Scoundrel

Man, politics and economics are hard. Why can't we just like, sacrifice a few goats or something? That would be a lot more straightforward.

One of my favorite rhetorical techniques is to use multiple negative descriptors to criticize something, and then to complement an alternative, but still keep one of the negative descriptors. Here is a recent paraphrased example: "We should rise above the abstract and meaningless semantic arguments so we can have a more concrete and meaningful semantic argument instead" I feel like this language trick encourages critical thinking. Just because a descriptor has a bad connotation doesn't mean you should be afraid to use it for something you approve of. Especially if it is one of the cases where the descriptor is accurate and good.

People talk about how important it is to use a person's preferred pronouns, like "he" or "she". However I believe that the most polite and respectful pronoun is "you". If you are going to talk about someone, the best thing you can do is to talk TO them. Plus "you" is gender neutral.

Are you planning out a busy and productive day because you actually want to be busy and productive? Or because you are bored and because planning stuff out is a good way to occupy your mind?

The sandman ran me over with a big truck breaking every bone in my body.

Peeopl say "don't meet your hero". Well, my hero is Goku, so I don't think that's going to be a problem. What I'm really interested in is whether people should meet their villains. There isn't a saying about that one to my knowledge.

I bragged to a police officer about getting away with a crime, and that bastard arrested me! So much for free speech!

Mao anounces one day that China has freedom of speech. Skeptical, one citizen hesitantly says "Taiwan is its own country". He is immediately captured and is never seen again. "WTF!" one person complains. "I thought we had free speech now!" Mao responded calmly "freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences."

My favorite question to ask Libertarian types is whether it is ethical to perform CPR on a stranger who stops breathing and passes out without advanced warning. Lots of Libertarians say it's always unethical to take someone's money without consent, even if they recieve something they want in return. Okay, sure. But is it okay to break someone's sternum without consent while performing proper forceful CPR? Most Libertarians are just Communists or Capitalists or Conservatives and just don't want to present themselves that way for some reason. However, when talking with the rare exception, the CPR question often stumps them.

I hate my customer service job. It's really wearing on me. Not a lot of you know this, but I actually work at a phone store selling various Android devices. I can't tell me how many times customers have come up to me and asked "dO YOu seLL ApPLe PrODuCtS???" Yesterday I got written up by my boss because I started trying to sell one of those retards a bottle of apple cider I smuggled in. FML

Political Analyst Warns California Law Banning Residency May Cause Billionares to Flee

I've been thinking about geometry and space. Specifically I've been thinking about different spaces in terms of resource gathering and resource delivery. When gathering resources, the most important thing is that a small search radius encompasses a very large volume. One of the great tragedies of living in euclidian space is that volume only grows polynomially with respect to radius. For example, on a flat plane, the area of your search circle is pi*r^2. Emphasis on the r^2. Hyperbolic space by contrast has far better properties in this regard. For example you might see something like 2^r instead. This could be the difference between having 400 resources in a 20 unit radius and having 1,000,000 resources in a 20 unit radius. However, hyperbolic space is far worse for resource delivery. If you are transporting a resource from a source to a destnation then it's important to be able to navigate around obstacles. For example, the fat butt of the another guy delivering between the same source and destination. In hyperbolic space, the circumference of an obstacle with radius r is on the order of 2^r. Exponential again. Meanwhile in euclidian space, the circumference of an obstacle with radius r is linear: 2*pi*r. This means that if 20 people are performing a delivery in euclician space, they might have to travel about 20 units in order to get around eachother. Whereas in hyperbolic space, some poor delivery guy might have to travel a path of 1,000,000 units just to avoid intersecting with the paths of the other 19 delivery guys. The ideal space has both of these properties, but clearly messing with the curvature of the space isn't enough to accomplish that. Cranking up the number of dimensions far beyond our ordinary three can help a lot, but unlike messing with the curveature, (like for hyperbolic space) the effects of high dimensionality don't depend on scale. That means that even just existing in such a world would be very difficult. With 100 dimensions you'd need 100 legs just to avoid falling over, and you would need like 100 unit^99s of skin to cover one unit^100 of flesh or your organs would fall out. Not great! The only way I can think of to avoid this issue is if the space is some sort of very complicated manifold where distant locations are connected to eachother as if by a portal. But that isn't super nice either. For example, in regular euclidian and hyperbolic space you can always make a path slightly shorter by just taking a small shortcut. That's not always the case in more complicated manifolds. There are some cycles you can take where there isn't any small shortcut and there isn't any way to shorten a looping path without going a completely different way. Additionally, such a manifold would no longer be as symmetric as euclidian and hyperbolic space. Even if there were no stationary objects at all to act as reference points in the space, you may still be able to tell different locations apart just based purely on how the space loops back on itself. I'll have to keep thinking about this.

Pro-tip for writing a story. If you can make something explode within the first paragraph of your story, it will really draw people in. The most important part though is don't tell the viewer why it exploded. You don't even need a reason, just imply that everything will be explained soon and that it's related to the things you actually wanted the reader to care about. There's nothing I hate more than a story by an author who doesn't even know how to manipulate their readers smh...

RGB puts the gay in gamer

Got called a Redditor today. I hope the authentic Japanese katana I ordered arrives soon so that I can commit ritualistic suicide.

I'm starting to think people didn't mean it whenever they said "that's funny as hell". I'm there right now and this shit isn't funny at all... 🔥🔥👿🔥😥🔥👿🔥🐶🐶🐶🔥🔥

I aquired a new insecurity lately. Would you believe that I'm insecure about my sobriety of all things? I've told various people that I believe it's better to experience authentic pain or suffering than to use substance to avoid the pain. Multiple people have called me a masochist for that. How the hell am I supposed to argue with that? Suppose someone just goes "nah, you aren't sober because you like authenticity like you are always saying. The real reason you are sober because you just really like suffering and punishing yourself. I'm glad I'm not a freak like you!" Is there anything I could even say or do to disprove that? There are so many ways I could turn their argument back on them. Oh yeah? What if someone you loved died? Would you want to feel bad about it? Or is it better to be glad that they died? Or even to not give a shit at all? If you could take a drug which made it so you didn't greave over a loved one's death then would you take it? Here's another one. What if you could feel perfect, non-addictive bliss with no health problems and no side effects and all you had to do was torture and kill an innocent person? (The drug would also take away any feelings of built about it afterward.) Would you kill that person? I refuse to use those arguments however. Partly because I believe that analogies are always bad. And partly because those are really personal questions; asking about the death of a loved one is pretty insensitive, and my own insecurity doesn't make it right to stomp on other people's feelings like that. I should stomp on their feelings in a different, better way.

The humans' best statisticians predict an apocolypse will occur in 2150. Because of this, every family gathers food, water, and other resources in preparation. Near the end of 2149, every family enters their bunker and closes the door behind them. 100 years later, resources are running low, but the current generation is prepared to return to the outside world. All of the families step out of their vault only to find that the apocolypse never occurred. Instead, a worried looking man stands outside checking his watch and pacing impatiently. When he sees everyone emerging, he relaxes. "Oh thank goodness! I've been waiting for ages! I was worried I had the wrong planet!" In the year 2250, the apocolypse wipes out the human race.

Should I come out as transphobic to my transgender friend? I'm worried my friend won't look at me the same way if I come out of the closet to them...