“I thought of the resistless passion which drives men to undertake terrific scrambles. No example can deter them . . . a peak can exercise the same irresistible power of attraction as an abyss.”
– Théophile Gautier, 1868
why are your kids so smart?
Every time someone finds out how amazing she is at math I say it’s because she had extra vaccines and tons of fluoride.
The rich pretended it makes you autistic, it doesn’t it makes you smarter. They want their kids to be the ones getting top jobs while poor people are stuck in manual labor.
Smart people know I’m being an ass, antivaxers look startled. Logic isn’t working I figured I’d just try my own disinformation campaign.
There are three ways to make a living:
- Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
- Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
- Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
The rest is commentary.
Society holds together through spectacle and habit rather than accountability
It is necessary to choose the difficult truth over the easy satisfying one.
The grifters and the hucksters and the influencers selling impossible things succeed because audiences reward certainty and punish doubt. They honor confidence and resist complication.
on smart people who are stuck
the $25+ billion Iran War & Profits
The Chance for Peace
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” Address “The Chance for Peace” Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53 by Dwight D. Eishenhower
seems poignant
Nothing you do matters
A Ding Dong from a factory is not the same thing as a gâteau au chocolat et crème chantilly from a baker which is not the same thing as cramming chunks of chocolate and scoops of whipped cream directly into your mouth while standing in front of the fridge at 2:00am.
I didn’t leave a dent in the universe so much as splatted against it. The world no longer has a need for what I somewhat sardonically call my art.
on sunk costs
Sunk costs: just because you’ve already sunk your time/effort into a situation doesn’t mean that you should continue putting in more & more time/effort (let it go!).
You know how dogs appear to be so happy? You also know that when dog is called to eat it runs away immediately from the hole it’s been digging for last three hours?