How to Maintain Information Hygiene?

Yes, I can give some suggestions even though there’s zero chance anybody will listen to them.

Rule #1.

If you catch a source in a lie, never access it again.

Examples: “police officers were killed on J6”, “children are at the same risk from COVID as elderly people”, “COVID didn’t come from a lab.” Now that we know that these were not mistakes but lies and were spread by people who knew these were lies, there’s no excuse ever to listen to these information outlets again.

Rule #2.

If you hear the same turn of phrase repeated by different people verbatim, it’s propaganda. Avoid anybody who uses these ready-made phrases and never trust them about anything.

Examples: “walking us straight into WWIII”, “Russia wasn’t going to tolerate NATO military bases on its doorstep”, “CIA organized color revolutions”, etc.

These are good, simple rules that people could use to avoid getting duped. But they won’t. Emotional dysregulation feels good. It’s destructive but it’s very enjoyable in the process. These propagandistic lies are like heroin. They soothe and lower anxiety. People will come again and again to get their hit.

This is a completely bipartisan affliction. Self-indulgent, undisciplined behavior is the norm. It’s normalized because people who indulge in it are easy to dupe, deprive, control, lock up, and rob. And it’s hard to argue that they don’t deserve it if they can’t get their emotions under control enough not to repeat every slogan they are fed.

A Sobering Realization

While we argue about the nation-state and neoliberalism, there are people who want to pay for their DoorDash with payday loans. There are many of them, and we depend on their voting choices.

If that’s not disturbing to you, I need to hear about your meditation routine.

We Are Not Robots

The funny thing about our administrators is that they honestly don’t see a difference between humans and robots. After

a month of telling faculty members and staff they would be, at worst, fired and, at best, carrying the workload of the fired colleagues for free,

censoring a student newspaper,

hijacking an open forum where workers were supposed to discuss their reaction to these plans,

antagonizing everybody on campus to an extreme degree

they decided to hold a large event welcoming prospective students. On a Saturday.

Understandably, the atmosphere at the event was funereal. The word “prospective” stinks like old, dirty socks after people were told they have no prospects at this university.

I find it very entertaining that the administrators honestly think that they can abuse employees and still have a good, positive event as a result.

Just Followed Orders

This is very dishonest. They didn’t just follow the rules. They hounded people based on sex and race excitedly, enthusiastically, and with glee. This was not a top-down revolution. This was – and still is – a phenomenon in which the most educated, credentialed, intelligent and privileged people participate completely sincerely. The percentage of scholars who do not passionately believe in DEI is maybe 2%, and I’m being very optimistic.

DEI was created in academia and then exported as a neoliberal cudgel everywhere else. Since Trump’s inauguration, the administration of my university has not used racist language. Even though we aren’t dependent on federal funding, the administration stepped away from this. I did, however, hear a colleague mockingly go on about “mediocre white men getting jobs because they are mediocre and white” to a white male academic who looked very uncomfortable but terrified to say anything. We lived for years amidst this kind of bullying where it was OK to insult people most outrageously based on their innate characteristics. Nobody took responsibility for this. Nobody indicated in any way that they understood why this was wrong and why this shouldn’t happen again.

Another #MeToo Scandal

In the meantime, the Dems are busy #MeTooting a 23-year-old influencer called Harry Sisson for exchanging Snapchat messages with several different women. Because consensual Snapchatting between adults is now not OK.

The chief complaint from these women though isn’t that Sisson harassed them—most don’t seem to have even met Sisson in person—but that he led them to believe that he “didn’t have a roster,” and was only “talking” to them.

This, to Zoomers, is a sex scandal.

I feel compassion for the women who are so lost and confused they mistake a Snapchat exchange with a random dude for declaration of love and serious intentions. They need older women in their lives to explain that it’s OK to want marriage and how to get it.

Harry Sisson, on the other hand, needs a sexopathologist to help him find out why, at an age where he should have no inkling of libido problems, he spends enormous amounts of time on Snapchat instead of having an actual private life. The young women are all really pretty, and it’s sad they are so lacking in romantic options they have to chase a guy with early-onset ED.

This is a case of psychological issues meeting sexual dysfunction. Sisson’s problem is probably organic but the women can still be helped if somebody on their lives cares to step in.

Enshrining the Libs

Good question. The goal of handing the next election in Canada to the libs has been achieved. Is the plan now to make sure that the libs win for the next three generations?

Does anybody have a positive explanation because I’d kill for one at this point.

Who Killed American Literature?

I kept wondering for years why American literature is so dead. Today I learned the answer:

I honestly had no idea about this.

Here’s the link to the article. It has a funny passage on Stephen Markley who showed great promise in his novel Ohio only to produce the following monstrosity later on:

And Stephen Markley’s 2023 climate change epic The Deluge, replete with a Jamaican/Native American heroine and a queer neurodivergent Arab-American mathematician, shows that appropriation is acceptable so long as the politics are sufficiently on the nose (“The trauma of that time, especially the storming of the Capitol, lit a new fire under me…”).

At least, there’s Emma Cline. That’s good literature. Slim pickings in such a large country but better than nothing.

One more quote on the same subject:

In 2022 famous novelist—and no liberal—Joyce Carol Oates wrote in a post on X: “(a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.’)”

How to Recapture the Lost ‘Literary Men’

Abolish Gendered Sports

Yes, by all means, let’s do this. This will finally provide the needed evidence that male and female bodies are fundamentally different, and we will be able to move on from this anti-scientific lunacy.

I completed sincerely support this plan because nothing else is working.

Back to the Origins

I spent the afternoon with organized labor, making plans to save physics. And the rest of the programs under threat. It’s entertaining to think that, after everything, I’m back with my COVID-mask-wearing, BLM-stickering, Ramadan-observing, very lefty comrades.

The left is at its best when it fights “the Man”, so maybe that’s what it should do.

I’m still not voting Dem under any scenario ever, so there’s that.

Example of Poor Informational Hygiene

Here’s an example of poor informational hygiene:

The idea that it’s weird or unusual to have a house valued at that price with a quarter mil salary and a working, highly paid wife is nuts. The utterly invented outrage over this judge’s house was amplified by Elon Musk and eagerly consumed by overheated bimbos of both sexes. There’s absolutely no difference between this and “there are thousands of unarmed black men murdered by police each year.”

The worst part is that we are all hostages of these stupid, excitable, eager idjits.