A Phlaming Phoenix

Officer pulled me out of my car, threw me over the his, wrenched my hands up behind my back… Because my registration was out of date.

Yeah, and “womanfriend” has a real incel vibe to it.

Or even the corollary, that the Abrahamic religions grant authority to men, so men who feel as though they command no authority flock to the religions to achieve it.

I have hope that they will not learn from these mistakes and will therefore keep making them. I hope that hope is not misguided.

Yeah, the elections get operated at the state level, but don’t you still need an employed VP to count/register them?

Really, the media finally realized millennials don’t care if we killed Applebee’s or whatever, and they’ve moved on to the next thing to scare boomers with. “They hate us because we buy bags of paper napkins” becomes “They hate us because we can use old style keyboards.” Generations are not a monolith. You can compare them, but it’s stupid to pass judgment in that way.

Greed, corruption, and nepotism are effects of power structures, not socialism. That’s why we have them under our economic system as well as socialist/communist states in the past.

You are born into a family that practices that religion. The people closest to you insist the religion is true. Every week they take you to a stage performance where the audience all insists the religion is true and they performers not only insist it’s true but are treated as a great authority on the truth of the religion.

You are put into youth groups and formal education programs where additional authorities instill in you the constant insistence that the religion is true. You join the local Boy Scout troop and they all insist it’s true. You go to a school run by the church. The entire class of students collectively insist the religion is true.

Some religions, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, send church members and their families to canvas neighborhoods, knocking on doors, delivering the “good news,” failing to convince anyone, and coming to the conclusion over time that the rest of the world just doesn’t want to see the truth that you’ve become convinced of because literally everyone in your life constantly reaffirms that the religion is true.

The most successful indoctrination runs deep and is pervasive.

Baron d’Holbach was writing about it in the… 1600s? And it had been going on for a while at that point, too.

“I’m a bitch, I’m a lover, I’m a child, I’m a mother” might play better than just acceptance of the term.

On top of that, an autism diagnosis rarely gets you any support that isn’t Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy. That’s essentially dog training for your autist (designed by the same B. F. Skinner of “Skinner box” fame using the same principals), and people who have been through it have described it as torture. The ADA doesn’t make many accommodations for folks with non-physical disabilities, and cops have no idea how to interact with folks with communication barriers and an inability to control their bodily movements. It’s tough being autistic in public. It’s tough trying to navigate our society as a parent of autistic people. With or without insurance, it’s hard. The problems are not purely financial.

I recommend some books on the subject, particularly Neurotribes by Steve Silberman and Unmasking Autism by Dr. Devon Price.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I consider “leftist” to mean something like “a collection of positions rooted in criticism of capitalism.” Socialism would be one such worldview (a subset or example of leftism), but so would communism, some forms of anarchism, and more. “Free school lunches for everyone” should probably be considered a leftist position as it undermines the profit incentive of recouping the cost of that lunch, whether he presents that as a leftist thing (which I can see causing some political blowback that he may try to avoid in the name of progressing this kind of legislation) or not. I haven’t had time to do any other research on this guy or his other positions. If he supports a lot of legislation in this vein, then maybe it’s okay to call him a leftist.

Yeah, it grows basically anywhere. That’s why it’s called weed.

Still, in some of these cases (like the Georgia RICO case), others have been charged and even plead guilty. This is a shit argument all around.

We are trapped in the belly of the beast, and the beast is starving to death.

If you scorch coffee beans, all the nuance of their flavor is destroyed, leaving you with beans that taste like shit. However, the beans will also all taste the same no matter where they’re sourced from. I’m convinced this is why Starbucks coffee tastes like shit. They want it to have consistent flavor no matter where in the world you’re getting it. If you cover that with enough cream and sugar and artificial flavoring, you can make it palatable again.

I always imagine his little orchestra-conducting hand movements.

It really helps you to hear it in his voice, though.

The Scathing Atheist podcast has been reading through the new testament lately with Jesus played as a sassy gay man.

God damn you.