If you read social media, all you will hear is gloom, anger, and outrage bait because, unfortunately, our primitive brains LOVE THAT STUFF.
We may think we want to see sweet little puppies and hear good news, but every time that gets tested in the real world against “It’s over for us,” and “Can you believe that guy you don’t like said this outrageous thing?” the puppies are not the ones getting all the clicks. But is all this sea of negative, black-pilled, “We have no hope,” spin you hear in so many places realistic… or not? If we’re being honest, there’s never a simple answer to that. Every person, group, and country has some dark days. The Roman Empire was the greatest empire in all of recorded history, but imagine being them when the Gauls sacked Rome in 390 BC, when Hannibal killed more than 50,000 Roman soldiers on their own soil at the Battle of…Open
Everyone has different rules, mental shortcuts, habitual behaviors, and expectations for how things will play out when they’re around other humans.
These are mine, and unfortunately, I had to learn some of them the hard way. Hopefully, as you read over these, you’ll see a few that you can add to your own personal code. 1) The opinions of people online who aren’t your friends or someone you respect don’t matter very much. They certainly should never be allowed to impact your mood negatively. 2) If you genuinely screwed up, apologize unless you’re dealing with an online mob. You never apologize to the mob. 3) If you’re under 30 and not a stone-cold expert in something I’m asking you about, I do not need your advice. 4) Put the shopping cart back. Rack the weights. Pick up your dog’s sh*t. 5) Doing or saying something dumb in response to something dumb does not make you…Open
X has been consumed with debates over the cost of burritos this week.
Yes, really. It seemed to mostly revolve around a couple of posts from Joel Berry of the Babylon Bee and Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire that were really describing different aspects of the same problem, rather than actually contradicting each other: From there, things went in just about every direction you can imagine… burritos don’t cost $20, here’s where you can get cheap burritos, people are out of touch because they don’t know what burritos cost, are the Jews behind expensive burritos, what to do if socialists promise people free burritos, the Boomers probably want us to eat dirt burritos, etc., etc., etc. So, how do we skin this cat or alternately, stuff this burrito? Well, first of all, it’s worth noting that as a…Open
Back in 2023, I did a post called “Why Can’t Everything Be Free?” and people were asking, “Is this how far our society has gone downhill?
Back in 2023, I did a post called “Why Can’t Everything Be Free? ” and people were asking, “Is this how far our society has gone downhill? Are there people so dumb that we need to explain to them why everything can’t just be free?” Yes, there are. Many of them are probably the same people who think that we don’t need prisons. Now you might think people like that are just random idiots on Reddit, but many of these people are prominent on the Left. Like whom? Well, let me give you just a few examples. Briahna Joy Gray, a political correspondent who used to be Bernie Sanders’ press secretary: Francesca Hong, who’s running for governor of Wisconsin: New Yorker Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was strongly supported by Bernie…Open
Once you get beyond the surprisingly good job he did of defending Brett Kavanaugh during his hearings, I’ve never had a lot of particularly nice things to say about the late Lindsey Graham.
Still, I did love this story: This may seem like a big jump, but I thought about that quote when I read these comments from streamer Asmongold about an interesting Korean AI show concept that shows poor people crawling through cold pipes, facing harsh challenges, while rich people enjoy watching them from outside: Americans do have real enemies in the world. Iran considers us to be “The Great Satan.” Russia, China, and many other countries might not want all of us dead per se, but would they like to see us humbled, broken, poorer, and weaker? Absolutely. You might even legitimately have some crazy neighbor, jealous ex-girlfriend, or rival gang member that truly, specifically, wants YOU hurt, dead, or crushed. You might also have…Open
After years of defending, encouraging, and catering to the most radical people in their base, it has been interesting to see some of the more old-school liberals getting worried about the craziest members of their party starting to acquire some real power.
For example, here’s James Carville, who has sounded increasingly crazy himself in recent years, fretting over lunatic members of the Democratic Socialists taking over their party: Similarly, Bill Maher has increasingly moved from a radical to something closer to a voice of reason on the Left over the last couple of years: Other liberals like Rahm Emanuel and Mark Kelly have criticized Democratic Socialists because they think they’re too radical for voters, which is sort of like a Muslim condemning 9/11 not because it was wrong, but because it made Muslims less popular in the West. The truth of the matter is that liberals have been enthusiastically building this Frankenstein for a long time, and it’s hard to do anything other than…Open
One of the biggest problems most people have is that they ask the wrong questions about their life.
Guess what happens when you ask the wrong questions? You spend a lot of time trying to figure out the answers to things that don’t matter or that you shouldn’t be thinking about in the first place. That’s because if you try to ask your brain a question, it will try to come up with an answer, and some of those answers may be irrelevant, very damaging, or even put you in a no-win situation. For example, should you be asking yourself, “Why am I always such a loser?” No, because even if you’re the most successful person on earth, when you ask yourself a question like that, your brain will try to ANSWER YOUR QUESTION. You want your brain to focus on questions that will help you build a better life for yourself, not questions that…Open
One of the seldom remarked-upon things in modern life is how many things are controversial or extremely difficult, not because they’re innately hard to handle, but because a certain percentage of Americans have no morals or common sense.
That was something that came to mind when I saw this video: In the video, a Hispanic man is in the car with his family, and he gets pulled over by ICE. They have no idea why they were pulled over. When ICE comes up, he asks why he was stopped; ICE tells him that he looks like a target they’re after and asks for his ID. He gives them his ID, they look at it, realize it’s not who they’re after, tell them to have a nice day, and they go back to their cars. It was a very normal encounter. Humdrum and boring even. Why? Because the guy in the car didn’t act like a moron. Compare that to the people in Minnesota chasing ICE agents around with their cars, attacking them, smashing things up, resisting arrest, screaming abuse, etc., etc. The…Open
One of my favorite movies in the pre-UFC days, when your brain didn’t scream, “THAT’S SO UNREALISTIC” at you every three seconds when one guy was fighting off like 10 bad guys with his bare hands, was Steven Seagal’s Marked for Death:
In the movie, Seagal is a burned-out ex-DEA agent who is disgusted by the things he’s done to stop the bad guys and decides to retire and come home. Eventually, the bad guys in the movie, a Jamaican drug gang, make the horrible mistake of coming after Seagal’s family. That’s when he gets together with an ex-military friend of his, and he tells him this before they decide to basically wipe the entire gang out like they’re playing a game of Grand Theft Auto: “The way I look at it, you come home, mind your own business, watch your own yard. And then, if trouble finds you, you go after it, and you bite its head off before it does the same thing to you.” I may be the first person ever to say this before, but there was great wisdom…Open
While talking to a British reporter, Elon Musk made what I thought was an extremely important point about the “far-right”:
“You support not just the populist-right, but the far-right. Very fringe parties in some countries,” the reporter stated. “No, I support the normal people. What you call far-right, falsely…” Musk replied. “Falsely… you think is the normal person?” she asked. “Okay, yes. Literally, if you go back 10 or 15 years, those policies are completely normal,” Musk responded. It’s certainly worth noting that not so long ago, Elon Musk, who voted for both Clinton and Biden, was considered a hero of the center-left. Eventually, his criticism of the way COVID was handled, his opposition to censorship, and his attacks on “wokeness” turned him into a public enemy on the left and pushed him toward supporting Trump. Since then,…Open