One of my best friends lost her place of living when her boyfriend of 4 years said the relationship had actually ended in his head 2 years previously, but he needed the rent. But then he found a new girlfriend to grift from, “opened the relationship,” and they edged my friend out. I am still mad they did that to her; she was so heartbroken and damaged from that.

Okay, say this was true. I’m not saying it is, but let’s carry this argument to the next step.

IQ is a score that shows how well someone can solve problems and think compared to other people their age. It doesn’t measure how smart you are in every way, but it can help show how strong your brain is in certain kinds of thinking. So let’s say, okay, they aren’t born smart, but we’ll train them to BE smart, and this screening will make it easier because we won’t be working upstream against “the dumbness,” or whatever. Kid has the capacity to be smart, now all we have to do is train them, right?

Next, you have to assume that their parents and environment allows for this. These services will be available for rich parents only, which historically have been a better environment for teaching. But it also will give these “high IQ kids” access to parents of conservative, “Christian values” as well as liberal rich kids. So now we have a problem. What if having a high IQ also leads to insanity? We haven’t even defined what “smart” is, really, and so a lot of conservatives, “smart” means “stronger than your enemy.” Intelligence without compassion breeds psychosis, and leadership qualities that are sociopathic and ruthless. And that INCLUDES turning on their own kind. But that’s what they want, right? “Survival of the fittest,” a kind of social Darwinism.

“Sorry dad. I know you raised me to be the head of the company, but I gutted it instead, and will be funding my super-race and frankly…? You’re genetically inferior. Goodbye.”

Layoffs are not bad press. Not to the shareholders, the only ones who matter to these types. I used to think “oh, layoffs mean the company isn’t doing so good,” but shareholders see “they reduced cost but lost no customers, thus increasing value of the company should it be sold.”

“Are these ‘weather weapons’ in the room with you right now?”

Zenni was a game changer. I could get their top-of-the-line titanium frames with glass and auto-tinting for like $130 from them, or get the most basic birth control plastic frames with acrylic from my optometrist for no less than $900. Most of my glasses from Zenni are $80 or less, and yes, I have to wait 4-6 weeks. The optometrists are super-upset about this, too. Like some refuse to give me my prescription or pupillary distance, with high-pressure sales tactics and dire warnings. I have been told I’d ruin my eyes with “toxic metals” and “frames that will burn sunlight into my face and retinas.”

Well. It’s been nearly 20 years, and none of that has happened.

I was out of sugar, so I tried to sweeten Kool-Aid with honey. Nope. Just god-awful.

One revolution I have realized in baking is the recent trend to start talking about weight and not volume in recipes for certain dry ingredients like flour. Three cups of fluffy sifted flour is a lot less flour than three cups of densely packed flour. Same with brown sugar, or wondering if you need a “flat teaspoon” vs. a “heaping teaspoon” of something.

When eventually washed off, the aerogel is handily broken down by soil microbes.

I am not going to claim to be an expert on any of this BUT that wording sounds suspiciously like bullshit. Maybe it’s not, but it’s one of those phrases that sounds like when vitamin companies claim that more B12 has shown to fix whatever ails you. Or “our plastic is environmentally friendly: 100% recyclable, and breaks down into teeny micro-particles over time, and gets absorbed by the sea life like ordinary sand…”

That explains why it’s so hot outside.

I have had two tech jobs like that, even before COVID, starting in 2016. The first time, it was a company that outgrew their workspace. They put us in ‘rent-an-office’ spaces for a bit, and then my boss started working from home a few days a week. Then he allowed me to. We moved to a new office, but it was always empty in my section. That was fine, too, but the commute was terrible, so I started doing 2 days a week, then once a week, then a few times a month. I rarely saw my other coworkers in person, and nobody said anything aloud.

The next job started because of COVID, and when they started doing RTO, they also wanted to do “hot desking” (no assigned seating) and open office plans, and I was not having that. I was not going to work in a “cafeteria” like setting. So I got contracted work and have worked from home 100% for several years now. Nobody has office space, and we work all over the world to collaborate. I get paid very well.

I hope i never had to go back to an office. I reach retirement age in about 15 years, and I am hoping to make it.

Trying getting out of that in your 50s with arthritis setting in. Oof.

This was also where “yo momma” insults were also invisible to me. Like, “You don’t even know my mother, you’re just saying that and it makes no sense.” It wasn’t a trigger for me like it was other kids. I saw it for what it was. I’d tell my friends, “they just say that to get you mad, don’t listen,” but they’d get mad anyway. It’s like they couldn’t help it. I think dares were in that headspace as well.

I wasn’t popular growing up. I was really awkward and non-athletic, so I didn’t bow to peer pressure as much as the other kids. I was going to be unpopular either way, so…

I think this is one of the extreme examples of revenge instead of rehabilitation. It’s a prime breeding ground for control freaks who want to punish those that break the rules, and will stop at nothing to try to accomplish this by dealing out damage via a morality defense. And I think a lot of parents know this, at some level, as revenge for not conforming to their definition of normalcy. “Retribution for being bad.” Like mob mentality.

In the bible you get permission to declare your teenager wayward, take them outside the city gates and stone them to death.

I was like, “Really…?” But sure enough:

Deuteronomy 21:18-21

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them. Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place. And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

… k.

As a kid, I never got that concept because it seemed like being manipulated. “I dare you to do this dangerous thing for my amusement!” Uh. No? “Chicken!” Okay, whatever, dude.

I mean, the Roman Empire was an olive tree superorganism. Prove me wrong.

This sounds kind of sad, but bear with me. This was c. 1976-1980.

My father was mostly absent, but I prefered his neglect to his abuse, so that was okay. He’d go on business trips a lot. My mom was an alcoholic, and sometimes she’d be passed out for days. I grew up an only child in a suburban home, and some weekends a year, I had the house to myself. From age 8-12, I had a few weekends here and there where fortune fell upon me and I’d be alone in the house with no real responsibilities. Friday night home from school to Monday morning going to school, all I had to do was check if my mother was still passed out, and if so, it was like one long vacation from my life to be myself. Bonus if there was still food in the house, which usually there was something I could cook myself.

I wasn’t allowed to watch TV as a kid, except sanctioned PBS shows, but we had a small B&W TV in the kitchen for my mom’s soap operas and cooking shows. I’d drag up all my Legos, pour them on the kitchen table, and watch “illegal TV” all weekend while building stuff with my Legos. Eating when I wanted to, or not, and I had free reign of pretty much anything there.

My positive childhood memories are scant and few, and most are just things like that. Like “sometimes the sun came out, if only for a brief time, before the storms returned.” I have a lot more as an adult.

This is something that influences a lot of culture. Like most people when they think of style and decor in the 1980s, are thinking of Los Angeles in the 1980s. The rest of America was not always neon pumps, leg warmers, and thin piano ties.

I had a motherboard like this: the USB ports didn’t work until it booted into an OS. You had to connect a PS2 to make changes in the BIOS, and could only boot from IDE. It was super-annoying.

We had a case not too long ago where someone “recruiting” for one of the GAFAM who was stealing PII by “accepting” applicants, getting their IDs and personal info for supposed employment, and when these people showed up for work, the real company had never heard of them. I think they got 30 people last time.