Thought Experiments For the Thoughtless, and Miscellany

Apparently it's HAL-9000's birthday, born January 12, 1992.

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Well, comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) is here. With a stupid name like that, I bet there's not even one mass suicide.

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I watched The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker last night. It's the story of Kai, a homeless person who became a viral meme and the person of the moment for a while. It took a dark turn and I had nightmares all night. I can't remember the last time a movie gave me nightmares! 

I've had this recurring nightmare for as long as I can remember. I kill somebody, but I know that the cops are on my trail and it's only a matter of time until they'll find out it's me. I have to figure out how to live my life to the fullest while this dark cloud hangs over me. I have to live with the anxiety, never able to relax again, not knowing when they're going to bust me. 

Terrible dream! I have it once or twice a year. The movie was kind of mirroring the dream, and I was nearly hyperventilating watching it. It really affected me!

January 12, 2023

Faye- Damn. Can't speak to the documentary, but MY reoccurring dream is that I'm at the end of a semester in college and it's only then that I realize I've forgotten to attend one of my classes all semester long so I've failed.

Me- That's my other one! Same thing, once or twice a year.

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A trickle of Republicans are making the switch back to some semblance of objective reality versus tge Trump-based confabulation they've been living in for 4+ years. Here's a thought experiment for those still supporting Trump. 

Imagine that Biden never agreed to a peaceful transfer of power, and then even after the Associated Press reported that Trump won, he refused to admit it. 

He kept claiming fraud even after losing 60+ lawsuits. 

He kept saying that he won with no evidence, in a landslide even, after left-leaning pundits, religious leaders, state election officials, his own attorney general, every newspaper in the country, the DHS, his chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, head of every branch of the military, and even Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer all agreed Trump won. 

After all that, imagine that Biden kept fighting tooth and nail even after states confirmed the votes, and all former defense secretaries, including three of his own, wrote a joint letter condemning his meritless fraud claims. 

Imagine that Biden kept promising a wild rally on the day the Electoral College vote, and then he incited them into a violent mob, by saying that the election was stolen from them and that they have to fight to get their country back. He told them to go down to the Capitol, so they did, and they fought to take their country back, leaving several people killed, including a police officer, against the backdrop of chants to hang Biden's own vice president for allowing the Senate to confirm the election results of his opponent, as the Constitution requires. 

If Trump supporters would condemn Biden in this case, then they condemn Trump. If they would think anyone still supporting Biden had sacrificed any critical-thinking skills they might have had, and they'd be right. They would then very clearly understand how us reality-based people feel about their continued support of their snake oil salesman.

If they think it would be a reasonable assumption that the Biden I outlined above would do more harm over the next week, they would be right. 

So we can all agree- time for Trump to go, before he does more harm.

January 12, 2021

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I guess there's a decision for people to make at this point. Do they support the president or do they support the military?

January 12, 2021

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Borowitz- "Antifa Puzzled By Video of Trump Saying He Loves Them And They Are Special"

Haha, right, they gave both arguments like normal. That it was Antifa that took over the Capitol, and that he loved the people who took over the Capitol. They certainly decided early on to adhere to Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" substitute for cogent political reasoning, and they're riding it right to the end.

January 11, 2021

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The speech in which the president incited his violent mob... when he says, "We're going to go down to the CAPITOL," why does he say "Capitol" like Professor Frink?

January 12, 2021

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Leon... I found this old postcards of the bridge between El Paso and Juarez from the 40's or 50's. I don't know about you, but this is absolutely NOT how I remember it.

January 12, 2020

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Think about this. Homo erectus existed for 2 million years and used basically the same tools the entire time. Later, along comes homo sapiens who exist for over a hundred thousand years, and then something crazy happens. Somewhere between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago we all of a sudden invent boats, oil lamps, bows and arrows, needles for clothes, art, religion, commerce, social stratification etc, etc, etc. 

I'm reading Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, not too far into it but it's quickly becoming one of the best books I've ever read. He presents the case that development of sophisticated language around that time helped us to believe in fictions. For instance, money is not real, it's a fiction. It's just a fiction we've all chosen to believe in. Same thing with religion, nations, trade, corporations, human rights, etc. Impossible to think that if you trace your history back only 1,200 generations or so on the light side, you could have ancestors that have no understanding of these basic concepts. Belief in these fictions is what bind us together in groups of more than a hundred fifty, which historically was about the limit.

January 12, 2019

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Kubrick In Color: https://vimeo.com/150603371

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I bet at one time or another, a member of Monty Python had sex with somebody, finished, and said, "And now for something completely different."

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Why am I physically and mentally incapable of turning the channel away from any documentary on the Manson family? I've seen so many, and never learn anything new, but I just can't... turn... away.

January 12, 2014

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The whole gang, minus Bazo- Pepper, Gretel, Emma, Moe, Razzles, me, and Sam.

January 12, 2014

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People do weird things when they have dogs- dress them up, talk to them like they are people, stuff like that. On cold winter mornings when I take my dog for a walk I use the shit bag as a hand warmer.

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Edmund Burke joined us on this day in 1729.

"When you fear something, learn as much about it as you can. Knowledge conquers fear."

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Jack London was born on this day in 1876. Here's his "credo":

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burn out

in a brilliant blaze

than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor,

every atom of me in magnificent glow,

than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days

trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

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Ira Hayes joined us on this day in 1923- today would have been his 100th birthday. He was the Marine and Pima Indian who helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. He was immortalized in song by Johnny Cash.

https://youtu.be/oEwSwQtSmDQ

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The Japanese novelist, short-story writer, and essayist, Haruki Murakami, joined us on this day in 1949.

"Most people are not looking for provable truths. As you said, truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning."

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Kirstie Alley, Rush Limbaugh, and Drew Pearson were all born this day in 1951.

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Howard Stern joined us on this day in 1954, an American original. Genius? Maybe. He certainly thinks so.

"Most of the things I do are misunderstood. Hey, after all, being misunderstood is the fate of all true geniuses, is it not?"

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Jeff Bezos was born on this day in 1964.

JEFFREY BEZOS by Bo Burham

CEO, entrepreneur

Born in 1964

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Bezos

CEO, entrepreneur

Born in 1964

Jeffrey

Jeffrey Bezos

Come on, Jeffrey, you can do it

Pave the way, put your back into it

Tell us why

Show us how

Look at where you came from

Look at you now

Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett

Amateurs can fucking suck it

Fuck their wives, drink their blood

Come on, Jeff, get 'em

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Other notable birthdays- Mississippi Fred McDowell (1904), Tex Ritter (1905), Kreskin (1935)

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I glanced at the headlines a few times today wondering which icon we were going to lose. Not sure if you noticed but it's a daily occurrence starting with New Years Eve. The news came in late in the day, it was Ronnie Spector. I'm pretty sure I agree with Brian Wilson that Be My Baby is the greatest song ever recorded.

https://youtu.be/i-bcn6Rwn44

Jan 12, 2022

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Other notable deathdays- Pierre de Fermat (1665) and Lisa Marie Presley (2023)

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TED Talk- The transformative power of classical music by Benjamin Zander

If you listen to one TED talk in 2016, you would do well to make it this one. I have no idea how he did what he did, and in only twenty minutes. Truly extraordinary.

https://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion

January 12, 2016

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Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath- "You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff."

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Moral luck... I never heard of that concept before. If you text while you're driving and kill somebody, you're going to be wracked with guilt for the rest of your life. If someone else texts while driving and doesn't kill somebody, they'll have no sense of guilt. But they both did the same thing. It's illogical for our sense of guilt to be stronger or weaker (or even existent or non-existent) based on whether we were lucky and didn't kill somebody, or unlucky and did.

https://samharris.org/podcasts/drive-interview-peter-attia/

January 12, 2019

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A touch too self-helpy, but great advice.

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Albert Ellis, Addicted to the Monkey Mind: Change the Programming That Sabotages Your Life- "People and things do not upset us. Rather, we upset ourselves by believing that they can upset us."

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Yeats- "All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions."

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Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol.I: Primitive Mythology- “…[T]he old in many societies spend a considerable part of their time playing with and taking care of the youngsters, while the parents delve and spin: so that the old are returned to the sphere of eternal things not only within but without. And we may take it also, I should think, that the considerable mutual attraction of the very young and the very old may derive something from their common, secret knowledge that it is they, and not the busy generation between, who are concerned with a poetic play that is eternal and truly wise.”

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Howard Stern again- "I'm sickened by all religions. Religion has divided people. I don't think there's any difference between the pope wearing a large hat and parading around with a smoking purse and an African painting his face white and praying to a rock."

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Viktor Frankl- “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”

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Marcus Aurelius, Meditations:

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?

You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you.

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Murakami again- "Spend your money on the things money can buy. Spend your time on the things money can’t buy."

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Robert Anton Wilson- "The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization."

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Miyazaki- “You may not like what's happening, but just accept it, and let's try to live together. Even if you feel angry, let's be patient and endure, let's try to live together. I've realized that this is the only way forward.”

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Edmund Hillary- "It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."

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Hawking- "I have noticed that even those who assert that everything is predestined and that we can change nothing about it still look both ways before they cross the street."

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Hitchens- "People who think with their epidermis or their genitalia or their clan are the problem to begin with. One does not banish this specter by invoking it. If I would not vote against someone on the grounds of 'race' or 'gender' alone, then by the exact same token I would not cast a vote in his or her favor for the identical reason. Yet see how this obvious question makes fairly intelligent people say the most alarmingly stupid things."

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Camus- "The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."

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Asimov- "If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."

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Norm Macdonald- "My idea of heaven in to be up on a cloud looking down at all my friends getting raped by the devil."

Addendum 

Myspace Blog 

January 12, 2007

The Masters in Animal Behavior

He burst out of the women's restroom shaking a fistful of brochures and shouting, "The stupidity of the educated animal!" This is his mantra. He's talking about us, er, them- the people who act like animals, throwing trash all over the place. He's the grumpiest rest area janitor in the state, and class was in session.

He mocked them, glancing at a brochure and then pretending to throw it on the ground. "The bathroom was littered with these! Stupid!" He joined me at the rotating brochure rack, putting them back where they belong. My hands withered and crawled up into my sleeves, like when you throw acid into a box turtle's face. (Too gruesome? Sorry. Feel free to substitute "like the Wicked Witch of the East's feet after Dorothy crushed the life out of her.") I don't like the thought of people breathing on my brochures. Imagining someone coughing on them makes me uncomfortable. For someone to pick them off the restroom floor and... I better stop before I start shuddering so bad I can't type. Moving on, quickly...

The janitor continued his rant. "No need to go to the circus, just come here! Sometimes I sit at a picnic table and just watch." At this point he used his right pointer and left palm to draw me an incomprehensible map of where he sits. Remember the Life Goes On episode where Corky is on the football team? Well there's a reason he wasn't the quarterback, if you take my meaning. He continued, "Once, two people walked up and looked in the windows for about 20 minutes, before one of them tried the door. Yes, use the door and go inside," he mocked. "I've seen people walk up to a trash can and throw trash on the sidewalk right in front of it. Animals!"

As I considered how impressed I'd be if any animal got that close to making it into the trash can, an attractive young girl walked in and asked him how far it was to Binghamton. She was tall and he's very short. What I'm getting at is that his eyes were exactly boob level, and he was locked in a death stare. He was a deer caught in the headlights, so to speak. "About 30 miles north," he mustered. In the wild, eye contact like this (if it had actually been eye contact) would invite a fight, but she politely thanked him and left. Somewhat pacified, he said to me, "Well, gotta clean up after the animals."

He went outside, leaving me to do my work as a middle-aged couple at the coffee machine tried to decide what to get. "French vanilla? French vanilla what?," the wife asked her husband. "Beats me," he said.

I remember when I used to ask stupid things like that. Not anymore though, not since I evolved. A few more classes and I'll have a Masters in Animal Behavior from the master of animal behavior himself.