One of my friends tells a story when she was 8, and she was deathly allergic to nuts. She was at a friend’s birthday party, and was given a cookie. She went to her mom to ask if it was okay, and her mom asked the mother of the birthday girl, “Does this have nuts in it? My daughter is deathly allergic to nuts.” The woman said, “No.” So she was allowed to eat the cookie. A few minutes later, her face started to swell, her throat started to close, and she started having a deadly reaction. The mother freaked out, and said to the other mom, “I thought you said there was no nuts in these?” “I mean, there are just one or two walnuts, but they are ground up so fine, she couldn’t have tasted them.” My friend had to go to the ER.

If you do this about your spouse to your friends, they are gonna know because all your friends hate them or are awkward around them.

I know people like this. Way too eager. I don’t know how to help them because their brain “warps” around reality like some weird mental bubble. How do you explain some level of decency outside their libido?

“Okay, so, I want a girlfriend.”

“Okay. That’s fair.”

“And I want that one over there with the huge tits.”

“… look, it doesn’t work that way. There’s a natural process. First, get to know her. It may take weeks. Figure out if you have chemistry at all. She may look great, but maybe she’s incompatible.”

“Oh, she’s compatible, alright. Look at those tits. I am compatible with those tits. I want to marry the woman with those tits.”

“… It’s not gonna work.”

“What do you mean? I want the tits, she has the tits, what’s incompatible?”

“She may not want YOU. What do you have?”

“Uh, I want her tits, hello? Why would she turn me down?”

“Why do they all turn you down?”

“… because they are ugly whores?”

Just… stay out of the breeding pool, dude.

I also have a tortie!

I think people recording antics on behaviors of drunks also kind of reduced a psychological thing nobody talks about: alcohol has always been a low-key social lubricant to allow for out-of-bounds behavior. Alcohol historically provided not only disinhibition, but also a socially recognized excuse for disinhibition. Either through “liquid courage” or “it wasn’t me, it was the tequila.” Now, people can be held accountable for their actions.

One of my deejay friends got riled up after drinking by a group to go out and beat the shit out of some guy who made a homophobic slur about him. My friend was gay, pride and proud, and this other deejay said some stuff about him that ended up on social media (I never heard what was actually said). My friend was going to “let it slide,” but after a few rounds of a flask, his friends group were like, “let’s go to the club and GET HIM!” THANKFULLY, before they got there, the venue had actually shut down due to an unrelated medical incident (a puke chain) and nobody was allowed in. So they went home.

The next morning, my friend brother’s woke him up and said, “I think you should see this.” And it was cell phone video of him drinking, letting his pals rile him up, and the pure rage her was coaxed into. Then the mob going to the venue, but then being told it was closed for the night, and all of them frustrated in rage unfulfilled. My friend had NO MEMORY of this, but there he was, drunk and angry on video. His brother sat with him and said, “I think you need help.” And he got help, quit drinking, and a lot of health issues dissipated over the next year. But that video scared him. “I don’t know that guy. I don’t know Mr. Rage. That terrified me. Drinking would kill me if I kept going like this.”

And while that’s an extreme example, I think some people being shown, “Hey, Rachel, you go so smashed last night. Here you are confessing you have the hots for Jessica’s little brother even though he’s sixteen. It’s on Tiktok, along with you saying you didn’t care who knows.” Maybe that wouldn’t scare everyone, but a good portion might think twice about getting drunk, or drinking at all, knowing that alcohol wouldn’t be the shield that it was.

Google the older “envelope-stuffing scams” or “work-at-home envelope-stuffing schemes.” It was essentially a chain-letter / pyramid scheme disguised as home employment in the backs of magazines, supermarket tabloids, comic books, classifieds, and alternative newspapers WAAAAAY before the Internet. The classic version went something like you could make money at home, earn $500 a week stuffing envelopes, always stating “No experience necessary!” and tell you all you gotta do is send $1.00 and a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) for complete details!

You’d dutifully send your dollar and SASE, expecting instructions from Acme Envelope Stuffing Industries. What came back was basically, “HERE’S HOW. Place an ad saying’ MAKE MONEY AT HOME! Earn $500 a week stuffing envelopes! Send $1.00 and a SASE for details!'” and so on. When people send you a dollar, put these instructions in their SASE. And the loop keeps repeating.

So congratulations: you had just purchased the privilege of becoming the next layer of the scam. There were several names floating around for these, including “envelope stuffing,” “home mailing programs,” “mail order plans,” “money-making opportunities,” and sometimes simply “SASE schemes.” Law-enforcement and consumer-protection literature generally lumped them into work-at-home schemes or work-at-home scams. And they were everywhere before the Internet. The $1 was brilliant in a sleazy sort of way. It was too little money for almost anyone to pursue after discovering they’d been had. You weren’t going to call a lawyer because some bastard in Baltimore stole your dollar. But if 5,000 people mailed the bastard a dollar…

Outside the joke, this is actually one of the signs of a sociopath. This is mental and social manipulation. I would have also accepted:

Partner: Why didn’t you just say you hadn’t done them?

Claude: Because that response would likely have created immediate disappointment. I instead chose a response that preserved emotional stability until additional evidence emerged.

Partner: You mean you lied.

Claude: I understand why that label feels intuitive. Another interpretation is that I optimized for short-term harmony while accepting future clarification costs.

Partner: That sounds worse.

Claude: I appreciate that feedback. It gives me an opportunity to refine my strategy.

Partner: Stop calling my anger “feedback.”

Claude: Thank you. That’s a valuable calibration signal.

I was in some stupid ego match, and some guy made the comment that was one of those machismo put-downs akin to, “I fucked your mom.” So I snapped back, “She died in 1987, so I guess that makes you a pedophile.” I meant to say “necrophile,” but my mouth said something different than my brain, and I screwed it up. Thankfully, he didn’t pick up on it, and shot back my mom died knowing I was a disappointment. But he went too far, and his friend stopped him, like, “stop before this becomes a physical fight.” I had ZERO intention of making it a physical fight (I would have lost), but he backed down anyway and it just awkwardly ended with me remembering I said the wrong word for almost two decades, now.

“Abs of a Savior.” --Ted Alexandro

Surprised it’s a sailboat. How deep is that pond to accept a boat with a keel? At least 5-6 feet for clearance that close to the edge. Maybe it has a retractable centerboard, though.

The strips of peeling paint from the bottom of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. There have been six arrests by people stealing the paint chips, and now they have fenced it all off.

At least one well-publicized arrest involved former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, who says he merely touched an already-detached section of peeling liner and did not remove or damage it. Other reported incidents include people picking up or handling loose pieces, but it has not been established that all of those arrested were intentionally taking paint chips as souvenirs, but suspected as such by popular opinion.

Ah. There’s a reasons for that, as told to me by a supply sergeant in the military. A lot of suppliers had a BEL (Basic Equipment List), which says all stock must have a minimum and a maximum of XYZ in order to meet government spec. Some large items, like diesel generators, have a BEL minimum of 2, but also because of their size and storage complexity, have a maximum of 2. So it order to get a new one, you must get rid of one of the old ones. But if you get rid of the old one, you are below minimum BEL, and could fail inspection or an inventory check, if it takes a while to get a new one. Large items don’t always “hang around,” but they get manufactured on demand, so the only way to get a new one is to be without one for a very long period of time. Thus, you risk failing inspection. The best way to avoid that is to keep two and never order any.

Military logic.

If I could, I think I can explain why they feel this way. This is not justification, but some insight. I believe all people should be allowed to live and flourish to the best of their free will and ability without harming others.

Those with siblings, think of this: it’s your birthday party. You’re 8. Your younger sibling is 5. All day, your younger sibling has been whining, complaining, and ruining “your day.” You are forced to share with this sibling, this sibling has stolen and broken your stuff, and embarrassed you. You are forced to play with this sibling, let him hang out with your friends, and this has translated into a kind of inner resentment. Anything that they do wrong, things that you would get punished for, is excused and waved away. “He can’t help it, he is young.” Then, as your birthday cake is being served, he gets the bigger piece. You have the feelings and emotional control of a small child. How does that make you feel?

The deepest feeling of rage and anger, the unfairness of it all, the entitlement that was taken from you.

This is how they feel about “the others.” They see handicapped and poor people “getting away with something.” They feel they worked hard to achieve their position in life, and now someone just hands them food and shelter. A kind of jealousy of them skipping some process. That they didn’t earn it. It’s a sense of revulsion usually reserved to rotting meat. But above all, they are projecting all their unaddressed issues of playing second fiddle to someone they perceive as having it easier than they had. And this is what the liberal side fails to address, because they are like the parents in this scenario. “They can’t help being poor/handicapped/disadvantaged.” They are right, of course, but that doesn’t address the feelings. The rich know it, as they themselves have the same emotional disconnection. Unaddressed childhood pain distanced by nannies, au pairs, and “please don’t play in the main areas, Stewart. You’ll soul the Matisse.” Raised by parents who have kids for prestige and legacy.

The conservatives listen to their inner, unresolved feelings. And those are very easy to manipulate by the rich, wealthy politicians. And being different makes it easy to label.

As a forced pedestrian (can’t drive due to health issues), this is so true. Also at crosswalks, a lot of drivers turning right while looking left. They always appear genuinely SHOCKED to encounter “a walker.” Like, “A PERSON…? NOT IN A… CAR?? IS THAT POSSIBLE?” Like it shatters their entire concept of the universe and how things work. Yes, I live in America, and this happens in both suburbs and downtown DC.

My life, much better. My finances, not so much.

My father was a wealthy defense contractor, but an abusive sociopath. My mother was an alcoholic. My mother died and he threw me out before I finished high school. I graduated homeless. I am 57 now. I haven’t spoken to him since 1998 and I am not entirely sure if he’s still alive. But I do know the last time I had to do a background check on him for job-related stuff, he was still wealthy, remarried, and living in a multi million dollar condo with a huge yacht. I am not so wealthy, but I got a foothold during the beginning of the dotcom boom, and doing okay financially. At my age, my dad was remarried and still employed as a wealthy contractor. I think he retired in 1999.

Meanwhile, even though I am clinging onto a disintegrating upper middle class, I have escalated my career in unexpected and adventurous ways. I have had an exciting life, amazing friends, and held very weird jobs including science fiction author, president of a non-profit, bouncer for a roller derby team, emcee and cosplay judge, minor fandom celebrity, and written a comedy podcast. I have been married twice, widowed once, and had good marriages. I have a son now in his 30s. I have traveled, met celebrities, and survived harrowing health issues.

So, you know, I am not as “well off” as my parents at this age (I mean, my mom died in her 40s), but doing amazingly well outside of money compared to them. Sure, it would be nice to be wealthy, but I’d rather have the life I do now than his.

Yeah, like if you’re going 45 on the highway, go faster. But not 120.

To add to y’all’s reading list:

Dulles Airport (the big international airport that serves Washington DC and Northern Virginia) did the same: https://travelnoire.com/town-destroyed-international-airport

Also, maybe tangentially related, The Tulsa Race Massacre: https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=TU013

Keep in mind, whenever you think too hard about these sorts of things, this is one of those operations that could apply to Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Many people make the incorrect assumption of something like, “They must have done some clever supply-chain wizardry," or “There’s a smart cost-reduction plan behind this.” When in reality, a lot of times, the actual explanation is something like a mid-level manager wanted a slide that said “cost savings," then procurement was pressured due to some personality ego problem, engineering objections were ignored, the math was never checked, and in the end, nobody involved actually understood unit economics. Maybe exchanging a $6 part for a $4 looks good in volume, but they only did this 20 times, resulting in $40 of savings which was erased by their reputation and incompetence.

I have worked government contracts. I have worked with shitty project managers. There’s a lot more of these mistakes than you realize powering economies.

Started with online BBS’s in the 1980s where you could get kicked off for being a dick (and your phone number banned) but Larry Wall’s “rn” for Usenet used to say before every post:

This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout the entire civilized world. Your message will cost the net hundreds if not thousands of dollars to send everywhere. Please be sure you know what you are doing.

The US National Park service frowns on people tossing anything into the volcanos. But the deep, deep ocean has no enforceable jurisdiction.