universe is a cold and horrible place, the Gods don't care, life is shit, let's drown in our negativity blahblahblah." Babby's first nihilistic experience? First time? Have you considered that like, you can just be neutral about all this? You can withhold judgment about everything that's outside your direct sphere of influence. You can choose to be as neutral as possible, emotionally speaking. You can choose to not engage in this kind of emotional drunkenness. You do not have all the information about how the Universe runs anyway. But I mean, above all else, you can also choose to not send this kind of negativity where it doesn't belong but just keep it to yourself. Unless you're the kind of person that likes to fling poop everywhere. That's a chimpanzee. I suppose you could be that.

November 2024

• 11/3/24 People in this country, and perhaps some of our troops, used to ask "how could people in Afghanistan or Iraq let terrorists do what they wanted for so long? how could they allow such evil to fester and grow unhindered like that?" This was really prominent around 9/11. A lot of people in my schools growing up asked the same question about how the Germans let the Nazis take over. And to that I say hey, look around you. It's the same. I have the "luxury" of seeing it coming sooner because of my Holocaust survivor family, and of not being listened to or believed til it got to this stage. You wanna know how you'd act in a choose-good-or-choose-evil choose-honor-or-dishonor scenario? You already know because you're living it. And in terms of the sheer amount of dishonorable people "not believing in vaccines" and supporting Trump, or being tankies and TERFs, and on and on, consider the equally dishonorable batch of people who have been shutting up and putting up. Why? Cowardice. Imagine having to live like that. Look what all this dishonor and cowardice has done to our country. If you're under 20 or so you probably don't even remember what it was like before the racists, communists, greedy entitled assholes, spineless suck-ups, and complacent idiots ruined this place but it was pretty good. I'm sorry you have to see it like this.
• 11/4/24 As mentioned in the Women's Rights For Men section, precious few people with accessibility challenges or disabilities actually want to be a burden to anyone. Or to have to be anything less than totally independent. This goes for the elderly too, no doubt. But I don't think that extends to many able-bodied or able-minded people because of a lack of experience in doing for themselves what has always been done for them, or has always been easy for them. So think about this. We might not have actual slavery anymore in this country (with children as notable exceptions as defined in the legal system, where children are pretty much defined as the legal property of parents or schools and have little to no Constitutional rights; prisoners may also be an exception though I don't know), nor in-home helpers or servants as much as in the past. But have you ever considered how much stuff you could be doing for yourself is not done by you but by people who are paid very little, and who should probably be getting paid a whole lot more for these essential services? We don't live in a manufacturing blue-collar economy as much anymore so people above a low-income or medium-low income bracket probably don't have experience doing a lot of this kind of labor, but I'll tell you right now. It's suuuuuper exhausting. Try it yourself if you aren't sure what I mean. And then ask yourself exactly how much resemblance there is to what you're paying peanuts for some poor undereducated and unlucky schlub to do for you - versus indentured servitude or actual slavery. Consider also any unpaid labor done by say, a family member or a coworker in their off hours to help you out, or anything else you may have previously taken for granted. If it's enough to make you uncomfortable, reassess what you're doing.
• 11/7/24 You know, this is an ideal time for Russia or China to stage a direct attack against the United States. What with the bickering and the confusion about who actually won the election and what the exact percentages of popular vote and electoral college are. In fact, it's quite plausible that Russia and/or China (and China probably did do this for sure) pulled enough strings to foster enough confusion about our election for a couple weeks. They probably know they can't hide the truth about our election forever but this would at least buy them some time, and they'd want the maximum time possible, in which to fuck with us. And if Trump does happen to win, so much the better for Russia. Then they get all of our military goodies. Our democracy's gone, and they can pick off the other democracies one by one like dominoes. No more freedom. No more dissenters of any sort. We become another Poland. Heck, Poland might have to be the one saving us in the end. So, this is what they mean when they say an excess of compassion is not a good thing.
• 11/7/24 Regarding that pedophile, Trump: If this guy legitimately did win the popular vote in more than half the states, I might as well consider myself legally braindead because I stake my reputation on my belief that he did not. Knowing what I do about this country
• 11/8/24 Here's what I posted in Wisdom Teens
• 11/11/24 The specific importance of Veteran’s Day in the United States is that we know for certain there’s one thing all branches of our military have always had in common. Fighting for a principle greater than mere filthy lucre, power over others, or feeling godly. That principle is to make this place a haven for people who want to be good people and have freedoms, rights, and even have the ability to be good people without having to make ethically dubious decisions every single day to survive. Our country exists to give people a little breathing room and a chance to make themselves into who they are truly capable of becoming; the best people they possibly can be, without spending literally all their time struggling for resources, survival, or basic human rights. And it also exists to give people the chance to do all of this – and this is groundbreaking in human history considering our species’ history of evil, narcissism, sociopathy and selfishness – the chance to do all of these things together. I know it’s a vast oversimplification, but that’s why people have died for this country. This country historically has had the audacity to say, looking at the junkyard of atrocities human beings have committed over the eons, “We have to be better than this. We can be better than this.” And to prove it. I write this now as the 2024 November situation worsens and the nation backslides into complacency, proving that to be complacent in many cases is to be complicit. No doubt this country will have other incidents like this in the future, if there still is the United States in the future. Our only hope is to remember why so many people have fought so hard for this place over the years.
• 11/14/24 Here's an idea. What if every person who voted asked for a copy of exactly who they voted for from the place they voted, so they could take home the paper, see "who they voted for," and compare and contrast with friends and strangers? Like comparing graded tests after school. This would provide a little more security about elections. Not a lot, but a little. This is especially important if you honestly don't see any inauguration speech being packed with people unless they were paid to pack the place, because that means it's pretty likely that the president did not lawfully become said president. Think about it.
• 11/16/24 Conditions in the USA have me going "hey, this reminds me of something!" Yes. Chronic Lyme disease. See, what I have is known as a stealth pathogen. It causes autoimmune symptoms and tends to not show up on all the standard tests for a disease. After years of dealing with it, and almost dying of it in the first years it really got bad, I learned a thing or two. 1. Nothing short of killing this disease would allow me to live. I couldn't just mitigate the symptoms, or pretend everything was fine and believe the doctors and authority figures telling me everything was fine. I am now on antibiotics (herbal, but still antibiotics) and sun exposure, which functions as a kind of antibiotic (for Lyme, just Lyme, don't get any bright ideas). You can't pussyfoot around when something is trying to kill you. 2. I had to research the heck out of what was wrong myself, and all of the things I could do to fix the root causes, symptoms, and symptoms from killing off the root causes. 3. There were no shortcuts. So the country's dealing with a bunch of problems and root causes huh? Almost killed its own democracy for no real reason? Wrong. Find the root causes. Get rid of those. It's how I'm beating Lyme. You can beat this too. I'm not saying to kill a bunch of people blindly. I'm saying to find intelligent solutions that will work (and not Hitler's Final Solution either, but thankfully I think I know you readers are intelligent enough to understand that). My only real advice to you is to not underestimate how much work this will take.
• 11/17/24 Stoicism is a help. Know what you can do, know what you can't, focus just on what you can do. I think you understand that. But I ask the readers of this site to not only spread that message but also to spread the message to everyone who is empathically and psychically throwing a tantrum: "STOP." I also ask the readers of this site to either do what you can to force these people to stop (as long as they are over 18) or ask people who know how to force them to stop... to force them to stop. And to also teach empaths how to shield better. Or you're going to be seeing a lot of deaths of really kind people (empaths). Then you won't have anyone preventing you from picking up on it yourself. Everyone's empathic to some extent. Also, if you don't believe in or care about that, consider this: lots of empaths are actually doing what they can to protect children, since they are naturally more empathic, and that's all kids. If the empaths can't hold on anymore and perish, the kids get the full brunt of this, and a lot of them can potentially get really sick or even die. This is serious. - 11/21/24 To make this totally clear to people with mental illness that causes intrusive thoughts, compulsions, or urges: mental illness is not how to psychic attack someone. It really takes a lot of effort to commit an act of psychic rape and several different things have to line up in order to do it. 1. You have to intend, as strongly as possible and of your own conscious free will, that someone else feel or think what you want them to. 2. You have to also intend, just as strongly, that this override everything they choose to think, be, and feel, completely without their consent. 3. You have to have no subconscious, conscious, or unconscious blocks to doing this; you have to completely ignore (or just not have) any conscience in all three of these. 4. You have to ignore all societal and religious teachings instilled in you to - for heaven's sake - not do anything like this, ever. 5. You have to obsess over this at an actually pathological level; it has to have taken over your life to some extent. See what I mean? Not the same as "bad thoughts."
• 11/18/24 It is now possible to report on a crime that was committed any number of years ago. This is a really handy thing to know if you happen to know of a crime that someone with a truly horrible personality committed however long ago and they don't know you know, and you have evidence. For instance, Trump supporters or really adamant supporters of extremist philosophies that verge on or actually are terrorism. Considering the liberties such people are now more likely to take thanks to the current political climate, you might consider it.
• 11/19/24 Just for the record, it was my idea to create and sustain an online library run by the United States government at a national level, with citizenship identification being one's library card for it, and ask LeVar Burton to ask people in this country for donations for it and generally be its spokesperson. I have been bugging the President about it for years via the White House comment form. If Trump decides to take credit for it he can just go shut himself in Lenin's tomb, where he belongs, til he starves.
• 11/19/24 I don't think I was the only person to mention this, but voting for literally anyone aside from Trump and his supporters is (as I and probably others have explained) a path out of wage slavery. And a large chunk of the population either didn't care enough to vote or actively voted FOR Trump and for wage slavery. What do you wanna bet that they think that totalitarianism, anarchy, complaining, or Communism is the "solution" when they're actually the ones who directly caused the problem? Unbelievable.
• 11/22/24 The other day I saw this saying: "Gen X: We Don't Care." That's not entirely accurate. It's a really diverse generation and there are lots of them. So I'm going to make some generalizations here that apply to large swaths of this generation that I've noticed. It's subjective but I think there's something to it. Disclaimers aside: I think a lot of this generation once cared way too much and they don't have any fucks left to give, or so they believe. I get it, and I see it, but I don't condone it. And I'm really hoping Gen Z doesn't follow in those footsteps. This is - again, generalizing - not a happy or fulfilled generation. I think a large chunk of it gave up on virtues as something to pursue, likely because the Boomers defined "virtues" as "whatever makes Boomer life easy." Caring too much left 'em heartbroken. How I got this info: the music, personal observations, being a musician, living the musician life. I wonder if Gen X will ever get out from the Boomer thumb's shadow. This is after all the first batch of kids that monster-batch had.

December 2024

• 12/2/24 What makes us human? I say it is more than genetics. I say it's more than the sum of a person's parts. More than a body, more than your upbringing and programming, and more than what you were brought up to become. More than a slave to circumstance. This didn't used to be an audacious notion but I believe in the existence of the human soul, the human spirit, and free will. Without those, I don't think you're human anymore. Look around you and think about this.
• 12/11/24 Here's a reference from The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. I'm greatly enjoying my personal headcanon that every news source is staffed by just Weerd and Bogel
• 12/12/24 This pandemic and worldwide situation has brought out the truly villainous behavior of many average Joes to the forefront of what's obvious. No doubt every other country has its own way of dealing with jerks but in the United States the standard approach has been to take the high road and the legal road and generally stay tolerant, even complacent. This is opposite to the Middle East, where everyone is super reactionary to the slightest offense and a lot of innocent people, women and children get killed for no reason other than "justified revenge." We obviously don't want that. However, if you need say, the long arm of the law to get justice for something someone's done to you, and the law and all lawyers aren't going to help because they can't, chances are that a. you don't believe in justice anymore and b. you have spent a while being emotional about it and lamenting your circumstances. So here's a question for you. What do you think would have happened had you spent all that time and effort lamenting your circumstances on getting even instead? I'm not referring to anything illegal. I am however referring to changing the legal code, or legally getting justice on the perpetrator of a crime by spending several years accumulating a paper trail and phone calls to the cops, or just naming, shaming, and blaming, or anything like that. Petty, nasty tactics are sometimes quite legal. And quite frankly sometimes they're richly deserved. The really important thing in all of this is to think about the most likely end circumstances, secondary and tertiary consequences of your petty behavior (butterfly effect is alas, quite real) and avoiding all hmm, collateral damage. For instance you don't want to lump in someone's kids with whatever horrors that person committed and accidentally punish them too. You think about it.
• 12/14/24 I had this realization today now that I'm learning a bit more about the borscht boys in that country they fucked up. Sasha Cohen chose the wrong country for Borat. Kazakhstan? Wrong. He should have chosen Russia. The similarities are absolutely spot on. And now, hey bonus, Trump's going to try to make us into that country in Borat too! Wonderful! Provided the complacent assholes just let him and his cult get away with it of course. That part is up to everyone else.
• 12/15/24 Here goes: I'm extending a personal plea to Ukrainians, to people from every ex-USSR country, and to Israelis who are very good at this sort of thing: please help us find plenty of evidence one way or another about this election and about Trump and his most major supporters, and please put the whole kit and caboodle online. After all, all such countries now have a more personal stake in this since if the truth - and I mean the whole truth, not the glossed-over vague "reports" about things that every news source has failed to properly cover - about both of these does not come out and fast, all mentioned countries could cease to exist. Plus nations either on the border with Russia or with history dealing with them have had more experience dealing with KGB propaganda, brainwashing, and Pravda - and less complacency than the United States because they know what they have to lose. And obviously we're in such a mess it will take some time for the United States to figure our own shit out.
• 12/18/24 You could, hypothetically, look into the old propaganda and main messages of the governments of the People's Republic of China and the USSR, rephrase them to make them sound modern, and casually tuck sayings like that into conversation with anyone you feel iffy about. You could also, hypothetically, read a bunch of books, few people read a lot of books anymore, find the worst villains in those, and rephrase lines from those villains; again tucking sayings like that into casual conversation with iffy people. See how they react. If you manage to still have any faith in humanity left after this, consider how to better protect the people you care about

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