There’s a short story by Andy Weir called “The Egg”, and the premise – spoiler alert – is that every human being is a reincarnation of the same single soul cycling through reality over and over inhabiting each person. So every person on Earth – parents, their children, bosses and employees, your best friend, your lover, your rival, every politician and their opponent and every voter too are all fundamentally the same person interacting with themselves.

And if one can get past their hatred for members of a genocidal cult, it’s a profound metaphor. If we appreciate all creatures as linked, Every Nazi was unwittingly murdering their own brother. Every American in Vietnam didn’t realize that the person on the other end of the bullet was secretly their own father. And this doesn’t just hold for the bad guys: every American who shot a Nazi was killing a version of themselves.

War is hell. The Israelis got sold a lie, that it was possible to poison a hand that you didn’t like, as if poison can be isolated to one part of a whole. The mission has been one of mutual death this whole time, and so many of them only discover it after they sold their soul.

I want peace so badly. Not vengeance, even for the most wicked. I understand why people want vengeance, but all I want is peace, equality, and dignity universally. I feel like I’m watching a civilization kill itself.

I’m reading this now! It’s pretty dope!

It’s pay walled.

This is a really interesting question that people aren’t taking seriously.

It’s a huge mix. Because one of the key features of wealth and privilege is freedom: these people get to do more or less whatever they want.

For some, that’s whatever their parents do. Maybe they just want to make money and have martini lunches. But for a lot of them, they may just want to be a gaming YouTuber or a marine biologist, or a even run a social-justice focused non-profit.

As much as most of us resent unearned privilege, there’s no rule that says people who lucked into life are all stupid, mean, or incompetent. Many will become successful academics or devote themselves to politically righteous causes. The main problem is not what they do, but all the human potential among the unprivileged that is denied and squandered.

Many may also move between careers; etsy store one year, writer another. It’s very fluid.

This is very articulate and very motivating.

It’s pay walled for me

Wow, I’ll admit my guess was wrong: that’s a pretty clear endorsement of terrorism. I still don’t think she should be arrested.

Also I think it’s terrible journalism that they didn’t say specifically what she posted. That’s necessarily context. Thanks for sharing it.

I wouldn’t call him “die-hard”. He’s a neoliberal, but I think he’s clearly pretty conflicted.

He seems like a closet Berniecrat. He hasn’t said it, but I think he is probably a Warren voter.

I wish he was more socialist, but it’s clear that he hates Jefferies and Schumer, and has a sinking suspicion that Democrats are just the Washington Generals, but is still in the denial phase.

I listen to his podcast, and it’s mostly good. He’s still a lib, but he’s clearly working on it. It especially comes out when he’s taking with his producers, who he clearly hired to help him see his blind spots.

I like him.

This whole thing is Orwellian, but nothing more so imo than when stories like this report that someone was arrested for speech but doesn’t actually tell us what the offending speech was.

I think it’s pretty obvious that they know that they’ll get in trouble with the same people if they share the message. It’s quite sad.

I’m generally supportive of diplomacy, but I suspect that these delegations are only finding common ground on the worst fucking things.

Astronaut with gun: Always have been

Yes, constantly.

Most people, imo, don’t have a good idea who the scientific community is and what their discussions look like. The scientific community is made up primarily of working class nerds who work at universities and suppliers and contract companies, and they communicate through blog and magazine articles in publications by and for other academics.

If you go to a scientific conference, you’ll see talks and panels on this subject and it’s a routine topic at coffee breaks and drinks in the evenings.

The scientific community has been discussing this topic literally longer than anyone else.

Yeah. I would describe the politics of SpongeBob as extremely mild and offensive to as few people as possible, but that said, the SpongeBob movie made the stress of masculine gender performance a surprisingly central theme, with the core lesson being that people should disregard gender performance anxiety and prioritize self love and authenticity.

I’m as surprised as anyone to say this, but good job Nickelodeon in advancing the gay agenda through subliminal indoctrination of children.

I agree, although I think the elephant in the room is the pressures of capitalism.

Image, for a second, if money didn’t matter. Image if the crew all divided up the earnings. There’s no investment return, regardless of performance.

What kind of movies would Sony make? How many of them?

The answer would probably be “the kind of movies people who like to make movies like to watch” and “However many they have worthwhile scripts and people for.”

The entire problem they’re trying to solve is “how do we maximize returns in a world in which audiences want artistic quality and are clearly irate with is for trying to maximize returns instead of artistic quality?”

All of this is downstream of that misalignment in priority. If the studio had the same goal as the audience, I think their product would reflect that.

I’m grateful that sometimes art gets made, but the insurable appetite for free money by the investor class really seems to be the weight that is drowning the film industry.

The guy in the bottom is the rapper Afroman. He’s most known for the song “Because I got high”.

He lives in Ohio. Police raided his house looking for pot (probably because they they took his song seriously, which they shouldn’t have). He made a series of music videos using security footage complaining that they fucked up his house and broke shit for no reason at all, and the local police were so outraged and hurt by the public anger towards them that they sued Afroman for defamation for over a million dollars. The picture is from his court case, where a jury told them that was fucking bonkers, and agreed completely with his defense that he didn’t hurt their reputation by lying: they hurt their reputation by doing terrible shit on camera to an artist who told people what they did.

That freak out about Drop Site News is wild, because it’s so counter protective.

DSN is such a small outfit, and Trump is simultaneously showing how vulnerable he is in his reaction and also doing such promotion for a news magazine that is otherwise not that heavily read.

It’s great though, because I love DSN.

I think it’s easier to find success stories if you ask this question about your town than your country.

A few weeks ago I took my kid to a parking lot by a park so he could practice biking, and when we got there there were nearly a dozen kids biking, and a band was playing etherial middle eastern music next to us to a crowd as the full moon hung over a lake draped in light of the setting sun.

It was gorgeous, and free, both financially and in spirit. It was a beautiful appreciation of people and art from across the world. I thought for a moment that it was a picture of what I’d like America to one day be, then realized that I was in America, and it was already a picture of what America IS. It’s unfortunate that America is also many terrible other things. But America is also this. And that spirit is what brought these musicians or their parents to America, and eventually to that parking lot by the lake under the full moon.

This looks good!

It looks a little overstuffed, but No Way Home managed to execute a very overstuffed film successfully, so I’m hopeful they know what they’re doing.

Organic webbing seems like a very weird choice, but I can live with it.

Wow. I knew lint is flammable, but I kinda assumed spontaneous ignition in a dryer was a myth. Good to know.

That’s nuts. It’s hard for me to imagine a fire that after a whole day isn’t put out but also hasn’t broken totally out of control and destroyed the ship.

I mean… 30 hours? Imagine issuing a status update after 20 hours of continuous fire fighting and being like, ‘Well, we think it’s under control… It’s not growing anymore. How long until it’s out? I don’t know, I’m pretty sure we’re past the half way point.’

Crazy.

Also, I wonder how it started? Was someone sneaking a cigarette? Did someone get stir crazy and start playing with matches? Weird AF.