Insanity

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Insanity is a dramatic deviation from reality. Whether it’s a relatively minor one like believing your cat is trying to say human words (guilty) or an elaborate and more difficult one, like the proverbial belief that you are Corsica’s gift to the martial arts (is that ever a thing, or was it just something comic artists seized on?); whether it’s relatively harmless (no one cares if I scream at the cat “Speak clearly.” At least if I’m not in public) or very dangerous, like believing your at is whispering that you should kill the neighbors and put their pieces in a garbage bag (oh, please, Havey is too stupid to have a concept of neighbors.) insanity is a deviation from reality. (I almost typed consensus reality, and that way lies one of the dangers, which I’ll mention later.)

I don’t think there breathes a single human who is not at least a tiny bit insane by the strictest definition. As Heinlein pointed out, some illusions are even functional and parents’ belief that their kids are the most beautiful and smartest human beings on the planet keeps the kids alive to adulthood. Because sometimes the temptation to strangle the living daylights out of them will be almost unbearable, say when the four year old blows a crater in the backyard. (Actually it’s worse than that, because you don’t know whether to giggle or scream, so you can die of an apoplexy before you even think of yelling at the kid.)

I suppose my own, personal bit of undeniable insanity is that I believe stories show up fully formed in my head, as though I were a receiver for some master story teller elsewhere. And I talk about it that way too, by saying thing like “I just can’t get properly tuned to receive this story.”
By everything rational, this is an insane, nay, a possibly utterly bug nuts belief. But it is a functional one. It works for me, to cast what I do in that terms, and I certainly don’t demand that anyone think or believe the way I do. Even husband more or less pats me on the head and makes the expression that means “well, it works for you.”

But we all have some. People talk to plants; believe they can hear something that’s patently impossible to hear, etc. People also have strange ideas that don’t accord to the real world but which don’t hurt anyone — under normal circumstances.

It’s perfectly possible — or was until the late nineties — for me to be friends with people who believe that every country has the same priorities as America, or who thinks China elects their government, or that everyone lives at least at the same level we do.

Which brings us: why till the late nineties?

Because since then the media/overculture has been on a tear to sell us a “consensus reality” which has no contact whatsoever with real reality, but which locks in every part of it, in lockstep.

They’ve been building a great, overarching madness, in which women are the most oppressed people of all, unless it’s against transwomen who are even more super oppressed; America is systemically racist, but other countries (snort, giggle) are better; all other countries are more tolerant and people have more rights than we do; it is possible to pay everyone money so they can “pursue their art” and we’ll all be automagically rich and food will materialize from the air along with medical care, and possibly free unicorns; the only people standing in the way of this are “haters” who is anyone who doesn’t agree with the program as proclaimed that day; and all we have to do is put the right (left) people in charge, and it doesn’t matter if they take all our rights away, because they are so perfect and loving and want to take care of us.

There are branches to this madness, like the idea that if you get rid of the police/guns/self-defense violence will stop; that if there are no possessions there will be no crime; that there is no difference between men and women, but you should be able to change from male to female and female to male, even though these categories don’t actually exist.

The deeper you delve into this insanity, the deeper the waters of madness become, till they cover everything and everyone, into a grand unified theory of nonsense that doesn’t connect to anything real.

Look, yep, there are transsexual people — real ones (very, very few, percentage wise, but they exist) — ;and there are racist assholes (very few, but we’re a population of 300 mil. There will be assholes); and there are instances of discrimination against every possible category of humans, and some impossible ones too.

But the world — the real world — as it exists is imperfect. There’s always going to be something. The more you look for something — whether it’s ways to make money or instances of microaggressions — the more you’re going to find.

This doesn’t mean you can somehow find every instance of the bad things and turn it into good things, because that’s not the way the world works.

You can’t stop every instance of child abuse; racism; mass killing — well, pretty much anything. Because humans are humans, capable of both self will and dissimulation. You can’t control everyone. And the more you try, the more power you give to the people who control it all. And think about it, what type of people want to be in charge of deciding what everyone can’t and can do? They’re not usually the most selfless, other-oriented people in the world.

Part of the problem and the reason saying “Consensus reality” is wrong is that it doesn’t matter what the consensus is. We can all believe that food will rain from the sky every day at 12 pm and yet it won’t happen.

But you see,t he left believes it will. When they tell you “The consensus is” as though that meant “reality is” it’s because they believe this is true. They’ve gone around the postmodern bend so far that they think that believing makes it so. Which is why in 2008 in Denver we were treated to the bizarre spectacle of their trying to levitate the mint.

This is also why they get so made when you tell them their beliefs are wrong, and this is what makes our speech “violence” — because if we all believed, the world would be paradise. This is also why they want everyone to say the election was completely aboveboard. Because if you all believe it, it will have been so.

There are many forms of madness. A madness imposing itself from above results in the insanity that was 2020 (and 2021 isn’t getting any better. Worse, it results in insanity like the Cultural Revolution in China, which killed millions and destroyed knowledge and material wealth in untold amounts.

I know, being bombarded from all sides with the insane narrative makes it feel like it must be us who are crazy. But it is not so.

Consensus (which they don’t have, and we know they don’t have it, because they’re destroying every possible means of figuring out what the consensus is) is not the measure of reality.

Reality is the measure of reality. All of your wishing upon Das Kapital one make a single one of Marx’s insane assertions correct.

All it does is tilt you further and further away from reality.

And reality is a stone cold bitch. She always wins.

So insanity will cease, because it has to.

The only question is what remains after. Build over, build under, build around, and get ready to hold when the Earth Shattering Kaboom comes.

Be not afraid.

447 thoughts on “Insanity”

  1. The Left has managed to invert the definition, so that insanity is deviation from their reality. Well, I stand with Puddleglum: if that is their reality I reject it.
    ~

          1. As we move deeper into the brave new world of huddle at home, you’ll have nothing but you’ll be happy, worry not the drones will deliver, masks upon mask, upon masks now, today,tomorrow and forever, the cocoon is the only safety, obey, stay, stand down, the computer screen is the only scene, we all must zoom to avoid our doom alas, seeing anyone in person, Marsh-wiggle or not, the flight or flight response is acceptable.

            1. I think one of my neighbors is already where you just described. He’s a hateful communist troll who cowers dramatically when too close to a no-muzzle creature.

              If FL wasn’t FL, I might make a try for that state. But, it’s FL.

              1. Most of my growing up years were in Florida, Kathy, over sixty years ago. Where my back yard ended the Everglades began, nothing but glades for 60-70 miles. Now, looking at a google satellite view nothing but houses.

                When my daughter was born in NYC I moved us to Alaska, minor differences like temperature and no snakes but much like the Florida I was raised in. My son and daughter grew up here, self reliant, independent and, of course a wee bit crazy. The latter, in my considered opinion, is a good thing.

                If not Florida today, & I agree, not Florida today, I’d suggest folks consider where the Carolinas and Tennessee meet. Lot of switch backs in them thar hills, t’ain’t worth the trouble nor the hike to bother other folks and a long history of not botherin’ other folks.

                1. Where-ish in Alaska are you? Because I grew up in Anchorage when the Matanuska Valley* was a moderate scattering of cabins (mostly around the fishable lakes) and Wasilla was a wide place in the road, and now it’s “nothing but houses” and about as wild as the rural outskirts of Seattle.

                  (* that’s 30-40 miles north of Anchorage, for the non-Alaskans)

                  1. Where-ish? Twix-ish Fairbanks and North Pole.

                    I know what you mean although, even back in the bay we used to joke that Anchorage was a large city, and only 20 minutes away from Alaska! 😉

                    First time I drove down to Palmer, in the mid sixties, it was a typical mid-western farm town; The feed/grain store was right next to the railroad depot, the only hotel was across the street and the Dairy queen was way down at the end of the block.

                    The hotel, of course, contained the local bar that you entered through a side door.
                    Hanging over the door was a sign advertising Grainbelt beer.

                    I went in and asked for a Grainbelt. The bartender said they don’t carry that brand, asked if I’d settle for an Olypop (Olympia Lager) and wondered why I though they might have Grainbelt. I told him the sign hanging above the door. He said it’s been hanging there for over thirty years, maybe they otta think about taking it down.

                    Palmer today, ain’t quite the same, alas,.

                    1. Well, I would dispute that Anchorage is a large city, except by comparison with it’s neighbors. 🙂 Driving around last summer and this last six weeks, I realized that except during rush hour, no place is more than about 20 minutes’ drive from any other place. It’s smaller than I remembered, and in comparison to cities I’ve lived in since.

                      My parents both arrived in 1959-1961, when Anchorage had a population of about 44,000. In 1970, when I was five, the population was about 47,000 (no wonder they seemed to know everyone). And that’s when Wasilla had about 300 people and Palmer about 1,000. By 1980 when I was 15, Palmer had barely doubled, Wasilla had quintupled, and Anchorage had nearly quadrupled. I think this is why when my Seattle friends bemoan all the sprawl and new developments going up everywhere and old houses being torn down for bigger buildings, etc., I wonder why they’re upset — isn’t that just perfectly normal?

                2. Having visited the ‘Glades once, I can only imagine the wild beauty you grew up in. Breathtaking. Plus, you learn to be self reliant because the alligators are right there.

                  I lived in Big Pine Key and Key West, 6 years total. I traveled the mainland some, but still love what the Keys could be if you had enough cash. Florida was the first time I saw a cow grazing under a palm tree.

                  I’m not a total fool; I won’t rule out a move to FL, TN, or elsewhere that seems consistently reasonable and liberty-loving. Including AK. But my circumstances dictate a few years in the heart of darkness. I must be on a divine mission.

                  🙂

                  I wish I could hear your growing up stories.

                  1. OK, a quick short one -grin-; alligators.

                    Sometime around when I was in junior high (Ponce De Leon, JH) we lived on Bird Road in the Gables. A lot of abandoned coral rock pits and a lot of coral stone follies build in the twenties.

                    One rock pit nearby, 6 or 8 of us kids would swim there. We shared the pit with a six foot or so alligator.

                    When she was sunning herself on the far shore we’d be in the water. when she’d slip in, we’d climb the high bank on our side and watch her. We’d never discussed it among ourselves but none of us ever told our parents there was a gator in the pit, oddly enough.

                    She: don’t know why we decided that but she, was always, a she to us.

                    I would tell about the time I was chased by a herd of wild pigs and the boar’s tushes were that long and I was saved by a railroad bridge but I’ll save that one for ’round the campfire. 😉

                    1. Pure gold. 🙂

                      I went to college in South Carolina but lived on 800 acres of tree farm a half hour south.

                      I carried a pistola during my long runs (I was in ROTC) for two reasons: wild dogs and feral hogs.

            2. I’m not worried about feeling things are insane. I worry when I stop feeling ANYthing….

        2. Regrets for not including this in the original comment, from a typically low budget adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ The Silver Chair:

          Both The Doctor and the Marshwiggle on his resume? AND he played Rasputin.
          ~

    3. They’re trying for a population inversion and expecting Consensus Reality by Stimulated Emission of Narrative. Ignoring the definition of Reality being the bits that stubbornly won’t away with a simple lack of belief in them.

      1. They used to measure the power of a ruby laser in units of Gillettes, in the fraction/number of [a] razor blade(s) a pulse could burn. I shudder to think of the relevant units for the oompf of a CRSEN. Civilizations? Bidens? Braaains?

    4. I do as well; better Narnia than whatever Marx and Rousseau derived hell they are trying to conjure up.

  2. I had to look up “levitate the Denver mint.” I’m still laughing. As for my personal insanity, I believe that I get glimpses of the future in my dreams. Recently, one of my dreams showed me a beautiful video game that pulled me into it. The person next to me asked “why are you so fascinated with the lights when it has no substance?” So maybe I play too much… When I asked who wanted to know, the person said “Shishi.” Anyway when it is all lights and no substance, it will fall apart. I wonder how deep we will be into it when it collapses though.

    2. Had to look it up too. Those guys and gals are a few dimes short of a dollar.

    3. My dreams are sometimes like stories. A few nights ago I got to go to Italy again. It was really nice. And also Inception is wrong. If in a dream, someone asks “How did you get here?” Your brain makes a memory for you to retrace your steps.

        1. I got my whole last book based on a dream … a dream which happened in the early morning, so I remembered it when I woke up, and dashed off the whole book in five months and a bit.
          Seriously, I wish that I could have a couple of more useful dreams like that.

          3. I get entire business plans or designs in dreams. The details are incredible and include entire processes with leadership trees and org charts. In some ways it has helped me focus on the things I need to do and people I need to contact. Unfortunately they mostly require funding I do not have access to. I began to realize that I have to make some effort or they will go away. My theory is that G** puts them out there and you have to try to act on them or he gives them to someone else, because they have to get done.

            I think that the insanity that is overtaking the USA is absolutely stunning. All darkness and shadow and when you catch the movement out of the corner of the eye you start to see the reality again. I have to work and run a store day in and day out. The numbers have to work, keeps me very grounded. Watching, listening, observing, there are way more of us than them. No contest. Must keep the faith.

    4. And I know ponder a story with a couple powerful magic workers or a group of aliens with some super-tech debating messing with everyone by making one of these sorts of groups of nutters seem successful… but only once.

      “See, I told you we could our efforts published on Earth.”
      “But no credit. And… The Journal of Irreproducible Results?

  3. But what if there is no Earth Shattering Kaboom? Because sometimes there isn’t, even when you’re expecting one. Could just be a cosmic Oof! instead.

    1. The problem is everything they’re trying to do to make their thing reality are pushing us into faster and faster changes, some of them GOOD but not what the left wants or is prepared for. So, the chances of a Kaboom are getting larger.
      “And with a mighty crack all the institutions fail at once” kaboom.

      2. They finally re-floated that stuck freighter in the Suez Canal. Europe generally breathes a huge sigh of relief, because now all their shit is going to get delivered only a couple weeks late.

        The problem is that there are MANY choke points like that, all hanging fire and waiting to happen. Electrical grids, shipping lanes, dams bridges, meat packing plants, factories that make IV bags, all sorts of things that serve huge sections of the world, and all it takes to shut it all down is a storm or some guy falling asleep on duty.

        When all the changes you’re making are for More Bigger and Better Crazy, (can we mention body armor for pregnant combat soldiers?) the number of these disasters that will happen by accident because of stupidity multiplies.

        Now try to imagine a war. Where they do it on purpose. Like they sink a hundred ships in the Suez and the Panama canals. Just think about that for a second.

        2. This, I have thought long and hard about the resiliency that is built into the systems we rely on. I have generally made the assumption that they are designed like I would design. Backups, overlapping controls, fail safes, redundancy, etc. The last year has illustrated exactly how wrong I have been in my assumptions.

          We (western civilization in general, modern society specifically) are so very very fragile. I used to think, wow it would be hard to bring all this to a stop, NOPE, cakewalk. Once you see the vulnerabilities you cannot unsee them. It is terrifying.

          Prepare for the worst, live for the best. Stay frosty.

          1. We used to have a lot of resilience, but we traded it for “just in time delivery,” small inventories, and consolidation of corporate acquisitions. Which is fine if nothing bad ever happens.

            1. Just-in-time and small inventories is due almost entirely to tax law. Businesses can’t keep stuff on hand because they get crushed by the taxes.

              It is certainly possible to design a tax and finance environment where things like adding another canal in Suez and Panama would be logical and profitable. Unfortunately the last time that was possible was the Victorian Era.

              On the other hand, the Egyptian government twinned the north channel in the 2000’s and it only cost $9 billion dollars, according to Wikipedia. I bet they lost more than $9 billion due to this stoppage.

              2. I saw a figure of 9.3 billion per day. Presumably that was across all entities affected, but still.

                And having a twin canal makes your everyday operations better too.

                1. Right? You would think that the Egyptian government would be salivating at the thought of all the frickin’ fabulous MONEY they’d be able to get from digging a glorified trench in the sand. Nine billion is peanuts in today’s international finance world, its not even a rounding error. The ship and cargo itself is probably around a billion, all by itself.

                  But then there’s politics, right? 😡

            2. Also for lower material costs/higher profits. We should make everything here that we can, pay the costs and increase our security.

          2. Just in time is about the dumbest supply system ever conceived because it will always fail when Murphy rears his head. And the government can be blamed for it for over taxing inventories and property.

            1. I remember when it hit the automotive industry as The Great New Thing from Japan! And then everyone was doing it, with a whole industry of instructors, classes, and seminars.

              The very first time I encountered it, as a mere worker-fledgling, I could see it was a bad idea. But management jumped down the rabbit hole yodeling “Wa-HOOO!!!”

          3. As a trivial example: The Colorado unemployment system keeps going down for maintenance (supposedly). It’s the 21st century! Who takes a system down – for multiple hours to days – in order to upgrade it? There are apparently no backup sites, no redundancy, no scalability, no staging, etc… No resiliency at all, despite everyone else having long since solved this problem.

            1. “Who takes a system down – for multiple hours to days – in order to upgrade it?”

              The government, obviously. To them, taking the system down is not a problem. To the unemployed it isn’t much of a problem either, when was the last time you heard of anyone you knew getting a job out of a government program? I’ve never got one, that’s certain.

              Look up “Phoenix Pay System Canada” for a laugh. The government took an “off the shelf” payroll solution in 2009 and f-ed it up so completely that 12 years later it still doesn’t work right. Federal employees regularly don’t get paid properly, or don’t get paid at all. Sometimes for months. There’s a whole system for cutting emergency checks because Phoenix won’t pay people.

              Computer system scandals are constant with Canadian federal and provincial governments. The classic is the gun registry, they spent $2 Billion with a B dollars on the gun registry system. As I said elsewhere in this comment chain, the Egyptian government twinned the north channel of the Suez Canal for $9 billion in roughly the same time period. Value for money, right?

              Government computer systems are basically scams to make it easier to re-direct money, is what it boils down to.

    2. To quote the ever-wise Susan Ivanova: “No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There’s always a boom tomorrow.”

      So always expect one and always be prepared for it. 😀

    3. If there’s no Earth-shattering kaboom, then that wascally wabbit must be involved again

      1. “Listen to ancient Kali, inquisitive infants,” she said sternly. “Do not delve too deeply into the secrets of demons. You will not like what you find there.”

        Jimmy, typically, misunderstood and hastened to explain. “I don’t care about the demons,” he said waving his hands in negation, “I just wanted to know if the big ones can cross those event horizon barriers. Because if they can’t, we can shoot Alcubierre warp bubbles at them. It would be just like a bullet! Kapow, scratch one great crossing.” Then he looked at Kali expectantly.

        “By the GODS!” she exclaimed, “What in the nine hells have you children been doing here?!”

        “Perhaps I should pay more attention to your engines and such,” said Guruh, impressed by the sudden fury Kali was exhibiting. “Using the vessels of the void as weapons against the demons seems an obvious tactic.”

        “What do you think would happen if one universe crashed into another at the speed of light?” demanded Kali of the wolf.

        “An earth-shattering kaboom?” ventured Jimmy.

          1. This is from “Coffee With Kali The Destroyer” by Edward Thomas, which I just finished. It sits in the que, waiting for a cover. ~:(

  4. Yeah.

    I can absolutely believe that everyone who manufactures, transports, sells or consumes coleslaw should be, as a matter of policy, killed by torture. That is physically possible. Or chicken salad, or pimento cheese spread or jello salad. It harms no one so long as I can’t persuade anyone, and don’t decide that I need to give up on persuasion and start working on the problem retail.

    The situation was tolerable when we were not using the contents of a human mind (which cannot be objectively measured, and has no real bounds) as a basis for policy, instead of pragmatism and consensus /morality/.

    When they started pushing policy and law based on crazy person M, we had a problem. I can top crazy person M. There is no consensus in favor of making Bob’s insanities policy.

    Ergo, instead of a -archy of all madmen, we have an -archy using madmen as an excuse, or an -archy of /some/ madmen.

    I’ve been seeing through this at least fifteen years, possibly twenty or twenty five. This is one reason for my degree of anger.

      1. I hesitate to mention my age in the early ’90s.

        Let it be said that I had an excuse for being an oblivious moron.

    2. When you come for my coleslaw, you’d better bring all your friends and plenty of ammunition. 🙂

      1. I picked the examples as representative of my range of insanity, but they are not my exact flavor of nutjobbery, because I didn’t want to repeat my usual level of anger, and did not want to invest in my usual attempts to re-litigate the issues.

        I think I dislike those foods, but I would not commit mass murder over them. (Unless I have a headache so bad that I would be tempted to murder the whole world if it made the headache go away. The joke is that this is days ending in y.)

    3. Chicken salad made without celery and minimal or no onions is acceptable.

      No need to ask your opinion on jello coleslaw salad. It does exist. 😛

  5. My university is getting ever more stupid/woke. When I was going through my email this morning there was a notice about a visiting lecturer who is “an experimental sociolinguist” who is going to speak about “confronting linguistic racism”. I was thinking maybe she would talk about using racist words like n*gger, k*ke, etc. and how they can be offensive. But reading the description of the talk doesn’t make it sound like it. “Attendees will learn about the ramifications of the defaulting of White Mainstream English…” and ” voice-based discrimination in the housing market.”

    I cry for our education system these days. It no longer has a grasp of reality.

    1. So…. if you’re blessed with the voice of James Earl Jones, does that give you an unfair advantage??

      1. MorganFreeman narrates: “It did, in fact, give him an unfair advantage.”

        1. Last Man Standing’s Jonathan “Chuck Larabee” Adams has just two words for you.

          So depressing to not get an audio clip of that.
          ~

      2. What’s funny about that one is that Jones in particular has a debilitating stutter when he’s saying much of anything not scripted… pull up an an interview sometime. One of the loveliest voices in the universe and I expect it doesn’t help him at all in usual interactions.

        …but I think I can probably substitute Jake from State Farm and it works out the same for what you’re saying ^.^

        1. [blink] I’ve only seen one interview, from back about 1978, but he was most definitely not stuttering. Of course, I have no idea if the interview was scripted…

          “The worst thing to do is to fake an emotion.” — Jones, from that interview

    2. The county where my state’s university resides somehow thought it was a fantastic idea to put the university in charge of the vaccination efforts. (I note, also, that this is one of only two leftist bastions in my state.)

      I don’t think I need to paint you a picture of the s**t-show that it is. Of course, going by my interactions with the uni when I was a student there, I could have told anyone who cared to know that putting the university in charge of ANYTHING was a terrible idea, but…well.

      Whereas in my county–which is the next county over–they decided “screw deciding who gets to be first in line for this and therefore forcing people to have appointments, lest they be the wrong age/shape/whatever, let’s just have clinics and if you want a vaccination, you can show up!” and it was a model of quick, smooth, and friendly. (I finally opted to get one, bc my parents are high risk and I do all the shopping, etc for them.) I spent less than 5 minutes in line. (Granted, we’re a low population county in a low population state, but even so–there were quite a lot of people there. They were just proceeding in the most sensible manner possible.)

      1. Here in Iowa, SumDood wrote a bot program that announces when there are open vaccination spots and where.

        Most of them are in rural areas, but the big thing is– it means that folks can CHOOSE to drive for several hours, to get to a place that hasn’t got anybody scheduled.

      2. Here in Florida, they’re vaccinating a lot of people in Publix supermarkets, which is very convenient, and has the advantage that most of the people who run the process are nice.

      3. Just remember, the same leftist institutions that are raging against requiring ID to vote are insisting on ID in order to get vaccinated, so that they can be sure that they are vaccinating the right person (i.e. someone entitled to get vaccinate and so they can track who is vaccinated).

        2. And you are issued a card with the type of vaccine, and when the vaccine is administered. One. Card. Lose it? Too bad so sad no proof of vaccine. Should an activity require proof (which isn’t going to happen, wink, wink) this is it. There is no other copy (well there will be of ours).

          1. You can easily get a vaccine card online, for free. Just print out with your information and save! You might have to search for your state, etc.

            Obviously this shouldn’t be necessary; but if it is, there you go.

            1. Exactly. If the copy is the only copy, how would they know? If there was a database then there would be a database to check. If it was going into your medical records, then you could print your medical records.

              Hmmm. One would think they didn’t think this through. Right? OTOH what am I saying. Of coarse they didn’t think this through!

              When school tried to insist son get the Chicken Pox vaccine, when it finally became available, you know, 3 years AFTER he’d suffered through them. Like they are doing to patients who have already suffered through and survived Covid19. I mean, come on already. If you aren’t safe after having Covid19, how good is a vaccine going to do? OMG they are sooooo stupid!!!! (I have to apologize to stupid.)

              1. ” If there was a database then there would be a database to check.”

                There is. Doctor’s offices, pharmacies, charities, insurance providers, state and local governments, etc. are being “asked” to provide copies of who gets vaccinated / tested to HHS and CDC for a “data lake” via electronic transfer.

                1. Then the cards are not the only proof. But when handed out it is made clear “don’t lose it”. I was there when I got the spiel and when hubby got it. Two different locations, days, and providers.

                  1. There’s a reason I said it is being built, not that it is done. And I suspect that your doctor doesn’t know that it is. He/she/it has no need to know. The practice / hospital / pharmacy IT provider knows. Which is why I know.

    4. I do hope your U is providing segregated dorms for people of color as are so many ‘woke’ Universities. Elsewise you’re far out of the mainstream today.

      Perhaps your U could make a leap ahead of the pack by writing a grant for federal monies to install separate, but equal, drinking fountains.

    5. Oh, good grief. I cannot say enough how HAPPY I am to no longer be in a university. Guarantee somebody would try to drag me to a lecture like that.

      1. Omg. Yup, this is apparently a thing, and the “experimental” part is a source of great smugness. Ooh, empirical! Google “Wright Linguistics” and see the smug at a page called variously “covert racism” and “racioinguistics”.

        Look, even Chomsky is not that smug. And he is smug about getting into fields away from linguistics, with higher speaker fees.

        Language is a huge and humbling field, and linguistics is not one of the favored fields where you can coast. This person obviously does not do anything humbling. What is wrong with that person? What is she on? Also notice the typical Ann Arbor attempt to suggest an ethnicity that she does not share. (Cosplay, fashion, same thing.) Bleh. Must not need a job.

        1. https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/03/29/woke-music-profs-urge-oxford-university-scrap-sheet-music-being-complicit-white-supremacy-report/

          Breitbart has updated the story but not the headline. Apparently western music is colonialist and needs to be de-emphasized and decolonized in favor of hip-hop and other things. It would not surprise me one whit to go digging and find some prof arguing that the act of recording and transcribing music from outside the western tradition is an act of cultural appropriation and is racist or something, because it removes “the oralities of the indigenous tradition.” [The quote is from an article I read a decade and more ago about the academic morality of recording folk lore or not. I don’t recall the source of the article, but that phrase made me roll my eyes so hard that I had to chase them out of the study carrel and almost all the way to the archive door.]

          1. Whoever wrote that article should have been bashed over the head with a shovel, and buried in an unmarked grave. Failure to record folklore by the best means possible is just as destructive of knowledge as burning books.

    6. And such will continue, and grow, as long as they’re insulated from the consequences of their disconnection from reality.

  6. Oddly, I had just posted this on my meager social media before coming here to see if you had anything new. :,

    1. YES. This.

      I stand as me, myself, and I. Clear eyed, in love with myself and in love with my former Republic.

      1. It was intended as “self portrait as Don(a) Quixote,” I think, but it was from decades ago when I was going out of my mind trying not to get drowned by the groupthink in SF/F.

        1. Hmm.

          My first thought was Don Quixote. My second thought was, “No, it looks like maybe Lady Godiva?”

            1. These days windmills are mostly out to sea, so either provide a suitable mount or target solar farms.
              ~

              1. Dunno, I passed plenty of them in California and Spain when I traveled there. They’re just uglier and kill more birds than Don Quixote’s. -_-

                    2. He is pretty epic, but I worry that the blue city mayors are undercutting him. Lots of people talk about how free Florida is, but my part of Florida is still full of death cult crazies. I have to drive pretty far out to get to the sane people. (And then they’re sane in a crazy way, like the retirement communities that staged pro-Trump golf cart parades while drinking XD )

                    4. It is pretty wild. A lot of the communities down here have golf cart parades for just about any occasion (including decorated “float” golf carts for Christmas). Some of them tinker with their golf carts until they can go dangerous speeds. It’s kind of ridic. People talk about “them rednecks in trucks” but I don’t know that rednecks in trucks have anything on redstate retirees in turbocharged golf carts. XD

                    5. One thing here in FL (must be the same elsewhere) is that privately owned businesses and restaurants are very open on the mask thing. Wear it if you want, don’t if you’d rather not. It’s the big corporate outfits that are still hanging on to the, “mask required” garbage.

                    6. Depends on where in Florida; in the cities even the mom and pop places can be ridiculous about it. I get more grief at restaurants for the 15 feet it takes to walk from the door to a table than I get at any of the three grocery stores I go to.

                      But I do agree that the people who work at chains are more likely to be powerless to make exceptions, no matter how they feel about things. They have to answer to Corporate, or their jobs are at stake. :/

          2. I once read that Lady Godiva’s sidesaddle ride through the streets of Coventry is where we get the expression “Hooray for our side!”

          3. Lady Godiva was a fighter for freedom. 😀
            It was also my nickname when I was …. under 12 when they managed to beat a sense of “you’re shocking people” into me. Until twelve I had hair down to my knees and kept forgetting I had a body, so I would come running down the stairs to “pick up something” (usually a book) while my parents had visitors, dressed in nothing but my hair.
            My brother shortened it to Lady G. (I should use that as a pen name, I swear.)

                1. I love horrible puns, and I was tickled pink when I found out that Donna => Dona=> Lady Don.

                  In no small part because my brain went to Mafia.

            1. There is a reason why horseriding men or charioteers are the ones who invented pants….

              Yes, a woman could do.it. No, it wouldn’t be unsafe for the horse. The woman would have to have a good seat and good posture. But the nature of a woman sitting is that her wingwang would tend to be held above the surface of the horse and even above its backbone, unless her butt was skinny.

              That said, there could be significant inner thigh chafing if the ride were a long one. And one would not want a bountifully endowed/breastfeeding-veteran lady to have to post at the trot, much less canter or gallop. Clothes have functions beyond hiding nakedness.

        2. Don Quixote, Joan d’Arc, Lady Godiva, chocolate, knight with a lance on a horse as a unicorn who only saves virgins, female nudes, Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek, space cases, suit cases, cards, house of cards all comes tumbling down.

        3. I got “lady Don Quixote,” FWIW.

          But I also mostly got the story via Stasheff’s use of him as a more fun version of Saint Jude.

      3. I think that’s my favorite XKCD cartoon. In part because I have a . . . well, let’s just say if all the commercial wind turbines in the US were to be Raptured, I’d dance with wild glee and delight.

        1. Yeah. Wind turbines sometimes make sense for off-the-grid power. Even small wind farms for islands or other remote town sites may make sense. But as a major component of the grid? No. Just no.

            1. (STYLE = pedantus maximus) In order for that to work, it would be necessary to have enough elevated storage (i.e. water towers or reservoirs in the mountains) to satisfy water usage for the maximum time period that low/no wind conditions may be expected. Generally speaking, that’s going to be far more expensive than just paying for fuel for the power stations. (/STYLE)

              1. Only if it’s the exclusive method– even out in Nevada, we have to haul generators around to pump water.

                Main purpose would be shifting demand– many buildings already have water storage, and of course many towns have water towers.

              2. Van Gogh painting of a somewhat rundown farm in Montmartre just sold for 15 million. I had no idea that Montmartre actually had farms with windmills at that point. I guess that was the joke to the windmill at the Folies Bergeres.

                Which means that basically it was That Strip Club Outside Town By the Highway. Lovely.

      5. “Man has earned the right to hold this planet against all comers by the virtue of occasionally producing someone totally batshit insane.”

        It’s unfortunate that xkcd seems to have gone totally woke. The last few times I’ve clicked on the current comic, I’ve immediately clicked away.

        3. I’m not sure everyone would agree, but I think I saw the wokeness coming with this one, and hardly ever went back except to confirm the suspicion:

          https://xkcd.com/1216/

          The Don Quixote one is so brilliant, though, it’s been on my office door for years.

          1. There are a lot of fake-deep things like that.

            … I mostly eye-roll, but I also filter by only going to the site when someone else links a cartoon.

  7. I was just saying to somebody earlier today that there used to be this trope that people escaped from small towns because of the oppressive insistence that everybody behave according to some rigid set of behaviors. And instead we now have people trying to demand a small set of rigid behaviors for the whole country. The whole world.

    Local insanity used to be local. Now those with the levers of power are insisting that we all hew to the same damn insanity. When the internet was new and shiny people were excited because of the ability it grants to communicate with more people, to distribute information and knowledge. And it does that too. But it’s also spreading the rigid enforcement of (spit) “consensus reality”. Gack. We appear to need more individuality, not less, as those with a totalitarian bent are insisting.

    1. These people are afraid. I think the foundation of all the insanity is the belief, “If everybody does exactly the same things in the same ways, the ways I think they should be done, everything will always be totally predictable and I’ll be SAFE!”

      1. These people are afraid.
        and from Sarah up top:
        because if we all believed, the world would be paradise

        All of this is the cointersection of the widespread Karenish fear of everything and the Tink fallacy – if we all just believe hard enough then everything will no longer be so scary.

        1. And the obvious corollary, if they believe hard enough and it still doesn’t work, the world retaining its scariness quotient, well, there must be insufficiently beliving hoarders and wreckers and kulaks out there, so if we just identify the insufficient-believers and take appropriate action for the greater good, the inevitable arrow will cause universal post-scarcity earthly paradise.

    2. K, smartass came up with “they ARE the folks that folks were trying to escape.”

      Which is petty, and not really defensible …. EXACTLY.

      But, a lot of the new-crazy is in reaction to getting burnt by the old-crazy. So, the #MeToo hysteria is a response to the “girls should be just like cads or they’re repressed” BS. It at least recognizes a problem, though the solution of “so girls get to be cads and then punish guys because it doesn’t work” is the wrong answer.

      So… Small Town “pressure” served a purpose.

      And they’re trying to drag us through hell while avoiding the existing answers, even though basic freaking philosophy would go a LONG way to finding a useful answer.

    3. “Local insanity used to be local.” Indeed.

      My foam-at-the-mouth fury can be summed up as, “I spent years of my life getting out of Crazy and you bar sinister cads want to make my whole world that way!”

    4. Lo, these many years ago, when the sort of person who speaks in platitudes liked to say that the internet would turn the world into a “global village”, I came up with a platitude of my own.

      “If the entire world turns into a village, then everyone will act like peasants.” And that is exactly where we are.

      1. All the world turned into a village, so all the village idiots got together…

    5. Someone pointed out that a major reason we now have all this public crazy is because we *stopped* enforcing conformity to sane behaviors, and started tolerating every sort of lunatic behavior.

  8. “there are transexual people….” well, there are rare intersexed people – folks with the external organs of both sexes (or otherwise malformed sex organs). But even their genes are male or female. Because SCIENCE! I recall the mendacious case of Dr. John Money and his patient David Reiner and “raised as a girl” as a great and obvious warning against messing with Mother Nature too much. People forget too easily, and too often. This tragedy is recounted here https://allthatsinteresting.com/david-reimer

    1. After a great deal of exhausting research, I have learned that biologists classify sex based on gamete production, not on chromosomes, so the “because intersex” argument for transgenderism is moot. Either your body is geared to produce lots of small, disposable gametes, or your body is arranged to produce far fewer, larger, less disposable gametes. That’s it. Everything else, from chromosomes to hormone balance to primary and secondary sex characteristics, is not part of the decisive equation.

        2. 1) Covered with hair (well except my head but that used to have hair) Check.
          2) Give Live birth, well not personally, but yes (no not a platypus)
          3) Lactate, See #2
          4) Maintain constant body temperature, well mostly
          5) Have a spinal chord. Yes, not a member of the House or Senate

          Yup, looks like I’m a mammal.

      2. There might be things about sex we don’t FULLY get. Recently came across a study of an XY woman. She was a woman — about my age — looked like your normal woman. Had a daughter (with the same problem, note.)
        Her problem came to light because both she and her daughter had peculiar fertility issues.
        They haven’t figured out yet how this is possible. (Note comes from small, inbred population, etc and there might be other genetics at work. BUT anyway….. we might not know everything.) However “functions as” is always the way to classify things.

        1. I saw an article by a fetal developmental expert that made transgender make sense. Basically, no matter what your chromosomes are, the actual masculinization of a fetus (because we all default female) happens with particular hormone streams at particular times in the development. If you don’t get the stream, or if you have androgen insensitivity, you stick at female*.

          The key is that the hormone stream that masculinizes the brain comes at a different time than the one that masculinizes the body. So if you get one stream interrupted, or you end up with a surfeit of the hormones in the mother’s body at a time when they shouldn’t be there, there’s a mismatch. And the brain knows what shape it’s supposed to be, at least insofar as “this really doesn’t feel right.” Mind you, this has nothing to do with culture saying “if you like boy things you must be a boy,” which is ludicrous.

          *Note that XY female with androgen insensitivity shows up a lot in the modeling industry, because strong androgen insensitivity often manifests as tall & thin, yet hyper-feminine.

          1. So theory, guided by measurement, suggests. Now, as an adult, how to decide which fetal experience applies to you? My surmise is this physical measurement could only yield probability estimates,

          1. That is a good argument. The problem is that hormones and surgery don’t solve the mind problem for most, because the suicide rate is high, and hormones and surgery do insult the body, so it is not a health benefit for most.

            And apparently the “solution” is a mental health danger to a lot of vulnerable people, because widespread acceptance or fashionability has created some kind of teenage mass hysteria, akin to the previous popularity of anorexia, drugs, cigs, suicide, playing chicken, etc. If kids do whatever their friends are doing, maybe we can’t let their friends do it at all, or at least not publicly.

            1. At least in cattle, those are *almost* always sterile, and still have female bits. There’s been some “steers” that didn’t seem to have any bits to clip, though.

              For non cow folks, a freemartin is most often the female twin in a male/female twin pair, they develop pretty much like a steer with female gear.

          5. Apparently it was mosaicism. From Wikipedia: “There has been a case of unassisted pregnancy in one woman with XY gonadal dysgenesis, who had a predominantly 46,XY Karyotype – a 46,XY karyotype in peripheral lymphocytes, mosaicism in cultured skin fibroblasts (80% 46,XY and 20% 45,X) and a predominantly 46,XY karyotype in the ovary (93% 46,XY and 6% 45,X) – who gave birth to a 46,XY female with complete gonadal dysgenesis.”

        4. But… the Narrative tells us women are interchangeable with men, and to acknowledge any differences is Badthink.

          2. ACLU tweeted in the last day that trans kids are perfect the way they are.

            Apparently not expecting a chorus of “Fine — then they don’t need drugs or surgery!”

        5. About the stupidest thing we can say is, “We fully understand [process].”

          It is just begging for a hubris smack-down.
          ~

        1. Doing that sort of thing to children cries out to God for vengeance. Which is why I keep coming back to “Cry nothing but repentance to this generation” in my scripture studies.

          1. Yeah. I’m reading the Doctrine & Covenants for my own studies, and it’s a bit astonishing how OFTEN ‘cry repentance unto this generation’ comes up.

            (Also the more humorous G-d notes He is very pleased with the church–but qualifies it that it’s the church as a whole and NOT the individuals, who He is less pleased with, and they’d better shape up and repent.)

            I have no doubt that he finds what is being forced upon children right now to be beyond appalling, and things are going to go very bad, I fear, to clean that nastiness out.

    3. I can see how in previous decades how a doctor, presented with a baby with under- or mis-developed genitalia, might make a mistake and “fix” it wrong. But nowadays with quick genetic testing there’s no reason to call anyone “intersex” who doesn’t literally have a chromosomal error.

      2. The intersex community abhors genital surgery of infants. They basically say that if you have an intersex child, let them make decisions when they are old enough to do so, because a lot of them would prefer no surgery at all if there is no physical impairment.

        1. “We don’t want to influence you, we just want to you put off the surgery until it’s too late to accomplish without considerably more and expense and less chance of a satisfactory outcome.”

          1. ….what the hell are you smoking?

            Because truly intersex, the change is cosmetic. Which beats nothing, because there’s no better option, but still cosmetic.

            Not truly intersex, the result is destruction of any chance to repair function, years of deliberate maiming, and what would be recognized as human experimentation if it was for anything not trendy.

            Most famously, David Reiner, though he was “intersex” via maiming rather than birth defect.

          2. It’s one thing if it’s correcting a physical issue, like a blocked duct. It’s another if it just “looks” abnormal, or if it’s genuinely in-between in a manner that won’t impact health.

          3. That is a double-edged sword Mr. TRX.

            If you want to plastic-surgery part of your body to look different, you need something to work with. Unless the goal is to have infant/child genitals one’s whole life.

            (Not addressing you)
            And for all of me, if someone does not “feel right” in her body as a woman, and genetic testing confirms XX AND she has ovaries… Why in the blazes is the first default treatment not estrogen + desensitization therapy? If agoraphobes were treated by locking them in closets it’d be much of a muchness for how pshrinks handle folks who aren’t happy with their sex.

    4. There are people so emotionally/psychologically fractured that a sex change operation, cosmetic though it is, brings relief. They are very very very rare, though.

      1. Yes. And often those people know that they have a serious problem that therapy/psychiatric drugs/other things can’t help. So they go into the surgery and hormonal treatments knowing exactly what WILL get better and what won’t change. Unlike kids, and far too many other people. (Not counting the “I’m trans because it gets me access to [thing/people]” predators. {Looks at Canada’s most infamous transperson.})

          1. “But my kid wants it! Kid has decided kid is some other sex!”

            “If your kid decided he was Superman, would you let him jump off a skyscraper?”

            1. It’s simply the beginning of the effort to completely destroy families and parental authority, so that all authority over children belongs to The Almighty State.

    5. As I understand it, there are rare cases (like 1 per 100k births) where the brain is actually wired for the opposite gender. That is a *nasty* birth defect

      1. Eh… Autistic girls have that problem. Learning to be comfortable as a weirdo is cheaper and less destructive than chemical and surgical mutilation. Slower, though, and the adults and professional types don’t get the comfort of a quick fix for the “problem kid”

        [Redacted] them.

        1. Yeah.

          I scored hella high for “male brain” in school.

          …

          I have six kids.

          I am kinda hoping for seven, even though it’s not practical…..

          1. For those clue impaired: I gave birth to those six kids, at rather dire risk.

            One of the “male brain” markers is idealism, at least depending on who says it.

          2. I was going to say. And in my case, there’s a pretty good explanation in my case.
            BUT it’s not a terribly bad birth defect. I just get annoyed by female social games.

            1. They kept trying to say that engineers had equal parts male and female brain characteristics, but they just meant that both sides of the brain developed equally in some areas. Not all areas on either side. Just some.

              1. >> “They kept trying to say that engineers had equal parts male and female brain characteristics”

                Interesting. Who’s “they,” and what do engineers supposedly get from the female side?

    6. What a horribly tragic story. Having a family member with an “alternative lifestyle” I can honestly say the whole family is affected. I didn’t love my family member any less because of those choices, but the reality of a life ended far, far too soon will haunt me through my remaining days on earth. Lord save us from people who are “doing this for your own good”.

      1. All I can think–and I have to think it, so as to avoid becoming completely enraged at his parents–is that poor man’s parents were the sort who were completely and utterly convinced of the intellectual and moral superiority of doctors. That’s the only reason I can see why they’d have EVER gone along with any of this in the first place.

        Sadly, I find it a bit hard to stomach that they CONTINUED to do this even as it tore apart their own, personal inner lives alongside their sons’ lives.

        All because one cowardly doctor effed up a circumcision and didn’t want to really face the consequences of that, and because one evil and twisted psychologist saw a chance to play god with a child’s life. Ugh.

        (Also reminds me why I feel that the vast, vast majority of the psychology profession are horrible people. I’m sure there are some good ones out there, but it seems to me that, as with teachers, the good ones are almost as rare as unicorns.)

        1. I literally suggest Doctor Ray from “The Doctor is In” radio show as that kind of an exception.
          “Look, it’s a psychology call in show, but he’s not crazy and is actually helping folks, not screwing them up more for his theory.” One of the rare “psychology serves man” folks.

          Kind of like bioethicists, where I suggest Wesley J. Smith of Human Exceptionalism as “he’s a bioethicist who actually applies ethics, instead of explaining why obvious serious ethical problems don’t really apply here.”

          2. “explaining why obvious serious ethical problems don’t really apply here.”
            Thing is, these justifications are so easy that there is no challenge worthy of claiming it as the focus of an occupation. Ethics are a cultural construct, ergo, imposing them is racist. Boom, done.

            Evil already has a lot work done in its defense.

            The only legitimate reasons to work at justifying evil are trolling, practice thinking, and to expose parallel issues with other justifications for evil.

            “he’s a bioethicist who actually applies ethics”

            Yeah, that is worthy of being the focus of an occupation. People don’t want to be told no. It is easier to go along.

            Saying ‘No. This is wrong.’ and explaining why is productive work.

            Note for visitors: Everyone here understands that I’m often on the wrong side of both of these tests.

          3. bioethicist who actually applies ethics

            Uhhhhhh, isn’t that illegal?

            The job description of a bioethicist is to make up bullshit reasons to block any attempt at work, lest anything be accomplished.

  9. They want to believe that if they can think hard enough, say the right things, speak the right words, and shoot the right “disbelievers”, it can all be made how they want. The idea that reality is consensual scares the living hell out of me, because I know how banal and boring, dull and grey far too many people are. The people that are the most banal are the ones that try their hardest to “shake up the status-quo,” and have nothing to replace it with other than their own new, boring status-quo. Often covered in layers of paint designed to hide that it was made in a drawing room in London or from the Paris cafe culture of the Victorian era. Or worse.

    Live your boring, tired life. I want to try and reach for the stars. Even if I fall down in the process.

    (And, on the whole trans thing…I sit here, fearful, that the backlash from the current effort to make “trans” into “anybody that isn’t toeing the mainstream Karen/Kevin line” as a way to give the Weird boys a way to be accepted by destroying themselves. How many boys are going to be destroyed in the process? And, in the process, get rid of a possible treatment for a small number of people that need it, desperately?)

    1. The reason why the Progressive-Socialist Left supports the trans movement is because it produces a bunch of dependent, non-reproductive, drones.

      1. And, they die very quickly when they hit the point where they’re no longer economically viable. Especially with the meds needed.

        What is the newest kink thing is actual drone conversion play with hypnosis and brain washing-no face with a black gas mask and no voice, androgynous or female, all-black latex catsuit, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc…and, of course, the person that has been changed has a perfect life…inside of a hive network computer system, while their bodies go wandering around doing things.

        I’m wanting to get off planet before they actually make such a thing possible. Or required.

        1. Is that supposed to be what if? Cuz I honestly know more than a few that would jump at chance.

      3. What the LGBTQA+ and “reproductive rights” prog crowd forget in the quest for a collectivist society is that when the demographic crises gets to the point it can’t be ignored, all those things come off the table in service of the State.

        The first modern state to legalize abortion was the Soviet Union in the early twenties, the Soviet Union was also the first modern state to recriminalize abortion (except for mistresses of the nomenklatura) after its demographic collapse in the late twenties.

        The progs will get the “Handmaid’s Tale” they fear, but not from right wing Christians, it’ll come from statist “progressives.”

    2. While not in the LEAST minimizing the damage done to boys, it’s fairly common to let the boy just wear a dress and makeup and demand to be called a girl.

      In a move that makes no sense unless you’re looking at something like weaponized Mean Girl, girls are supposed to take testosterone really dang quick, and our systems are already very prone to breaking easily.

      I’d think it’s because guys’ systems are relatively simple– I said relatively! Not actually simple!– but they don’t even have a thing like “have trans-girls use the pill to mimic the cycle we insist is ‘really’ theirs.”

      1. On my long, long list of complaints about human engineering-

        1-Lack of a clear set of error codes and diagnostic tools for serious problems.
        2-Complete lack of OEM or upgrade components at a reasonable cost.
        3-The complete inability to hot-swap male and female components on the same chassis at any time.
        4-That I can’t buy laser eyes to blast the idiots that are suggesting this crap into ash.

            1. Cattle prods. Many, many cattle prods. With lots and lots of batteries to hot swap, because they are going to get some use I tell ya.

          2. My father always lamented that the computer op code HALT AND EXECUTE OPERATOR did not perform as advertised.

        2. I’d settle for knees and back that didn’t crap out halfway through the warranty period…

          1. We technically are machines, in that respect. I am just tired of friends that have medical issues. That their bodies just don’t work because they were made by the lowest bidder. Who did everything right and things screwed up.

            I’m not asking for perfect. Perfect doesn’t happen. I’m asking for better.

            1. Lowest bidder? As if. It was a no-bid contract with no specs and a rigid deadline.

              We are all made by unskilled labor. If you’re the oldest, you were made by inexperienced unskilled labor.

            2. Recent link on Instapundit concerning an aging study that lasted 45 years and found that there were aging factors that had folks aging at .4 years er chronological year and other up to 2.5 yrs per chrono year. Amazing. Aging out at 45 or so and feeling 75 with bad knees etc. or feeling great in your sixties etc. Even the looks were effected. Machines are built to last or not. I am very fortunate, long lived family of hardy pioneers. am 65 next month and feel and look like 45. (less hair) Work sixty plus hours a week, sleep 5 hours a night, read 3-5 books a week and looking for next adventure. Really good machine. Very blessed.

              1. >> “Recent link on Instapundit concerning an aging study that lasted 45 years”

                Do you have that link? Other than occasionally tuning in for Sarah’s night DJ routine I haven’t paid much attention to Instapundit since the election.

      2. they don’t even have a thing like “have trans-girls use the pill to mimic the cycle we insist is ‘really’ theirs.”

        Uh… Actually, they do. I know some trans folk (all adults) and the female ones have a cycle with the hormones, and some of them even end up getting induced cramps when their bodies try to tighten muscles they don’t have. (Though mostly they get the other side effects, like the bloating. Fun times!)

        1. For adults, yes.

          For later on, yes.

          For “I just thought of this, I’m 14 and my parents are going through a divorce,” I have yet to hear of.

          While I’ve heard of several boys in that situation, some pre-teen.

            1. Yeah.

              It looks a heck of a lot like the “any female problem, up to and including having a period, put them on the pill.”

              1. Yup, nobody tells girls that it’s not “one size fits all,” and that you have to experiment and/or complain to your doctor. Luckily my mom feels that way about all medical stuff, so I took that attitude too. But sheesh, doctors should be able to tailor this stuff a bit more, and female nutrition and self-care tends to stink.All the attention on makeup, no attention on staying alive.

                1. But also the prepubescent girl online, who thought she might be transgender because she was unsure about the prospect of menstruation, pregnancy, sex, marriage to a man, and boys. She was astonished to learn that every grown woman on the group had been unsure about those things.

                  She also knew more about sex (thanks to our culture) than pregnancy (about which she knew less than nine year old me had). Poor kid.

    3. More girls, but yeah, a number of boys too. And mostly it’s being sold to them as a way to “fit in” which means it’s a poison pill for our kind. And a lie.

      1. The tools that I grew up that allowed me more of an escape have become the tools to force a greater level of conformity than anybody could imagine previously.

        It’s a very well-gilded poison pill, especially for the desperate Odds that are the loneliest of the bunch.

      2. Oh yes, the “fit in”, ploy when used against the highly vulnerable autistic boys. Small wonder that they’re 10 times more likely to go trans than normals.

    4. They may want to believe that, but they’ll find the gods of the copybook headings arriving and themselves wholly unprepared.
      ~

  10. “Build over, build under, build around, and get ready to hold when the Earth Shattering Kaboom comes.”

    Yep. And all buildings of worth require good foundations. Either you have to bulldoze the sand and the muck to get to some solid stable mineralized subsoils, or actually some decent bedrock; or in some cases where you have boulders or uneven bedrock that can’t be bulldozed, you take the explosives to and break them up.

    I don’t think we’re at the building part yet. We have a lot of debris that needs to be dynamited and bulldozed back down to the Foundations before we can do that. First one is going to be the 2nd Amendment followed closely by the 1st. And we’re going to have any number of cases where people’s Constitutional rights of due process are going to be violated because they chose to legislatively violate ours.

    1. I listen to Akira the Don while I work. Mostly his Jordan Peterson stuff.

      In the one I just left, Jordan talks about how, if a forest is untended for too long, when it does burn, there’s so much junk tinder and old wood that it burns so hot it burns the topsoil. No topsoil? Everything dies.

      I’m getting the feeling that when stuff does start to really disintegrate, it’s going to burn really hot. Like an untended forest that needed cleaning, and we left it for too long. (More optimistically, I wonder if this is burning the detritus out of the forest so it can heal and become healthy again. That’s more my feeling. That God means this as a difficult blessing.)

    2. I’m so glad you’re back. You just made me laugh. And I was getting concerned.

        1. I’ve been kinda overwhelmed by having to fly up to Anchorage to take possession of my increasingly-demented dad (his lady friend with her own health issues couldn’t manage him anymore). It took only three weeks to find a care home and get him moved in.

          Now that that’s done, for the past three weeks I’ve been working remotely and clearing fifty years of junk out of his apartment (Pop grew up in the Depression and never threw anything away, and kept OCD meticulous records of paid bills going back 20 years). I’m going to be flying back to Seattle in a week since I’m finishing up faster than I thought I would.

          So I have time to get back online and catch up. 🙂

  12. I suppose my own, personal bit of undeniable insanity is that I believe stories show up fully formed in my head, as though I were a receiver for some master story teller elsewhere. And I talk about it that way too, by saying thing like “I just can’t get properly tuned to receive this story.”
    By everything rational, this is an insane, nay, a possibly utterly bug nuts belief.

    I don’t know if it’s insane, because I don’t know if it’s like what I know and have tested.

    Say, someone will ask a question, and I’ll answer, because I KNOW the answer, without thinking.
    And then I have to go back through and figure out how I know the answer. I can usually even find the actual citations for what I “knew,” though sometimes there’s a fumble in phrasing– say, this morning, Society rather than Association football. (Soccer. And yes, the UK did call it soccer, first, the US’s only sin was not changing with the fads. Ya wanna be picky, call it Association and Gridiron.)

    Point being, you CAN get quite complicated stuff without ever setting it up, at least not that you thought about, and my flavor happens to be something that can be checked as not being an ex-post-facto justification.

    *********

    K, funny story.

    I have a megaphone to wake up the late-riser kids in the morning.
    I ended up yelling “respon-day voo play!” at the Princess.
    The Baron looked at me, with big eyes, and asked if that was Japanese. I explained it was French, then asked if he knew why I knew it.
    “Because you were in the Navy, and sooooooo smart! You know lots of languages, you and daddy!”
    I grinned and said we know a lot of phrases, and he’d pick them up if he listened to stuff people say, then explained about RSVP and told him it’s French.

    Tickled me pink, though.

    1. That’s how I used to take tests. Later I’d be sure I failed, but I would get 90-100 percent by just giving the right answer. It’s like I picked it up in the air.

      1. I’ve only had that once on a test, but it was a geometric thinking problem. Apparently I can “just pick it up and rotate it” in my head, which is both useful and completely impossible to explain when it’s a crystal lattice.

        I mean, I’d made it out of gummy fruit, so it was obvious…

        1. Cool– I don’t have that ability. Really cool .. I also heard (could be wrong) that being able to rotate it in your head is sex-linked.

          1. That’s what I’ve always heard too. I seem to have it pretty well, as well as 3-dimensional space-packing ability (I once fit a friend’s three-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into a 20′ UHaul with no more than 3 inches of clearance on top and front left over)..

            And I initially read the prior post as “crystal lettuce“…

            1. It is much much more common in men than women, but it is not (strictly speaking) sex-linked.

              But then again, our society does not encourage mental 3D manipulation of images/objects, so it could be an ability that everyone has, but which remains latent in most. Like memory palaces, or using your fingers as an abacus.

              2. Probably 3/4 of my drafting class struggled with isometric drawings, taking *weeks* of careful individualized help from the instructor. Even then, probabably 1/4 were never able to make one. Some had a hard time identifying the object in the drawing as the same as the physical sample object in front of them.

                Later, working in a machine shop, I observed people holding plain 2D drawings out and rotating them at various angles. I have no idea what was going on there.

                1. That might be pretty simple.

                  A good 3D drawing usually has at least one of the object’s flat projections. If that flat projection corresponds to a surface on the object, and you can’t look straight at that surface, rotating the paper parallel to the surface will deform the perspective of the project in a similar way to the surface. Obviously, it is a little off from that, because the viewer to the surface, and the viewer to the projection are a little different.

            2. lol for crystal lettuce. Yea– I have a brother who is really good with that– he can move me with one Uhaul. I am totally amazed.

    2. I do that. I love doing training sessions on things I understand well, because invariably somebody will ask me a question I’ve never considered, and the answer will just pop right out without thinking. After the fact, I have to go back and write down the explanation, so that I will “know” it going forward.

  13. I think “transexual” may be the wrong term for it– the old word was “hermaphroditism” and then the new word was “intersex.”

    “Trans” means across over and beyond, implying being fully one then fully the other; “inter” means between, that is, has half of the indicators of one, and half of the other. (non-precise “half.”)

    Hermaphrodite is more accurate, though. “Having both male and female sex characteristics.”

    2. I meant the psychological dysfunction. Mind you, in most cases transitioning will actually HURT the person mentally, but in very very rare cases it helps. And while it’s a drastic and bizarre “cure”, in extreme cases I’m not going to say “never”. OTOH I’d try to talk a friend or relative out of it. BUT I wouldn’t say “never.” There’s someone in my fangroup who seems pretty comfortable with his choice.

      1. I am quite willing to say “never” to physical damage resulting in complete loss of function and all ability to recover function for a possible psychological improvement.

        Wearing dresses, getting laser hair removal, whatever.

        Stuff that is “in case of death” level operation in all other situations for a possible psychological effect?

        Right up there with “suicide is the answer.”

        1. This. Physical mutilation along with risky hormone therapy is a definite case of the nopes. The cross dressing thing has been going around in low percentages for, oh, several thousands of years, considering some of the dimly remembered history knocking about the old brain box. That’s all fine and good. Weird, but okay, weird is endemic to the human condition.

          I feel pity for the folks suffering, I really do. Human psychology is a complicated business. But it is too much risk for too little gain, in my opinion. Especially when acceptable alternatives exists short of surgery.

          1. So…who was the first cross dressing caveman? 😛

            Is there a Far Side cartoon for that? There should be.

            1. The thing is that cross-dressing has a large cultural spread because it’s the easiest way to dress up as someone else. You don’t need a new costume for the carnivalesque feast, you just trade clothes.

              I have seen the maddest solemn discussions of cross-dressing written by people who obviously never thought of that.

            2. cross-dressing caveman

              Every time you talk about trans, somebody always brings up that Indian tribe that honored and valued their trans women, and how by implication we people of Western civilization are horrible and anti-nature and yadda yadda yadda.

              It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I learned why they were valued: they could go on hunting parties (because only bio men could go hunting without spiritually polluting it) but they could be made to do all the hunting camp chores (because camp chores were women’s work). Win-win!

        1. If he’d done his hair in a primary color, he would have fit right in at an anime convention.

          1. Hey, hey, don’t be excluding the folks with purple, green, orange and cyan hair! 😛

  14. *looks at image for this posting*
    Sarah, have you been playing with Infinity Stones again?! 😉

  15. Why did this occur in the late 90s?
    Think about it – the Baby Boomers were in their mid-40s (or, around that time).
    The men realized that they weren’t going to reach their childhood goals (smoking hot wife/gf, athletic records set, keep their hair – unlike Dad, avoid that middle-aged flabbiness, or be the guy every other guy WANTED to be at work). Life, for them, sucked. And, they hadn’t stashed away enough money to retire early and sail the world, or other unrealistic dreams.
    The women hit their biological clock (or finally realized that they’d long ago passed it). Their kids (if they had them) were hitting their “I don’t have to listen to you anymore, Old Person” ages. Their BFs or husbands were heading to the door, no longer willing to take their $hit. and their bodies were beginning to look like Mom’s. Or worse.
    Not only that, but their idol, Billy Boy Clinton, had revealed himself to be just another sleazy grifter.
    So, they went crazy – not slowly, but in a sudden lurch to full-on Cray-Cray. The process made them feel energized. The media was on their side. And, they had a New Crusade – not that they would use that term now – that gave them a reason for living.
    Insanity – a Cure for Middle-Aged Blues.

    1. an interesting hypothesis. I was in my late 20 and early 30s. I am now lumped with the Boomers, but then we weren’t one of them so I wasn’t interested in the Boomer shift.

        1. The whole lot of these folks have now co-opted us, trying to make us irrelevant. Makes me wonder why they were so dead set against our generation. Scared of us???

      2. The “baby boom” is more of a marketing thing than anything else. If you look at live births for USA” at https://www.infoplease.com/us/population/live-births-and-birth-rates-year you can see a modest increase in births, with the fat part of the curve… way up in the 1950s.

        The “additional” births in the 1940-1965 blocks are around 15 million. That’s *all* of the Boomers, and some years on either side… plus the birth rate went up about a million a year 1965-up compared to pre-WWII, so the percentage of Boomers in the population is smaller than it initially looks.

        The endpoints of the Boom were originally 1942-1948, specifying “war babies”, of which the numbers show only a modest increase. The term has been stretched relentlessly, until all it means now is “old people.”

      1. I have noticed that Real Socialists have an -invincible- ability to ignore inconvenient historical facts from China, the USSR, physics, anywhere really. They really don’t live in the same universe we do.

        1. One issue there is Socialists and Communists tend strongly towards historical revisionism, as well as lying to their people in the present. A certain cynicism towards such things as news and history is a positive survival tactic. This can lead to problems, where the reality of the matter is much, much worse than what they perceive.

          Of course for Party members, why those inconvenient facts are for the little people. Why it would never happen to- Wait! No! Stop! I’m a Party Member! Someone, tell Comrade Biden! He will fix this!

          1. Most of those that expect to come out on top (or near enough) Come The Revolution will either be fertilizing some anonymous forest somewhere, or pleading for their life as they’re dragged off to the firing squad, as Lavrentiy Beria was said to be doing after his patron Stalin became a Good Communist.

            And none of them will accept it when historical fact is pointed out to them, because they “know better!”.

            1. And in the process of seeking their bliss, they just *have* to break a few hundred thousand eggs or so. Or a million. Give or take two. That’s just, like, the cost of doing business, y’know? They’ve already been talking about re-education. And “direct action.” Et cetera.

              It won’t just be them, though come the day, they will likely be the first. And it won’t end with us, either. We Odds, we stick up too much. Defy too much. Rebel often, and vigorously as our individual constitutions allow, when faced with the dire threats to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that such utopian dreams inevitably create.

              If the current madness insists on leaving folk such as we no way to peacefully dissent to the usurpations and and significant injuries done to those of us innocent of anything more than a zeal for to be left alone and unbothered, then the mess that will result will take nigh generations to un-f*ck, people.

              Also, dear WordPress, please note that this is NOT my blog, and I *don’t* need edit tools on other peoples’ posts when it is, as stated, NOT my blog.

              WPDE…

              1. >> “Also, dear WordPress, please note that this is NOT my blog, and I *don’t* need edit tools on other peoples’ posts when it is, as stated, NOT my blog.”

                And I can’t even get an edit function on my OWN damned comments. Yeesh.

          2. There is a reason why the old joke “In Soviet Union, the future is always known; it is the past that is always changing” resonated so much. It was accurate.

          3. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with historical revisionism, it is just that the right people never did it.

            Or at least, when they did it they got no credit for doing it right.
            ~

              1. …And considering that said tongue is forked and barbed, that would be a painful way to go through life. 😉

      2. Wasn’t this also around the time that China got “Most Favored Nation” trade status too? I seem to recall a lot of Chinese money floating around even in the Clinton year. Especially in the Clinton years.

        1. Gore famously got caught at a Chinese political fund-raiser hosted by Tibetan monks during the 1996 election campaign.

          On the other hand, many at the time believed that the market reforms instituted under Deng would inevitably lead the PRC toward freedom and democracy. Chinese officials flat out told American officials as early as the Bush presidency that this wasn’t the case. But the Americans chose to ignore them, perhaps believing that their Chinese counter-parts were merely saying what they needed to in order to avoid trouble with the more conservative wing of the CCP.

        2. Member of extended family worked as a machinist back then, much of the work being on military equipment. There were lots of security rules – except early in Clinton’s term when a bunch of Chinese engineers were given guided tours of the place including work in progress and supposedly secure areas. The employees were told that the orders allowing this came from pretty high up.

          1. Not only that, Clinton gave them copies of all the blueprints and technical manuals. All our aircraft, tanks, submarines, missiles, radars, guidance systems…

            Bastard should have been hanged for treason, not just forced to give back the ‘campaign contributions’.

            1. Loral gave them significant assistance in making their missiles functional, helping resolve guidance problems with their Long March rockets:

              U.S. satellite maker Loral Space & Communications Ltd. has agreed to pay a $14 million fine for passing missile technology to China. … The investigation started as a criminal case, after the U.S. government adjudged Space Systems/Loral might have broken export laws when it gave technical help to China, on its rockets.
              Loral helped China investigate the February 1996 crash of a Chinese Long March missile that was carrying a Loral satellite. Such a move requires government clearance. But in June that year, Loral disclosed that it had not received it.

              From CNN article datelined 2002.

              You might also recall Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, the Little Rock restaurateur who was tied t a “questionable” $450,000 donation to the Clinton campaign, or Johnny Chung, a Chinese-American businessman, who

              became a major figure in the Democratic fund-raising scandal when it was learned he made almost 50 visits to the White House. During one visit, Chung gave first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Maggie Williams, a $50,000 check for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The check was delivered inside the White House.

              according to a 1998 CNN article.
              ~

    3. I was born in 1955, so am not sure if I’m a late Boomer. (Yes, that was on purpose).
      I know I had nothing but scorn for the nonsense people were doing in the late ’60s and no sympathy for the anti-Vietnam War protesters at all. OTOH my parents were Goldwater voters, so I had an unusual upbringing (grin).

      1. My dad was born in 50, and doesn’t consider himself a Boomer because when he went through school, it was half empty.

        They built for the boom of the just-back soldier, and the classrooms were still too big when I went through in the late 80s.

        1. According to all the date ranges I’ve seen for the post WWII baby boom, 1950 is solidly in the middle of it. Maybe there weren’t as many children in your father’s area for some reason. From Wikipedia: “The U.S. Census Bureau defines baby boomers as those born between mid-1946 and mid-1964,[21] although the U.S. birth rate began to increase in 1941, and decline after 1957.”

          1. Part of the problem is that, like Millennial, the term for a rather specific group– the sudden burst of babies right as soldiers came home, the 16-20 year old folks at the turn of the Millenium— got used to describe a 15-20 year span.

            For an example of complicating factors, we got a big influx of refugees in post-war years…..

          2. They keep changing the date ranges for Boomer. And a lot of the late-supposed-Boomers *spit were not in the same mind set as the early Boomers.

            1. If you’re talking about generalized “generations”, I don’t think raw demographics are much use. I follow Strauss & Howe (coiners of the term “Millennial”) and look at shared experiences.

              Going by that, I really consider Boomers to be 1940-1960 (kids who never knew anything but the postwar period and had TV early), GenX to be 1960-1980 (latchkey kids whose parents were “finding themselves” and/or had mothers working outside the home), Millennials to be 1980-2000 (never knew anything but computers and internet), etc.

              As proof, a friend of mine years ago, born in 1961 (four years before me), talked about how his older brothers seemed to have all the advantages of the free love and easy sex era of the ’60s and ’70s, but just when he got old enough to take part all that stopped like turning off a switch. I consider him to be GenX.

              1. 1940-1960 is too long a period. you get two almost three generations. There is a different between a boomer from 1940-1950 and another from late 1950-1960. So I have to tell you that you are wrong. Plus the pivotal experiences for the 1940-1950 generation was different (they did the wars and the flower children). Those of us later were hit with Nixon– at the same age… 80s etc. Very different generations with different ideas.

                1. But so is there a difference between an Xer born 1960-70 (“Atari”) vs. 1970-80 (“Nintendo”). I think it has to do with the first half being raised by the two-prior generation (“Silents”) instead of the one-prior generation (“Boomers”).

                  Also, I’ve noticed that as this generations theory has been catching on, all the ranges have been compressing more and more so now a “generation” is around 15 years. I don’t know any mass of 15-year-old parents, do you? The Strauss & Howe theory was a four-stroke cycle extending over a long human lifetime of 80 years, so if anything the generations should be getting longer as a “long human lifetime” grows to 90 or 100 years.

                  2. Look, there are…. interlaced generations. For instance, both Dan and I are the children of men who were children during WWII. So we don’t fit in well with the “children of returning veterans” but we’re also not echo boomers.

                  3. Something interesting. My father and his two sisters were born before WWII. They were children during that time. The youngest two were born after the war and were definitely Boomers. So in one family there was two generations. And they were different even from the same family. I’ve seen that in my own family of 9 children. Oldest born in 61, youngest born in 78. BTW according to most data 1961 is not Xer… (although they aren’t boomer). And yes there is a difference between “Atari” and “Nintendo”.

                    1. Well, yes, it is an extremely broad brush. But like a pointillist painting, all those different-colored dots do tend to resolve into a picture if you stand back far enough.

                    2. Or if only those dots that match the expected are allowed.

                      The reason I bristle at “generations” talk is because I grew up reading stuff from the late 50s, and the mid 70s, and the then mid 90s.

                      And the only difference in their depiction of the “kids these days” was which generation-name they used for their complaints about “kids these days.”

                      You can imagine how delighted I was to be in the middle of the Indian Ocean, on a ship where most of the folks were also Millennials, hearing about how we’re worthless because some Boomer bully teachers whipped up a handful of morons to mouth the same stupid stuff they’ve been saying since they were spitting on Vietnam vets.

                    4. No, we are totally doomed forever.

                      There was some secret art of making awesome Americans, that has been eternally lost.

                      The Americans we have to go into the future with just aren’t cool enough to get the job done right.

                      Rumor and hearsay on the basis of collective appearance are enough to know the secret hearts of every American, and to lay bare the future.

                      /sarcasm

                      Yeah, I may be a wee bit excited, and speaking wastefully.

              4. 1960-1980 (latchkey kids whose parents were “finding themselves” and/or had mothers working outside the home)

                Interestingly this applies. Mom worked at home, but I often joke that my grandmother had to raise the grandkids because the sons and wives were so consumed with finding success….

          3. Spero, when I was a kid it was 46 to 56. I don’t appreciate getting aggregated, because our markers really are completely different.
            In 68, I was in first grade.

            1. Culturally, “Boomers” run from 1943 to…well, at least 1959. After that it gets murky, but the canonical Strauss & Howe formulation has generational cohorts averaging about 17 years in duration. That puts you probably at early GenX. Being born after Woodstock and before the Reagan presidency, there’s no doubt that I’m GenX and my kids are GenZ. COVID probably marks the demarcation point for GenZ–if someone does not carry memories of COVID remote learning, they’re definitely GenAlpha.

                1. In addition, Portugal may not be on the same generational schedule as the U.S. Although 1968 seems to have been a breaking point right across the entire globe, so maybe GenX is globally synchronized. Anyone who experienced the fallout from “the sixties” as a young child, not as a teen, is going to think like a GenXer.

          4. To try to clarify– there are four metrics.

            Total births. Lacks context. Pretty sure this is the originally observed “baby boom.”

            Births per thousand population. Highly sensitive to changing population.

            Births per reproductive age women. Still somewhat sensitive to changing population, especially given that immigrants are known to be highly likely to have kids after hitting the US.

        4. I was born in 61 and in my town, we were the largest class to go through school. There were five public elementary schools that fed my junior high. I know one (mine) is gone as of 20 years ago, and I think two others are as well. Part of that is that our town (La Jolla) became far too expensive for our generation to stay and raise kids, and part of that is general birth decline.

          1. Gosh, we were *almost* neighbors…Chula Vista/Coronado here, same era. I remember nights sitting on my grandmother’s front porch and observing the “night life” of Tijuana (my earliest experience of multiculturalism). I have the fondest memories of growing up there. Breaks my heart for what it has become.

      2. My dad always used to say, “The Democrats told us if we voted for Goldwater, we’d go to war in Southeast Asia. They were right — I voted for Goldwater, and wouldn’t you know it, we went to war in Southeast Asia.”

      3. “Boomer” is used to indicate a generation with a commonality of experience. As was pointed out in Generations, not a uniformity, but the changes would be the equivalent of a landslide election in such matters as the important thing about college (to develop your personal philosophy? to learn a job?) shifting from one side having the landslide to the other.

        The problem is that defining it by the adult fertility does not reflect the children’s commonalities.

  16. Pingback: Insanity — According To Hoyt – Sillyfrog's Blog

      1. I’m not sure why someone *would* object to it. If you want your memes to spread that will help. If you don’t why have a public blog?

  18. “This is also why they want everyone to say the election was completely aboveboard. Because if you all believe it, it will have been so.”

    They blew it there then. What a capital full of troops and razor wire tells me is that they don’t really believe it themselves and they expect to be punished.

  19. “I suppose my own, personal bit of undeniable insanity is that I believe stories show up fully formed in my head, as though I were a receiver for some master story teller elsewhere.”

    What? That’s not normal? Everybody doesn’t have that?
    …

    I’m shocked. ~:D

    1. That’s because you’re a Hun, Hon’. We all believe at least three impossible things before breakfast (or dinner, for the late risers.)

      2. If I just got up and I’m making bacon and eggs, then it’s breakfast even if it’s 4:00pm. So there.

  20. “Part of the problem and the reason saying “Consensus reality” is wrong is that it doesn’t matter what the consensus is. We can all believe that food will rain from the sky every day at 12 pm and yet it won’t happen.”

    I see that one of the Fathers of Post Modernism and the whole “consensus reality” notion, Michael Foucault, has been exposed last week as a -disgusting- pedo and child rapist. Stories from Tunisia, told by a colleague of the “great philosopher”. (Why is it always Tunisia? What the hell is going on with those guys?)

    Having read some Foucault and and Post Modernism generally, I can see where a deranged rapist and pedo would find the notion of a socially constructed reality very comforting. All you have to do is change the consensus and Realty ™ changes along with it, thereby justifying and possibly even sanctifying your horrifying deeds.

    Yep. The pervert runs deep in them.

    1. It makes sense. On that side, traditionally you get a pass on, well, pretty much everything up to and including murder so long as your work for the party is top notch. On the other, we see bad behavior as nothing less than what it is, and levy punishments where it is found. You get more of what you encourage (or turn a blind eye to, as it were). Thus the Democratic Party of today.

      Correlation ain’t causation and all, but… You’d be a fool not to notice that all these mass shooters, these child molesters, and these liars and cheats… They’re all Democrats. The crazy gets pushed out of the right side of the aisle. It gets protected on the left. Thus the left becomes the natural home of the crazy.

  21. More each day I’m coming to accept the likelihood that this, all this and that too, around me is a digital construct, where most are NPCs (non-player characters), -with the exception of you, and you, of course.

    As noted by many an author here, what we call the real world today would never be accepted as a story plot, it’s just too improbable.

    As Bat Sh_ _ Crazy as things are getting, it seems all is just too weird to be the real world, much less a salable story line.

    Call me insane if you want, but as you’re probably a voice in my head, I can answer; I know I am but so are you! 😉

    1. I really love my wife, but the world situation is such that there are times I wouldn’t mind being able to reload and resume at an earlier savepoint, before the crazy train started really picking up speed.

  22. Haven’t read the comments yet, but I need to say that you’ve got a Way of making the post I need to read when I need to read it.

    I was to some degree angsting about how I don’t try to engage anymore, that it’s so exhausting to try to get back to a point of commonality to build an argument from that I don’t even bother, just have my little internet spaces where I preach to the teensy choirs I’ve got.

    …well. A different friend points out that argument isn’t a thing anymore, we’re well into slash-and-burn (and that’s part of what’s so exhausting, trying to pretend that I’m getting arguments instead of intentionally destructive social pressure to Stay In Line), and then you remind me that it’s… even beyond the attacks being aimed at the monkey-belonging brain instead of the thinking one, it’s not as though they’re based on reality anyway. Just that reality isn’t acceptable and we need to do better.

    (This is why there aren’t Formative Books that I’ve noticed on the left, isn’t it? Like, I know the Libertarian Reading List–things like The Law and The Road to Serfdom and Economics In One Lesson. And even your Generic Republican will have the Constitution and Declaration and Federalist Papers as things to aspire to and will generally have the concepts, even if they haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. The Left? Near as I can tell… there’s your Smart Coffee Table Books no one actually reads or even knows what they’re about. (You can tell by the way they never seem to come up in conversation.) But they seem to have a shelf-life; I hear The Feminine Mystique referenced every so often, but in general yesterday’s revolutionary thinker is today’s hidebound reactionary. Certainly no one actually reads Keynes or Marx or Lenin.)

    (The closest I can come… is Death of a Salesman and The Crucible, maybe some Dickens, perhaps even The Jungle. Fiction they had to read in high school that made them Feel a certain way, with absolutely no brass tacks about how it’s supposed to actually work, just that Things Aren’t Acceptable As They Are. (Or as that patently obnoxious quote goes, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”)

    …this really was supposed to be a generic Thank You. So! Thank you. I think I needed this at the moment.

    (Now to dig into comments, that’s often some of the best part…!)

    1. (and that’s part of what’s so exhausting, trying to pretend that I’m getting arguments instead of intentionally destructive social pressure to Stay In Line

      Yes.

      I have to be polite, and rational, and be able to cite sources.

      They get to scream I’m a satanic devil worshiper.

        1. >> “Just thought of a reason that “Let It Go” was so popular…..”

          Boy was it:

      2. I just don’t have the energy or inclination anymore even with loved ones. Everyone is going to think what they like and they’re not going to change their minds based on what I say so why not conserve the energy?

        1. Me, too. I was reading an article the other day and for about a nanosecond thought about posting it on FB to say, “see? Y’all are hypocrites.” But, then my self-preservation side came out and said “Why? Nobody is going to change their minds. People are just going to get ugly. Read, note, and add to your own file of information. If you get a chance you can use it in person, but otherwise fugeddaboutit.”

          I have better things to spend my energy on these days.

        2. Yep. Tbh I don’t have many opportunities to have such “discussions”, but I see no signs that they actually work. If given the opportunity, I think I’ll ask some questions about what they know about the opposing arguments; hopefully that will make it clear whether they actually have interest in a back-and-forth or not. As far as I can see, most comments about politics in social situations are just social signaling that lets others know that they’re the “right” sort of people, so for most people actual discussion will derail the point of the commments.

          1. Indeed. “Who are you trying to convince?” is the thought I have most often when reading friends’ FB posts.

            There’s a reason I pretty much stick to pictures of food I cook, DIY projects, trips and vacations, and cats and daughter.

            On the other hand, boy am I tempted sometimes to turn their tropes back on them: “Wow, you sure seem threatened by that Jordan Peterson, are you worried that he’s right?” etc.

    2. It used to be Harry Potter, but that tide seems to have moved on as well.

      Also it quote never supported the things they think it supported as well as they imagine.

  23. no one cares if I scream at the cat “Speak clearly.” At least if I’m not in public

    That’s no less crazy than telling your meowing cat to “use your words”, which happens in my house all the time.

    1. When the rug rat was still a carpet critter (put not yet a yard ape) she overheard me saying it might be helpful to teach the new doggo to speak, along with sit, stay, and the usual.

      We let her go on trying to teach the dumbest dog ever (but sweet as pie) how to communicate longer than we should have. But … So funny!

      1. well…. Pixie — brightest cat ever — got taught to blow his nose by older son.
        We have no idea HOW. But Pixie had an upper respiratory thing with nasal congestion his last ten years of life, after getting hit by a car.
        You could have knocked me down with a feather. Seriously. BOY goes “Blow” with kleenex in front of cat’s face, and cat exhales hard through his nose. Gross stuff comes out, his nose gets wiped, and it’s like “Good boy.”
        Uh?

            2. Can’t remember if I told you– very definitely she cat has been dubbed Pixie. Dark calico.

              The cat who only came out when we can see her because it was FREAKING NEGATIVE TWENTY and I put out a water bowl, with food, including lots of good fats.

              Haven’t seen her since it warmed up, but she eats some of the food each night. (Raccoons eat it, throw stuff around, and drag the bowl 300ft.)

              1. For those about to comment– yes, I know this may draw raccoons.

                I’m an idiot.

                I can’t bear to see even farkin’ trash pandas starve to death via dehydration when I can give them water.

                I just… I can’t. I’d shoot them, but I won’t let them suffer.

                1. Yeah, raccoons are cute. Feral, nasty, dangerous, but cute. Best admired from a distance.

                  One night I got up to use the bathroom at 2 AM and there was a raccoon looking in the back (glass) door like, “Yo! Gimme something to eat!”

                  My answer was, “I ain’t stupid, bub. Go forage.”

                  Hey, wow, I just heard the local flock of feral green parrots fly over my back yard.

                  1. er…. Greebo had a raccoon cub understudy until we moved. I don’t know what happened to the parents, but there was this barely weaned racoon cub who followed Greebo around and did everything Greebo did. He was about a year old when we moved. I hope he survived.

                2. ‘Coons are a nuisance if you keep chickens. They also carry diseases that can be a bother to pets and other animals. Cute, yes, but so are coyote pups.

                  I don’t hold with torturing any animal, but I will shoot them if and when it becomes necessary. Spot ’em in the wild? No worries. They belong there, won’t catch none from me.

                3. Raccoons are cute. Possums are cute.

                  It may be necessary to deal with them as pests at times. But until then we can contribute to the long term Civilize All The Animals project.

                    1. It worked with the wolves.

                      Also the horses. And even the murderous psychopaths known as hogs, at least as long as they are fat enough.

                      Cats seem to have just moved in on their own, which makes them by far the smartest and sanest form of life on the planet.

                    2. The North American opossum was close to extinct when the first settlers arrived in the 1600s, surviving only in the eastern edge of Virginia and the Carolinas. They’re fluffy and nonaggressive, and the settlers kept them for fur and food, and spread them north and south. If you look at their population distribution you can see the east-west stripe of the Oregon Trail where settlers took them west, where they inhabit the entire west coast now.

                      Somewhere along the way opossums fell out of favor and domestic opossums were no longer a thing. But the opossums found living alongside humans to be useful, with their nice warm houses, food, and elimination of predators, and they’re still expanding their range.

                    4. >> “Cats seem to have just moved in on their own, which makes them by far the smartest and sanest form of life on the planet.”

                      I sometimes wonder who domesticated who.

                    5. Dogs discovered if you hung around those humans while they butchered their catch, you could eat the rest.

                      Cats discovered if you hung around those humans, there were a lot of mice.

                      Credit where credit’s due.

              2. Sympathies. I’m trying to teach cat #3 to come around the house and use the pet door so I don’t have to leave food outside (or HIM outside when it freezes).

        3. >> “well…. Pixie — brightest cat ever”

          That reminds me:

          1) Did you ever give Havelock the mirror test?

          2) I’ve been meaning to ask you something. I noted once how odd it was that you keep attracting cats smart enough to pass it, and you speculated that it was because they were expected to be smart. Can you elaborate on how you’re encouraging that? I don’t know if it’s my fault or if mine are just natural dumbasses, but if I can get them to act smarter I’d like to.

          1. I doubt Havey is smart enough to pass. Havey spent his kittenwood eating bugs and drinking feature water and maybe from the Chinese restaurant dumpster, and being hit on the head with mini-golf clubs.
            He’s a lovable dunce.
            Well….. Once our pediatrician told us if Dan and I adopted the kids would still be geniuses, because we’d expect it and push vocabulary and history and math at them as if they were.
            Like that, but with cats. But there are limits. Pixie, and maybe Greebo were VERY smart.
            Havey…. poor lovey.

    2. Dan and I have done that too. TBF Havey, mourning for his friend, and with total lack of other felines who’ll be nice to him (though there’s some cracks in the girl-cat’s hostility recently) has begun trying, OBVIOUSLY to communicate with us. He sounds like toddlers when they have inflections and syllables, but no idea of any recognizable word.

  25. There is a reason that I have long referred to what is now the present insanity as Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux. It has even been pushed out into society the same way; starting with a radical cadre of committed foot-soldiers on college campuses and the concerted and planned effort to move it from the college campuses into broader society, with accompanying struggle sessions, purges and “cancellation” of people from society for failure to adhere to that day’s required orthodoxy.

  27. 1. As regards Sarah’s method of story revelations- sounds like Fictons from Number of the Beast.

    2. Phantom – Ploor go klaboom.

  28. They want to ‘empower women’ by making them afraid of being looked at by men, and ’empower minorities’ by making them afraid of the ‘wrong words’ spoken by the ‘wrong people’.
    ———————————
    People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

  29. It looks like it might be against the lockdowns, or if not then maybe yellow vests?

    But in the end it doesn’t really matter: part of the job description of Government Official is to be deserving of a truckload of manure.

    2. ‘Tis a shame they couldn’t drive the truck right inside and dump it on the Conceil des Ministres floor.

      1. A big pile of crap always steams. Bacteria consume the…organic material and generate heat.

        I used to live on a farm. I know a lot about crap.

        1. Time was they used to to heat greenhouses.

          There can be problems with it catching spontaneously on fire.

  30. “I don’t think there breathes a single human who is not at least a tiny bit insane by the strictest definition.”

    I am not the least bit insane, but then,
    I’m a wallaby and I’m okay
    I pun all night ad I sleep all day.
    ~

      1. Same thing that has wrecked Denver, the state Colorado and is working on USA? Stress does horrible things.

  31. Random thoughts. Consensus reality can be defined as the set of durable characteristics of the universe that appears to be evident to all non-delusional individuals. The sun rises and falls in an illusion of orbital physics, freshly baked cinnamon buns invariably disappear as soon as you take your eyes off of them for one instant at the office, etc. This reality might or might not be truly objective in the final analysis, but there’s apparently no non-delusional way to perceive it as anything other than what may for convenience be called “objective,” so for all apparent practical purposes, it is indeed objective. 🙂

    Defining consensus reality in any other way is just mental self-diddling, as you’ve pointed out in many more words. Leftists love playing that game, though. I wouldn’t describe leftists in general so much insane as willfully, obdurately stupid. They intensely dislike objective reality and all its inconvenient implications, so they hysterically deny it and physically attack those relatively few enlightened individuals who comprehend the fundamental difference between destructive wishful thinking (reference to Ms. Ayn Rand’s remark) and what goes on outside of their heads. Yeah, and it’s way too late at night to be diving into whatsis, epistemology? So enough. -_-

    BTW, minor typographical error: “… believing your [c]at is …”. (omitted letter)

      1. Yes, not in this world. But leftists like to seek the perfect form of oppression. Two friends from high school and UW were Marxists and roommates. Post graduation they moved to New York to “ help workers organize.” In NY they broke up in bitter arguments of Mao vs Stalin. The left destroys what it touches.

      3. The left is Haber from Lathe of Heaven (the book or the 1970-early 80-ish film adaptation)

  33. Just another example on insanity, from O-care:
    The delusion that ‘”affordable” health insurance’ has anything to do with “affordable healthcare”, “available healthcare” or “quality healthcare”. And still we have people who assume the first provides the other three when it’s essentially antithetical to at least the second. Every time I hear commercials on the radio about how we spend too much for healthcare, or when the idiots voted in Medicaid expansion (“strings? What strings? It’s free money that we’re definitely not going to become depemdant on”), it sets me off.

  34. In political science, a consensus form of government or a consensus decision-making process requires that all participants in the decision-making agree to the same outcome and never let on in the press that there were disagreements nor who disagreed with what. The public solution is all that will be presented to the public. What most people fail to realize is that there WERE disagreements prior to the decision being announced.

    In creating a ‘consensus reality’ the left has failed to understand with regard to consensus decision-making that the internal disagreements were, for the most part, hashed out and a part of the public decision INCLUDES solutions to the disagreements. Even the EU has provisions whereby a single member state can stop certain processes and decisions if they object. The left does not allow for such provisions.

    It is most emphatically NOT the case in political consensus decision-making that one side has imposed its decision on the other. That failure to fully understand the concept of consensus decision-making is what is causing problems (to put it mildly).

  36. D’oh! I just realized — our theme song! “Ma-mama we’re all crazee now…”

    1. Man, I haven’t even THOUGHT about that song in… maybe decades? But if you’re going to bring it up you may as well link it:

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