Just what everyone needs: a MIDI harmonica.

Watch the drama

https://twitter.com/LilithLovett/status/1158749368670814211

Suddenly the political orientation of the shooter is irrelevant:

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1158591973969846272

So, as was mentioned in the other threads about children being supervised too much.

CABLE TEEVEE did this to us.

I seriously had not recognized how much continuing damage was being done to the American mentality by the Boob Tube. I threw out my own TV in '92, after the riots, and just kind of presumed that the rest of the country had agreed not to take it seriously as well.

I disagree with this. Tyson is an idiot. But I'm tired of demands —from majorities and minorities and factions and alliances and individuals, strangers (to me) all— that I ostentatiously reflect on world events in a manner which they find sufficiently pious and flattering.

I am not your God damn therapist. I am in fact older, grey-haired, and warm-hearted. But I'm not your fucking Grandfather! Keep your weep-snot off my lapel… That's expensive wool, and it doesn't belong to you.

Did you notice the flags at half-mast yesterday? In my generation, perhaps the last to enjoy this impulse, a little voice perks up in the back of the head: Oh! Who died?, as the gears for 'current events' start a subterranean grind while moving through daily chores. Ah, right, it's for Reagan... Or whomever. An honor for a particular personality, whether or not I personally thought the person was worthy of such a public gesture.

But for at least the second time, the flags are being lowered in response to these killings.

Why?

Because it's a fucking coup for the gun control zombies, that's why. They've turned a delicate, gently shared observance of commonality and respect for individual identity into a smug, smothering, sanctimonious scold.

It's a masterstroke.




Tell me I'm wrong... Did Reagan die again?

It started as a SciFi link, but then it got serious. Emphasis mine.

Combine superficial skimming with Dunning-Kruger Effect, and the results are irritating to someone who actually knows about whatever the subject is. I refer to this as “assumed knowledge”. You read a thing, you assume you have command of whatever it was about. Live long enough, and pay attention close enough, and you eventually realize that doing the reading is only the beginning of understanding in any real way.

So I saw that list, and my second thought was “how many people who don’t know the SF field will see that and think: Ah, these are the Most Important SF Authors Ever?” And how many others, who only know SF from some sort of academic setting, will look at it and nod and think “Yes, this is correct” without knowing enough to get why it really isn’t?

https://www.djasonfleming.com/on-impact/

Six— That Rizvi thread is money in the bank.

I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony. I hate sanctimony.

Claire Berlinski traces the urge to kill lots of people to Czarist Russia and anarchists in the latter stages of the 19th century.

Anarchists were also behind the rash of bombings in the US in the early 20th century.

It's an interesting historical perspective - something usually missing in the panicked wake of mass shootings here in the US.

Birth Control: not a panacaea.

Young Woman’s Viral Facebook Post Exposes the Destructive Nature of Birth Control

Feel-good story of the day:

38-Year-Old Survives Emergency Triple Bypass, Sets Sights on 4-Day Running Challenge

Fixing Baltimore.

Creepy-@$$ manifesto

I'm now strongly leaning towards the shitposter theory of mass shootings in general. This theory can be summarized as: You can't believe anything a mass shooter puts in a manifesto, because mass shooters are assholes.

Someone got his panties in a bunch.

https://twitter.com/rezaaslan/status/1158160628592209920

Cousin Dave, the shitposter theory reminded me of this:

Hans: The following people are to be released from their captors: In Northern Ireland, the seven members of the New Provo Front. In Canada, the five imprisoned leaders of Liberte de Quebec. In Sri Lanka, the nine members of the Asian Dawn movement...

John McClane: [listening on the radio] What the fuck?

Karl: [mouthing silently] Asian Dawn?

Hans: [covers the radio] I read about them in Time magazine.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095016/quotes/qt0466628

Utter hatred can have tons of lasting effects:

Rand Paul Loses Part of Lung Because of Neighbor’s Attack

Well.. In his defence, the sibling of a president/candidate behaving like a complete moron is quite the norm

https://twitter.com/Castro4Congress/status/1158576680182718464

Nothing is as it seems:

The Queer Caliphate (Guest Post)

The insanity discussed in recent threads.

> Nothing is as it seems

You shouldn't read things like that.

Not kidding. You really want to be upset about something, and people will being to wonder if there's a reason you've chosen that, or things like it.

If a person's worldview is steady enough, it will thrive even with sources which don't pander to it.

(Like Fox, the New York Times, the Atlantic, The Ellettsvill Penneysaver, etc.)

mpetrie, funny how few people here seem to think, as you seem to, that artificial birth control is wrong or should be abandoned just because there have been long-running problems with it (and it's not as though educated people are unaware of those problems, so why are you emphasizing them).

In the same vein, uneducated women aren't the ones, as a rule, to delay parenthood, and educated women don't need the constant warnings about how fertility declines with age, since they know that well enough, so why do the media keep harping on that subject?

"educated women don't need the constant warnings about how fertility declines with age, since they know that well enough"

You sure about that one Lenona? Most educated women I've talked with about that had no idea about that reality. I also don't see much media harping on it. naturalwomanhood.org isn't exactly a household name.

I just find it interesting. Then I share it.

Most educated women I've talked with about that had no idea about that reality.
______________________________________

Define "no idea." Who believes a 50-year-old woman is just as fertile as a 20-year-old? Or that even a 40-year-old is likely to be as fertile as a younger woman?

I admit the media's harping has gone down a bit. But now that they're starting to talk about how sperm quality in young men around the world seems to be declining (there was a cover story in Newsweek, a while back), it's only a matter of time before they start warning women again not to take chances if they want children.

From my experience with college educated women, most of them Lenona. I've talked with women in their 40s who were 'waiting to have kids'. Well, if you are 40 and still waiting you probably aren't going to have kids. I get that this was common knowledge in your generation (and it should be). But in my generation it isn't. And especially so among the educated. Likely a result of your generation's view that "educated women don't need the constant warnings about how fertility declines with age, since they know that well enough".

If you never teach them then they won't know.

I've talked with women in their 40s who were 'waiting to have kids'.
______________________________________

And what PERCENTAGE of such women would say that out loud, unless they were talking about adoption?

(I know at least one couple who didn't get married until their 40s - she had a child from a previous marriage - and they managed to adopt two kids. Which is not to say it's automatically easy to adopt at that age, but it seems to be easier than trying to reproduce at that age.)