so much of “thoughtful guy” discourse reduces to “everything is like everything else.” which is actually just wrong.

— Mike Solana (@micsolana) September 16, 2025

I don’t know who this guy is and how he got in my feed but this is spot-on. In 90% of cases, what seems like a smart analogy is simply the workings of a lazy brain. The beauty of learning is precisely that there is an enormous variety of scenarios, experiences, events, and people. Some analogies work but it should never be our first instinct to jump to something we already know to understand something new.

I should definitely do that, at least for the best ones. In the meantime, you can enter “book notes” in the search field, and they will all pop out. There’s many of them, is the problem. Would be easy for movie notes since I see a movie a year or so.

Talking about books, every September publishers drop a stack of phenomenal new books, and I spend much of my reading time trying to figure out which one to read and not reading anything. I’m a typical Buridan’s donkey.

Is anybody reading anything great at the moment?

No, it’s as anti-neoliberal as it gets. Psychoanalysis was invented in the solid stage of modernity. Meaning, it’s very modern but not postmodern. It is based on the idea of a person’s rootedness in their specific history and culture. It sees the self as a continuum. It believes that healing doesn’t come from a magic pill but from a slow building of a relationship.

Psychoanalysis is unpopular today because neoliberalized people want instantaneous results, fast pivots, magic incantations, and rapid makeovers. It reminds us that you can’t ditch everything and take up in flight. You are always and forever part of your bloodline. You can’t change everything by exercising willpower. You can’t choose your way out of who you are. All of this is intolerable to a neoliberal self.

Great, great question. Thank you, you rock.

It’s incredible how much I perk up when people ask me about neoliberalism. Maybe I should stand by the side of the road with one of those sandwich boards, saying “ASK ME ABOUT NEOLIBERALISM.”

The most annoying part is that the novel I taught that has no black characters and that merited me an accusation of being a white supremacist wasn’t even chosen by me. I literally hate that novel. Not because of the race of its characters but because it’s a crappy novel.

It had been chosen by a very left-wing colleague who decided not to teach the course a week before the start of the semester and off-loaded it on me. This is very unfair.

On June 12, 2022, 26-year-old Nicholas Roske arrived at the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh bearing

a firearm;

black tactical chest rig and tactical knife;

two magazines, each containing 10 rounds of ammunition;

17 additional rounds of ammunition;

pepper spray;

zip ties;

a hammer;

screwdrivers;

a nail punch;

a crowbar;

a pistol light;

duct tape;

hiking boots with padding on the outside of the soles;

lock-pick tools, along with other items.

Roske confessed to planning to assassinate Kavanaugh. He faces 30 years in jail.

He also insists on being called Sophie and “she.”

A guy called BAH won the Internet with the following comment today:

You are a liberal. You’re concerned that the government has stifled a man’s speech over misinformation. Tomorrow you will wake up and buy your morning coffee, but your card gets declined. Bank of America says that you violated terms and conditions. There’s a grainy photograph of you from five years ago, huddled shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of racial justice protesters. This photo was published by the FBI, and someone recognized you. Likely someone you considered a friend.

You are a liberal. You’re concerned that the home of AOC was raided by the FBI. Several of her staffers and lawyers have been imprisoned. An open letter was signed by one hundred national security experts, stating that she is an agent of Venezuela. Signatories include Nick Fuentes, Bronze Age Pervert, and cumpumper1488.

You are a liberal. You’re concerned that your capital hill district was taken over by a right wing militia. They’ve erected blockades and patrol the perimeter with AR15’s. The government does not intervene, they surrender the nearest police station, they negotiate and request permission for EMT access. A young black man gets into a shootout with the militia. He’s given a trial. Right Wing shock troops gather outside the courthouse daily. He is found guilty. Later, one of his jurors gives an interview wearing a Proud Boys t-shirt.

You are a liberal. You’ve been sentenced to ten years in prison over a meme. You are a liberal. Your truck left skid marks on an American flag mural and you’re charged with a hate crime. You are a liberal. You trained your pug to do a communist salute and now the government has some questions for you. You are a liberal. You’ve been kicked out of school. Your kidney transplant was denied. You’re on a no fly list. You can’t get a bank account. You’ve been fired. Your friends are denouncing you. Protestors are at your front door. You are a liberal. And the right has gone bananas.

https://x.com/BAHMnotgay/status/1968749891259187520?t=TB7OuynHU9ikdPXDqI5TWA&s=19

I think he ran out of space because there are many more examples that could be added. But the point is that liberals live like this happened to them when in reality they did all this and so much more to everybody else.

I’m disheartened by the endless discussions of how Tyler Robinson couldn’t have possibly used the word outfit because men don’t say outfit. Couldn’t have said vehicle because everybody says car instead of vehicle. Couldn’t have possibly written text messages without emojis because Zoomers use emojis.

People need radically to expand their understanding of the range of human variety. You can say that something is unlikely. But you can’t say anything is impossible in human behavior.

I particularly don’t understand references to what people normally do as an attempt to explain Robinson’s behavior. He’s clearly not like other people. He was living with a trans furry boyfriend. He shot a stranger in the neck. After all that, saying that he couldn’t have used the word outfit because that’s unusual makes no sense. Guess what else he did that’s unusual!

Absolutely anything is possible when it comes to human behavior. The variety is endless.

Everybody in their right mind would choose D.

A is a non-starter because is there any food there at all except rotting shark heads?

H and G are obesity-inducing vile slop.

F can be passable but that’s about it.

B has a few nice things.

C and E are third-world nasties.

Everything that’s good foodwise is in D.