What kills me is that people are paying so much for this kind of crap going on. It used to be valuable to get the sheepskin. It meant you actually learned something. Now? Read on. It pays to be a victim though. You get attention and entry.
It’s springtime, which means its college admissions season. And, for thousands of American families cursed to bear the wrong skin color, this means a rude encounter with the new American regime’s priorities.
On Feb. 23, Twitter anon Peachy Keenan relayed the story of a friend’s niece, and her faceplant during last year’s admissions cycle.
Go read the rest at the link, but if you aren’t in the hierarchy of victimhood, you ain’t gettin’ in. Most hurt – Asians and whites.
As affirmative action likely comes to an end later this SCOTUS term, higher ed will not give up its obsession with racial preferences, it’ll just eliminate the key type of evidence relied upon by the Asian students in the Harvard case: Standardized test scores.
Yep, the Asians take a hit because the school would be mostly that group, as they are the most qualified to go. But no, you are not the right victim.
But after his native Florida adopted legislation restricting LGBTQ rights, Nobles, who is gay, is planning to find a similar environment in a different political climate. The 19-year-old says he wouldn’t have to worry as much about discrimination or even physical assault in California.
“I came to reality and realized that I might actually have to involve those things into where I go, because you never know where I might be going,” Cody said, expressing concern about the possibility of having to attend school in “a place that has a record of hate crimes or a very old-fashioned point of view when it comes to gender.”
“For me personally, I just naturally assumed I was going to college down here,” he said. “But if things got worse, then I suppose I would have no choice.”
More victimhood. I haven’t read about physical assaults on that group recently, but don’t confuse the narrative with facts.
Hate hoaxes are good for more than garnering the sympathy of fools. They can also be used to shut down free speech, as with flyers blaspheming against sacred sexual deviants that were found on the campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
The incident came in the wake of a two-month-old MIT faculty resolution that defends freedom of speech and expression — even speech some find “offensive or injurious.”
Even some college professors are getting fed up with the climate of fear that prevents the free exchange of ideas.
A report released in mid-January by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression … found that “Large portions of MIT faculty and students are afraid to express their views in various academic settings. Faculty and students are at least as afraid of each other as they are of the administration.”
Oh good. The Frankfurt School of Communism will now dumb down their student population even more.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift. I would like to hear of a University that promotes fairness based on meritocracy. Those would be the kids I’d hire.
Oh, and woke sucks again. It ruins everything it touches
It was a good TV show when I was a kid. My Mom dreaded that I watched such nonsense and that it would certainly ruin me. I didn’t get any smarter by watching the show. It provided me with clean entertainment as compared to the woke TV the kids get now.
There were some things that didn’t make sense.
The professor could charge batteries for their radio by stirring coconuts, but couldn’t fix the Minnow?
Finally, my answer. It was Ginger, My how things have changed…
The biggest problem I have in my arguments is timing. I get out talked by people who tend to be wrong. Only later does the truth come out or I can express myself, but no one (except me) cares by then.
Like most introverts, I think things through, throw out the things that are wrong, then come up with a salient and correct argument. All of this is well after the discussion took place.
LESSONS LEARNED
While being pressured to get the jab during Covid, I knew it was wrong and listened to everyone regurgitating the media and government lies (paid for by the Big Pharma companies). Since I was an island, it was everyone against me. There was nothing I could say that anyone would listen to other than my black friends. They remembered Tuskegee like I did.
The lesson? Stop trying to be right, learn patience for the facts to come out. They are coming out now.
This would have also helped me a lot earlier in life if I’d have known. I didn’t understand that I was an introvert though and thought I could go toe to toe with extrovert talkers not afraid to be wrong. I lost a debate to an imbecile in 8th grade when I clearly had the facts. He had the class popularity and the class went with him as he made up stuff.
It was similar in politics. The 2016 election won me a $100 bet, not that anyone cared. The 45th President continues to be right, so they just throw dirty underwear against the wall until something sticks. He is the comeback champion in rhetoric though so I stopped talking about that also. I was an island politically also. I lost every discussion on that one also even though my facts were proven right over time.
I found out that a lot of people don’t have a sense of history or really understand anything other than reading and repeating talking points they are told to think. Social media is making idiots out of the next generations. Knowing how to find information is not the same thing as understanding why things are the way they are.
I was already recognizing the pattern of facts that led to the truth, just not when I wanted it. I’d never make it as a lawyer or politician.
Maybe that’s why I write about this. It gets my thoughts (mostly cogently) in order and documents my position. It’s all I have sometimes. Since the internet is forever, here you go in the future if you read this.
Very rarely in my life do I have the proper comeback. It’s not satisfying when I do compared to the frustration of not being drop quick witted and precise information when needed.
So, I just have decided to let some stuff pass. It gets me out of talking to the under educated anyway.
The other lesson?
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
From my childhood, being a Looney Tunes aficionado. The episode is called Bully for Bugs. Classic line, Stop steaming up my tail and of course, you know this means war.
Oh yes, I could say it with a straight face, depending on the other person. I just texted my friend George that there were a lot of balls to juggle, instead balls in the air.
I still call them wiener’s if there is a chance the other person will feel uncomfortable.
Hat tip to wirecutter on this one. It was too good to not share.
I love these stories. I worked with geniuses who created technology that we take for granted (and carry around or wear). They were great to talk to as they spoke with different words on how things are related and put together. They explained things on another plane of knowledge that required me to expand my thinking to deal with them.
It also confirms how different we are. I have relatives through marriage in Denmark who believe in Jante’s Law to bash American’s. This kind of flies in the face of what they believe, but then they were triple jabbed so they aren’t that smart.
Story begins here:
A toddler has become one of the youngest people ever to become a member of MENSA, after he taught himself to read at the age of two.
Staggeringly, when he was only 26 months old, he was able to read a book fluently to his parents, Beth and Will.
After that, the youngster progressed to learning how to count up to 100 in Mandarin, Somerset Live reports.
His 31-year-old mum Beth said: “He has always been interested in books so we made sure he had plenty around.
“But, during the lockdown, he started to take a real interest, and by the age of 26 months, he had taught himself to read.
Teddy Hobbs, now four, managed to gain entry to the exclusive organisation for the intellectual ‘elite’ aged just three years and nine months last year (
Image: Beth Hobbs / SWNS)
“He then moved onto numbers and was learning times tables. We got him a tablet the following Christmas for him to play games on. But instead, he taught himself to count up to 100 in mandarin.”
The child prodigy can already count to 100 in six non-native languages, including Mandarin, Welsh, French, Spanish and German.
Beth and Will were confused by his unheard of talents whilst still a toddler, and so got in touch with health visitors to ask them to assess Teddy.
“With him looking forward to starting school, we wanted to have some sort of assessment so we knew the level of skills he was going to start school with.” said Beth.
The child prodigy from Portishead, Bristol, can already count to 100 in six non-native languages, including Mandarin, Welsh, French, Spanish and German (
Image: Beth Hobbs / SWNS)
“Teddy was our first child and as he was conceived via IVF, we have nothing to compare him with.”
Continuing to search for support for their son, the couple approached MENSA for guidance.
Teddy, then aged three years and seven months old, had to undergo an hour long online assessment with experts.
“I was worried about him being able to sit in front of a laptop for an hour, but he absolutely loved it.“ said Beth.
Experts then revealed that Teddy sat in the 99.5 percentile for IQ.
Teddy, who starts school in September, received a certificate confirming his membership of MENSA (
Image: Beth Hobbs / SWNS)
Experts then revealed that Teddy sat in the 99.5 percentile for IQ (
When I was first on fake book (an early adopter), it was great until people came back that I didn’t want to ever see again. That’s pretty much the way it is for most of my life. When you are in the past, you stay there. It’s too much drama for me to catch up. I have trouble with seeing people I haven’t seen in a while and it’s awkward.
It’s not just people from school or social groups I’ve been affiliated with, it’s family also. It’s very awkward as I know that were we not related that I’d never talk to them. I don’t with most anyway and have lost contact with a lot of the others.
Why haven’t we talked? The answer is usually because I didn’t want to. I have a hard time lying about that. I can fake being excited to see someone, I just refuse to do it anymore. It’s personality turn off when I see it in others.
I didn’t want anything connecting me to memories I didn’t want. It was painful enough the first time around. Why do I want to relive part of my life that are best left as experiences to learn from? I’d already moved on in life having parted ways once. Those memories of my early life don’t make me want to try and pretend it didn’t happen for me. I was glad it was over, dead and buried. It’s easier for me to deal with.
They kept wanting to connect. I did, but muted everyone, but finally I put them back in the history box where they belong, for a good reason. I had to dump it and remain true to myself.
If we were really friends, we wouldn’t need social media. I’m still friends with those who were my real friends. The rest are people I don’t connect with because we mutually don’t want to. To be fair, I mostly don’t want to connect with them, but that is my nature as an introvert.
I have listed other reasons in different posts that point out how fake people are on social media and that it is a time suck.
My life is better not seeing others. Let’s keep it that way.
Even I’m getting bored about how bad they act there. Anyway, here is the short bus again and story below.
In a militantly secular society like ours, the highest authority is the intelligentsia. The innermost sanctum of the intelligentsia, our answer to the Oracle of Delphi, the dispenser of ultimate truth, is Harvard University. That’s how we know that it is possible for even infants to achieve the pinnacle of cultural Marxist oppressiveness by identifying as sexual deviants:
Harvard Medical School students can learn about how to provide healthcare to “infants” who are LGBTQIA+, according to a course catalog description.
“Caring for Patients with Diverse Sexual Orientations, Gender Identities, and Sex Development,” a regularly available med school course, promises to give students a chance to work with “patients [who] identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or asexual.”
The course description explicitly includes infants — i.e., babies less than 1 year old.
Prelingual babies would not be able to share the details of their perverse sexual proclivities even if they had any. But this doesn’t matter, because the LGBTism comes from woke parents, until kids are old enough for schools to provide indoctrination in progressive sexual ideology.
Ivy League college credit can be earned by evangelizing on behalf of the LGBT agenda:
Students in the course may also “engage in a mentored scholarly endeavor” such as “advocacy, quality improvement, medical education, original research, or public health project.”
The directors of the course are Alex Keuroghlian and Alberto Puig. They also work at Massachusetts General Hospital, where the course is held. This hospital performs horrific sex change surgeries starting at age 18. In addition,
It also has a patient guide telling parents how to support their child’s “transgender journey” by affirming an identity contrary to their biological sex.
Let’s not single out Mass General:
Another institution involved in the course is Boston Children’s Hospital, which became the center of a national controversy in August due to videos of employees promoting “a full suite of surgical options for transgender teens,” including vaginoplasties and hysterectomies. One video contained the claim that children can know they’re transgender “from the womb.”
What’s more,
Keuroghlian has authored research that connected transgender drugs and surgeries to better mental health outcomes for patients. He has also condemned government restrictions on the procedures.
You do not have to attend a prestigious and outlandishly expensive medical school to know that people cannot be transformed into members of the opposite sex. Harvard students are taught to unknow it.
I’m sure it’s one of the wide diversity of galaxies at the beginning of the universe. If you see one of these buried in the pictures below, run. Look for a cloaking device also.
Actually, it the telescope took excellent photos from a long time ago.
New data from the Webb Space Telescope and presented this week at an astronomy conference has found that galaxies in the early universe exhibit much of the same range of shapes and morphologies seen in the recent universe, a result that was not expected.
The image to the right comes from the press release. You can read the research paper here [pdf].
The study examined 850 galaxies at redshifts of z three through nine, or as they were roughly 11-13 billion years ago. Associate Professor Jeyhan Kartaltepe from Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Physics and Astronomy said that JWST’s ability to see faint high redshift galaxies in sharper detail than Hubble allowed the team of researchers to resolve more features and see a wide mix of galaxies, including many with mature features such as disks and spheroidal components.
“There have been previous studies emphasizing that we see a lot of galaxies with disks at high redshift, which is true, but in this study we also see a lot of galaxies with other structures, such as spheroids and irregular shapes, as we do at lower redshifts,” said Kartaltepe, lead author on the paper and CEERS co-investigator. “This means that even at these high redshifts, galaxies were already fairly evolved and had a wide range of structures.”
The results of the study, which have been posted to ArXiv and accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, demonstrate JWST’s advances in depth, resolution, and wavelength coverage compared to Hubble. Out of the 850 galaxies used in the study that were previously identified by Hubble, 488 were reclassified with different morphologies after being shown in more detail with JWST. Kartaltepe said scientists are just beginning to reap the benefits of JWST’s impressive capabilities and are excited by what forthcoming data will reveal.
“This tells us that we don’t yet know when the earliest galaxy structures formed,” said Kartaltepe. “We’re not yet seeing the very first galaxies with disks. We’ll have to examine a lot more galaxies at even higher redshifts to really quantify at what point in time features like disks were able to form.”
In other words, it appears galaxies of all shapes, as we see them today, already existed 11-13 billion years ago, shortly after the universe was born. This defies most theories about the formation of the universe, which predict that these early galaxies would be different than today’s.
The data however at this point is sparse. Webb has only begun this work, and as Kartaltepe notes, they need to look a lot more galaxies.
May we celebrate together, but alone and separately. Talk to you tomorrow because I’m not talking today.
It’s my favorite holiday after just suffering through Christmas and New Years. I can be alone today. Somewhere out there (although probably quiet) my fellow souls finally have some joy. It’s doubtful others will hear about it as we don’t boast, and other times you can’t get a word in edge wise for all the yapping.
I know and so do others.
PS, I’m not an INFJ.
This next one is me. I’m always in the back, next to the door so I can leave if I need to escape or panic
There is a long list of commercialized things overdone about it, but here is another.
I’m down to gift bags now as I can’t be bothered.
As an Introvert, there is too much going on for too long. By the time Christmas finally comes, my social battery is negative. I hate all the attention about something people don’t care about the rest of the year, including the people they buy presents for.
I see it is corrupting why we really celebrate Christmas, but it’s been ruined for me for life.
It’s already started, too early again. The stores were full of Christmas before Halloween.
On top of being an introvert nightmare for too much attention for the wrong reasons and this makes it a tough season for me.
I see these unhappy people for 11 months and then they pretend that everything is great. I know who they are the rest of the year and don’t believe their lies.
Nathan’s hot dog eating contest has been one of my favorite sports for years, since Kobayashi was king. My wife thinks it is one of the grossest competitions ever held, adding to my enjoyment.
I heard an interview with Joey Chestnut about taking a dump the next day after downing 70 hot dogs. I’ve wondered about that also.
What I didn’t know was that he’s done it while competing. Gross I know, but it didn’t stand in the way of him winning.
Or you could be like everyone else and just not talk to them because your life is better that way. I know mine is and there isn’t a one of them worth talking to, especially the one who turned into a traveling whore as a flight attendant for Delta.
I grew up in Florida. It’s pretty much the mosquito capital given all the water and year round climate. Other places can be more intense, but for being bit all year long, it’s hard to beat the Sunshine State.
I got bit as a kid as much as others. Heck, we vacationed in a place that has a section of the city called Mosquito Lagoon. It’s some of the best Red Fishing outside of Louisiana.
We didn’t have air conditioning at first when I was young so the window were open. Ever been kept away by the whine of a buzzing biter in your ear. Yes, just like the dentist drill we all know the noise.
I began to notice in my 20’s though that others were getting bit more than me. There were also biting gnats (no see’ums) that were almost worse. You couldn’t see them. You could at least kill some mosquitos if you saw them in time.
I thought that maybe I got anti-bite serum from being bit so much. Then I remembered that as kids, we used to follow the mosquito truck on our bikes in the smoke breathing in what has to be DDT or worse. I figured I had natural immunity.
My dad didn’t get bit much either. As a joke, he said it was the meanness in him that kept them away.
It turns out that some people just get bit more and I’m not one of them.
SOME PEOPLE ARE MOSQUITO MAGNETS
As you may have noticed, mosquitoes don’t attack everyone equally. Scientists have known that the pests are drawn to people at varying rates, but they have struggled to explain what makes certain people “mosquito magnets” while others get off bite-free.
In a new paper published on October 18 in the journal Cell, researchers suggest that certain body odors are the deciding factor. Every person has a unique scent profile made up of different chemical compounds, and the researchers found that mosquitoes were most drawn to people whose skin produces high levels of carboxylic acids. Additionally, the researchers found that peoples’ attractiveness to mosquitoes remained steady over time, regardless of changes in diet or grooming habits.
“The question of why some people are more attractive to mosquitoes than others—that’s the question that everybody asks you,” says study co-author Leslie Vosshall, a neurobiologist and mosquito expert at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rockefeller University. “My mother, my sister, people in the street, my colleagues—everybody wants to know.” That public interest is what drove Vosshall and her colleagues to design this study, she says.
Scientists have put forth some theories to explain why mosquitoes swarm to some of us more than others, including one idea that differences in blood type must be to blame. Evidence is weak for this link, however, Vosshall says. Over time, researchers began to coalesce around the theory that body odor must be a primary culprit in mosquito attraction. But scientists have been unable to confirm which specific odors mosquitoes prefer.
To answer this question, Vosshall and her colleagues gathered 64 participants and had them wear nylon stockings on their arms. After six hours, the nylons were imbued with each person’s unique smell. “Those nylons would not have a smell to me or, I think, to anyone really,” says Maria Elena De Obaldia, a senior scientist at the biotech company Kingdom Supercultures and lead author of this new study, which she conducted while at Rockefeller. Still, the stockings were certainly odorous enough to entice mosquitoes.
The researchers cut the nylons into pieces and placed two (from different participants) into a closed container housing female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Did they migrate to subject number one’s sample en masse or prefer the scent of subject number two’s? Or were both equally appealing? The researchers continued these head-to-head battles over several months, Vosshall says, collecting new samples from the participants as needed. When the tournament was over, the team had clear proof that some people were more attractive than others. Subject 33 had the dubious honor of being the biggest mosquito magnet; they had an attractiveness score “over 100 times greater” than that of the least attractive subjects, 19 and 28, the study authors wrote.
The researchers analyzed the subjects’ scent profiles to see what might account for this vast difference. They found a pattern: the most attractive subjects tended to produce greater levels of carboxylic acids from their skin while the least attractive subjects produced much less.
Carboxylic acids are commonplace organic compounds. Humans produce them in our sebum, which is the oily layer that coats our skin; there, the acids help to keep our skin moisturized and protected, Vosshall says. Humans release carboxylic acids at much higher levels than most animals, De Obaldia adds, though the amount varies from person to person. The new study had too few participants to say what personal characteristics make someone more likely to produce high levels of carboxylic acids—and there’s no easy way to test your own skin’s carboxylic acid levels outside of the laboratory, Vosshall says. (She muses, however, that sending people skin swabs in the mail could make for an interesting citizen science project in the future.)
“This property of being a mosquito magnet sticks with you for your whole life—which is either good news or bad news, depending on who you are,” Vosshall says.
“This study confirms, in a very careful way, that it is true that some people are more attractive [to mosquitoes] than others,” says Omar Akbari, a cell and molecular biologist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved with the study but whose recent work focuses on mosquitoes. He adds that the study’s identification of specific carboxylic acids as a key determinant of mosquito attraction is a new contribution to biologists’ understanding of the insects’ behavior. Akbari suspects that the results of this study—which focused on A. aegypti mosquitoes—are probably generalizable to other species of mosquitoes that also primarily prey on humans.
It’s a guy rule. You have to get all of the bags from car to house in one trip. Other stuff is seeing how far away the garage door opener will work from your house. If you can make a throw to the trashcan easily, you have to add difficulty to it like behind the back or use the other hand.
Sending a thumbs-up can be seen as passive aggressive and even confrontational, according to Gen Z who claim they feel attacked whenever it is used.
Whether the chat is informal, between friends or at work the icon appears to have a very different, ‘rude’ meaning for the younger generation.
A 24-year-old on Reddit summed up the Gen Z argument, saying it is best ‘never used in any situation’ as it is ‘hurtful’.
‘No one my age in the office does it, but the Gen X people always do it. Took me a bit to adjust and get [it] out of my head that it means they’re mad at me,’ he added.
They make you look old. I disagree. I think emoji’s are childish to begin with. I never use them on purpose just for that reason. I never saw them as anything but wasted time or unnecessary info on the text. An answer in emoji’s only is even more childish.
I have friends my senior age that do it, but I refuse. They sort of get it and have stopped it. They weren’t any good at it anyway. They were the thumbs up people
I recognize rest of them though. They mostly come from girls who are too old for this nonsense.
I could put an emoji on the end of this for sarcasm and irony, but I won’t.
Emoji’s are the small talk in texting that I hate in real life. It’s not necessary, ever.
In a powerful letter making waves across Europe, French General Christian Blanchon praised citizens who refused the experimental Covid “vaccines” injections. Despite years of pressure campaigns, discriminatory policies, social exclusion, loss of income, threats, and being blamed for other’s deaths, the General thanked the “unvaccinated” for their strength, courage, and leadership:
Even if I were fully vaccinated, I would admire the unvaccinated for standing up to the greatest pressure I have ever seen, including from spouses, parents, children, friends, colleagues, and doctors.
People who have been capable of such personality, courage, and such critical ability undoubtedly embody the best of humanity.
They are found everywhere, in all ages, levels of education, countries, and opinions.
They are of a particular kind; these are the soldiers that any army of light wishes to have in its ranks.
They are the parents that every child wishes to have and the children that every parent dreams of having.
You are made of the stuff of the greatest that ever lived, those heroes born among ordinary men who shine in the dark.
They are beings above the average of their societies; they are the essence of the peoples who have built all cultures and conquered horizons.
They are there, by your side, they seem normal, but they are superheroes.
They did what others could not do; they were the tree that withstood the hurricane of insults, discrimination, and social exclusion.
And they did it because they thought they were alone and believed they were alone.
Excluded from their families’ Christmas tables, they have never seen anything so cruel. They lost their jobs, let their careers sink, and had no more money… but they didn’t care. They suffered immeasurable discrimination, denunciations, betrayals, and humiliation… but they continued.
You’ve passed an unimaginable test that many of the toughest marines, commandos, green berets, astronauts, and geniuses couldn’t pass.
Never before in humanity has there been such a casting; we now know who the resisters are on planet Earth.
Women, men, old, young, rich, poor, of all races and all religions, the unvaccinated, the chosen ones of the invisible ark, the only ones who managed to resist when everything fell apart. Collapsed.
You’ve passed an unimaginable test that many of the toughest marines, commandos, green berets, astronauts, and geniuses couldn’t pass.
You are made of the stuff of the greatest that ever lived, those heroes born among ordinary men who shine in the dark.”
So Meathead couldn’t understand why an intelligent person wouldn’t get jabbed. I didn’t bother to explain it.
I knew the whole time what the story was, and never bought a second of what they were selling. I lived on that island a long time alone just waiting for the truth to emerge.
I took a lot of shit including people saying how sorry they were for me that I wasn’t vaxxed. I knew I had the upper hand the whole time. I sort of felt sorry for those who fell for it, but I wasn’t going to discriminate back.
What does tomorrow mean to us? I thought about that today. It occurred to me that I don’t have as many tomorrows left. As endless as they used to be, I’d grab at a new handful of them. For now, I’m glad to have the next one. They grow fewer every day (sorry, I had to put that in)
Young
When I was young, I never thought about tomorrow. It always came. Some took forever like when I cared about my birthday, and others flew by.
When something has an endless supply, the value is less. It’s economics. I never considered that I’d be working, or retired, or would have kids, a mortgage or any responsibility. Live for today. It was all about today. I had no real yesterday’s to learn from yet.
If I did think about tomorrow, it was the kid dream about being an astronaut or pilot (what I thought about).
That was so long ago and the days between now and then are so numerous that it seems, like another life for me. I’ve lived many different lives within the one I chronologically am still in.
School
I recall sitting in the classroom watching the clock ticking away. Tick, tick, tick towards when I’d be able to go home. Time was endless on those days, and this was just between 2 and 2:15 in elementary school. The only good tomorrow started on Friday.
By the time I got to college, I was aware that life was right around the corner. Still, I enjoyed the day without a care. I ignored that inevitable tomorrow. When it came, it was in the form of an exam, or a girlfriend or another event in life. It was finite and had little consequence as to what my next day held. Still, I had no real cares and a lot of what tomorrow brought was a new experience.
Letdowns started to happen, but the ocean of tomorrows never crossed my mind as I did stupid stuff. I think I lost a few tomorrows by taking too many risks. Somehow I survived and was able to live to the next day, always another tomorrow. It was expected.
Responsibility Years
Life marched on and I grew up, bought a home and started a family. Tomorrows always came, but now they came with other’s problems also. It wasn’t the carefree days when your kid is sick or in trouble. I didn’t have time to think about tomorrow as today brought 10 tons of manure in a 5 ton truck.
So much is happening in your life you take tomorrow for granted or you are too busy to think about anything but today. If you do, those thoughts are invaded with things you have to get done or do for others.
I did notice one thing. I was starting to have a lot of yesterday’s. Some of them happy and some sad. There were lessons learned on both.
The ocean of tomorrows was still seemingly full as it (now) quickly drained away.
Deaths
The first reminders of fewer tomorrows happened here. Those you used to know have run out of tomorrows.
When you are young, say at a grandparents funeral, you can’t comprehend time not being endless for you. By middle age, you know it is closer, but most choose to ignore the reality of time slipping away.
Growing Older
Rarely, do tomorrows bring something new to me. Occasionally, I get a different version of something I’ve been through. I have many more yesterdays now than the number of tomorrows remaining.
The kids are grown. The mortgage is paid off. I no longer work. I’m among the oldest of my relatives now. It brought me to how many tomorrows there will be. Among those, how many will be good or bad? Will there be tough times?
I try to enjoy the days, even if the tasks are mundane. I have less patience for things that don’t seem meaningful to me. My meaningful scale has changed dramatically over life.
From time to time (becoming far too common), people I know run out of their tomorrows. As I sit at the funerals, life comes into perspective for me, at least the part on Earth.
Tomorrows aren’t endless. You only come with so many. Some have more than others and some enjoy them more than others.
Most of life’s struggles are over, except what happens when the tomorrow’s are running out.
Here’s hoping for another tomorrow, and that it doesn’t suck for me.
But, I remembered I am stuck on Band-Aids because…..
Hat tip to 90 miles from tyranny
However, I forgot why I was in a room twice yesterday.
Short shorts was a Godsend for a young hormonal man. Of course, childishness set in on sometimes you feel like a nut, which should have been next to number 8
It’s why they need to stop ruining the kids by trying to pervert them into thinking they are something they weren’t born to be. It’s hard enough to be a kid trying to figure out all of the life stuff while you are skinning your knees or having fun not worrying about inflation, paying the bills or nimrod’s at work.
Even when they go through puberty, all the hormones keep them from figuring out what to do later in the day, much less the rest of their lives.
You can change your appearance (and pretend to be another gender), but not your sex. It’s still XX or XY no matter what you cut off or add on.
The first is my Introverted self saying this is one of the greatest inventions not to have to talk ever invented. Further, I can also isolate myself from others trying to small talk by putting in earbuds or headphones when it is safe and I want to get away. I’ve used this since movies on planes to not talk to others.
The second concerns potential victims of crime.
Of course there is the lack of social interaction which most people need to function (like a family). They look like the morons in the meme above.
My big one is situational awareness. When they are walking down the street oblivious to others in front or behind, they are a prime target for crime. They never see it coming. I use concealed hearing devices if I’m going to listen, which I rarely do when walking or being out in public other than the gym.
Someone could walk right up to them, commit a crime and they’d be unaware.
There is a more pervy aspect to this I’ve noticed. I walk by a bunch of girls (usually) lost on their phones and the young guys (usually) are looking to see anything if they can. I am very aware of my circumstances and frequently if there is something to look at (good looking person, outburst or any distraction) I look at the people watching the event causing the commotion. It’s much more telling and far more interesting.
There are many times I’ve been close enough to slap someone not paying attention because they are lost on their phone. They’d never see it coming.
In less dangerous scenarios, I often say something very wrong to people engrossed in their phone to see how much they aren’t paying attention. Most of the time, they should be shot, beat them for their crimes, ship them back or any other comment just flies of the heads.
If they do catch what I said, the whole situation is laid bare to the point that I am making, you are so lost in your phone you don’t care about what and who is around you.
Don’t be a target and put the damn phone down and join society.
Most of what I really learned happened after I started working. I get that an Ivy League degree gets you into the club in New York, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. The good workers rise to the top no matter where you studied.
Now, what you study matters. See below for examples.
I made some references below to everyone going to school. It’s not true. I’ve worked with plumbers who didn’t graduate high school, but had a Ph.D in their hands. They are as successful or more than a lot of college grads I’ve had to put up with.
I think the right college and the right degree are good and can be useful in life. You have to make the right choice on both. I don’t see a lot of that these days by those who need loan forgiveness.
Hello Harvard. The working world is pointing at you.They teach you to be a victim and to blame othersThe Meathead in the family thinks everyone has to go to college.More evidence for Meathead.
And finally, the truth of the whole student loan crisis.
I had a lot of these growing up and made them more dangerous if possible. Instructions? If I read them, it didn’t mean I followed them.
Where were our parents? They bought us these killers and told us to go outside and play. I never had supervision other than don’t hurt the other kids, which was the point of all our games anyway.
I never had a Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab with real radiation.
In 1951, A.C. Gilbert introduced his U-238 Atomic Energy Lab, a radioactive learning set we can only assume was fun for the whole math club. Gilbert, who Americanmemorabilia claims was “often compared to Walt Disney for his creative genius,” had a dream that nuclear power could capture the imaginations of children everywhere. For a mere $49.50, the kit came complete with three “very low-level” radioactive sources, a Geiger-Mueller radiation counter, a Wilson Cloud Chamber (to see paths of alpha particles), a Spinthariscope (to see “live” radioactive disintegration), four samples of Uranium-bearing ores, and an Electroscope to measure radioactivity.
Here are the rest of the 10. If you don’t have the time, lawn darts IS on the list and I threw them at other kids and had them thrown at me.
Now, the Karen’s of the world have ruined the fun, or tried to make it woke.
After reaching both puberty and achieving my drivers license, we drove around and made up games. It was sort of like video games in real life.
Everyone has been in a car and someone scores a target based on how many points you get if you open the door by driving and hit them, or just hit them with the car. Before you gasp, this was teenage boys showing off without ever following through. It garnered a good laugh and we always did the same. We drove past the target and counted the score based on who called it first. No lives were lost that I know of.
But here were the rules…..
Old People or disabled – no score as they moved slow and are too easy to hit
Mooning old people – extra points if they grab their heart and gasp (ok, we really did this one)
Young couples or families – a double score, but still low as the kids are like old people, slow and easy
Regular pedestrians – multiple score if you get more than one
All of these are walkers, and aren’t much of a challenge. For higher scores, move on to….
Bikers – A fairly high score as they are a moving target and satisfying if they are holding up traffic. This can only be scored with an open door as hitting with a car wouldn’t be a challenge. The faster the biker, the higher the points. Multiple bikers garners a multiple score, like a 7-10 split.
Motorcycles – A very high score as they are fast. A lower but more satisfying score if you open the door while stopped in traffic and catch one cutting between cars.
Animals -no score as you should lose points if you hurt one. They don’t know you are playing a game.
Practice – revving your car while stopped before someone crosses the sidewalk, then waving them to cross as you keep revving. The smart ones will just say no and not cross.
Sure I’m immature and think that below the belt humor is funny. People have even stopped asking me if I’m ever going to grow up. I think this post re-confirms that.
An acquaintance’s father passed away a few years ago. He was an adjunct to a Five Star General in WWII and a press officer for IBM. He wrote his obituary and his funeral notice. It was spectacular. Not because it touted all that he had done, but that it was clear and concise. When my uncle died, I got that he was a pilot, but not much else and he did a lot of other things that would have been nice to hear.
It’s because someone else wrote his obituary. And there you have the key.
Write your own eulogy and find out what you want the world to know or not know about you. It’s harder than you think because you only have a short space to get in what are the highlights.
A BIGGER PROJECT
For me, it went to exploring the rest of my life and before I knew it, I’m writing about kindergarten or my 3rd job. No one will ever read it, but I finally found out that things like me being an introvert were there all along. My life would have been a lot easier if I’d have known the things I wrote. Sure, it’s hindsight, but the pattern was there. I wonder why it took me so long to see some things.
I remembered teachers (back to kindergarten), classmates, situations, jobs, life and so much that I couldn’t type fast enough. I knew I’d have to edit and re-edit for details and accuracy, but if I could remember it, I wrote it down. I forget a lot of stuff now anyway.
It fell out on the pages who was loyal or a back stabber to me. What was it that I expected or deliverd to friendships. Who I could count on and who I could count on to try to cause me difficulty or harm (mentally or physically).
I realized who was actually a friend and why, and who was passing through that time of my life, but didn’t remain. As I have said, there are a lot of characters in my autobiography who don’t make it to the end.
MY EULOGY
Guess what I haven’t finished yet. That’s right, the original project. I got so enthralled with trying to recall memories that sometimes would flood my mind, or that one deep memory that I hadn’t thought about in decades.
I’m going back to it as I need a break. It wasn’t just the writing, but having to re-experience feelings and situations that I’d buried were mentally taxing. I haven’t been blogging much as it has been overwhelming.
DO IT
Why? You will find out more about yourself than you could imagine. You think you know who you are until you write about your warts and missteps, the awkward things you said that you wish you could take back. Why you react the way you do instead of being more effective, especially when you are protecting your inner self.
I found out who I was and why I act the way I have. I got to re-visit a lot of times in my life. While writing, I put myself back into the 6 or 12 year old to feel those times again the way they were, instead of how my mind changed them over the years. Then, I thought if that moment affected my life later. Most times the answer was yes.
There were times I couldn’t type fast enough and had to keep a separate list of all the things I needed to write about. Conversely, I didn’t want to go back after vomiting up memories, joys and pain, success and failures in my life. I didn’t want to write the pain, but it felt better after having said it.
I’ll keep the eulogy, but delete the life story, no one cares anyway other than me. I won’t care soon either.
I guess I’d better get around to that Eulogy now so the kids don’t screw it up.
I read Introvert Dear, most of which I agree with, but even introverts come in different flavors. Today they wrote an article that resonates with me.
When taking multiple personality tests, I always came up with the same 4 letters and the strongest was I (introvert), always. The rest define me also, but not for this post.
See 15 things Introverts want you to know, but might not tell you and look at networking events. They are the worst nightmare for us. Force a bunch of people together and let them talk about themselves until perhaps you might find something in common. That is hell for me. It’s like small talk, something else I loathe. I prefer the silence, almost every time.
Want to meet me and watch me talk passionately? I do stuff I am passionate about, and then find people who have that in common and we naturally connect, without the social pressure of being forced to.
Icebreakers are supposed to be “fun,” but many introverts absolutely dread these activities because they force them into the spotlight.
Being an introvert at work has always been hard, but most days I get by just fine by minding my own business. For the most part, I don’t mind my job, and sometimes I even enjoy it.
Except when it comes to staff meetings.
I’ve been lucky that most of my past jobs haven’t required weekly staff meetings, because honestly, I’m not sure I could handle that. My current job only has quarterly staff meetings, but they’re enough to drain me and stress me out.
In fact, the most recent one was so difficult that I’m still reeling from it.
It’s part of why I hate family reunions and holidays. It’s forcing people together, only some of whom want to be there.
These are extrovert rules forced on us in public.
Another excerpt:
Why Introverts Hate Icebreakers
Not all introverts hate icebreakers, but many of them do, especially introverts like me who suffer from anxiety. I’m sure there are some extremely confident and self-assured introverts out there who have no trouble speaking in front of a crowd, but that’s never been me. (me: I can do it but hate it and it’s an act when I have to do it. Hell, I hate being at a small gathering and having to act like you are interested, when in fact most times people are more interested in talking about themselves. It’s like a Facebook post to get the most likes by telling the good parts about your life).
Why do introverts tend to feel uncomfortable during icebreakers? For one, an icebreaker forces you to become the center of attention. Whereas extroverts may enjoy being in the spotlight, introverts may find it overwhelming. In general, introverts thrive in calm environments where there isn’t much stimulation. I can’t think of a more stimulating situation than a roomful of eyes watching your every move! For introverts, all this attention may simply put their nervous system in overdrive. (I hate Christmas for this).
Also, icebreakers are supposed to move quickly, so there’s little time to think about what you’re going to say or do. Although no one likes being caught off-guard, for introverts, it can be especially difficult to think of something to say on the fly. That’s because the introvert’s brain might be wired a little differently in this sense. According to Marti Olsen Laney, author of The Introvert’s Advantage, we “quiet ones” may rely more on long-term memory as opposed to short-term or “working” memory, which makes us a little slower to gather our thoughts and speak out loud (it’s because we’re processing our thoughts and experiences deeply). Extroverts, on the other hand, may do the opposite. (Here’s the science.)
Personally, even when I come up with something to say, it never comes out quite the way I planned it in my head. I might stutter or stumble or mix up my words. In turn, this spikes my anxiety even more and leaves me feeling frazzled and embarrassed… all in front of people I work with… in a situation where I am trying to make a good impression. I know icebreakers are supposed to be “fun,” but I, like many introverts, absolutely dread them.
There is nothing better than when people cancel plans on me, even if I wanted to do something as I usually can do it alone anyway.
The more I think about it, the less I want any more people in my life wanting to do stuff together. At this point I’d rather just not have to deal with them.
Here is the kicker. I stopped caring if people liked me in high school. Once I learned that lesson, life is much less complicated. If they talk bad about me, I just kill them off figuratively in my Autobiography. Not all characters survive in stories. Very few do in mine.
I loved lawn darts. It’s like eating a tootsie roll pop. You always bite it. With lawn darts, you take maybe 2 throws at the circle and then you are aiming at the other kids. Now, micro aggression’s need safe spaces in case I hurt you with an incorrect pronoun or say a forbidden word. How sad it is that you can become so shallow that words thrown childishly and generally out of context hurt you.
Now for dodgeball. They don’t let kids play it because the unwritten rules are kill the fat kids and girls first as they are the slowest and easiest to hit. It’s why lions kill the slowest in the heard. They are the ones that got a good game banned because they couldn’t win. Note: This game is a good lesson in life, survival, awareness and loyalty.
Loyalty in dodgeball? Yes. When it’s down to a couple of kids, you don’t throw at your friends first. It spilled over into class and life.
Did we aim for the body? If it was available, otherwise a head shot was good for stories 2 days later that everyone enjoyed until Karen’s came along.
If they would stop banning the good games (also red rover), maybe kids would go outside more.
“I wish I could be the bearer of good tidings and tell you that you have unlimited time to stare at the ball and decide what you’re going to do with it, but that’s not reality. Like all games, the game of life must end—and the clock is ticking as you read this.” — Robert Ringer
I know for dead sure who the rat is. It’s an ex of mine who served cokes in the sky for a living. It turns out she was also the cheating bicycle in the sky that many other guys got to ride while away on trips, behind my back of course. As for no brain, there is a long list with a lot of them competing to be in the top 10, but can’t even make that list either. The bicycle had stewardess friends who lied to my face as they knew she was cheating on me, with surprisingly little remorse. I always found that revealing about her and her friends. It was a pattern for her.
I’ve met a lot of rats who seemed to function without a brain. Some are in my family. I went to high school with a den of rats. Most that worked with in Armonk or Somers for IBM were that. How they made it through life is beyond me. They are like Forest Gump, only not rich, not famous, not good looking, not friendly and are just surviving at this point. Yet here they are, probably able to survive a nuke with the roaches, in NY
No one gives much of a crap about colleges unless it’s theirs or it’s Football season or the Final Four, or they embarrass themselves.
Well, I graduated from UCF, although it was named Florida Technological University. It was started during the Apollo moon program to develop engineers for NASA. When that stopped, they had to try to be a business college.
I’m ashamed enough of what they have become that I changed my college to Faber College on LinkedIn. Knowledge is good.
I led the student advisory committee in the late ’70’s which recommended that the school start a football program. It is a big money maker and they have been nationally ranked. I won’t even go anymore. Hell, I’ll pull against them when they cross the line now as right is right and wrong is wrong.
It was all OK until they went woke, became a bunch of snowflakes and free speech Nazi’s. Now, they nationally are rank(ed) (smelling because being Woke). Unfortunately, I also went to school with some of the now board of directors (M. Grindstaff) and I’m not surprised that this group would allow this bias and contempt for the Bill of Rights. A lot of them are lawyers so what do you expect?
UCF fired tenured professor Charles Negy for tweeting the truth about black privilege, but it doesn’t matter, free speech should be protected (except for Negy). There is enough acidic speech against the position he was fired for that should have had them look at the real violations committed by UCF, it’s directors and spokespersons.
It turns out they violated free speech, Negy’s rights and acted like spoiled children. I’m embarrassed to be associated with them. I vowed never to step back on campus once I graduated and never have, knowing the kind of people they have running and advising it to be anti-constitutional. They had to re-hire him with back pay, bonus and tenure. Justice is served.
UCF is against freedom, free speech and the first amendment. Worse, they are Woke, a scarlet letter. They discriminate against conservatives, professors and white people. They also show a serious lack of judgement on their Board Of Emeritus Directors.
We previously discussed the effort to fire University of Central Florida Professor Charles Negy after he tweeted about “black privilege.” UCF President Alexander Cartwright abandoned any pretense of academic freedom or principle in failing to protect a colleague from an anti-free speech campaign. Now, after a major court ruling against the university, an arbitrator has awarded Negy all back pay and benefits from the time of his firing. That is good news. What is not good news is that, despite shredding core principles governing higher education, Cartwright remains the UCF president. To the contrary, the university issued a statement that indicated that it is undeterred by the adverse court rulings. Negy, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida, required police protection after he tweeted about what he views as “black privilege.” There was a petition demanding his termination with more than 30,000 signatures and, as we have seen in other schools, his colleagues were virtually silent as Negy was attacked for expressing his views. While classroom misconduct has been raised by some critics, most of the effort (and the focus of this posting) is on his statements on social media. That petition focused on Negy’s statements on social media as unacceptable and grounds for termination:
“We are calling on the University of Central Florida to dismiss psychology professor Charles Negy due to abhorrent racist comments he has made and continues to make on his personal Twitter account. In addition to racism, Negy has engaged in perverse transphobia and sexism on his account, which is just as reprehensible. While he has a right to free speech, he does not have a right to dehumanize students of color and other minority groups, which is a regular occurance [sic] in his classroom. By allowing him to continue in his position, UCF would simply be empowering another cog in the machine of systemic racism.”
Negy faced protests at his home and on campus, according to news reports after he explored the concept of “white shaming” as an academic, including his book “White Shaming: Bullying Based on Prejudice, Virtue-Signaling, and Ignorance.”
Negy’s work is highly controversial and his tweets have inflamed critics. In a now deleted tweet, he wrote “Black privilege is real: Besides affirm. action, special scholarships and other set asides, being shielded from legitimate criticism is a privilege. But as a group, they’re missing out on much needed feedback.”
He has also written, again on Twitter, “If Afr. Americans as a group, had the same behavioral profile as Asian Americans (on average, performing the best academically, having the highest income, committing the lowest crime, etc.), would we still be proclaiming ‘systematic racism’ exists?”
Again, the question is not the merits or tenor of such writings but the right of academics to express such viewpoints. There have been few comparable protests when professors write inflammatory comments about white culture or white privilege.
UCF President Alexander Cartwright told students that the university would investigate Negy, and that he and his Administration “are acutely aware of the offensive and hurtful Twitter posts that professor Charles Negy has shared on his personal page. These posts do not reflect the values of UCF, and I strongly condemn these racist and abhorrent posts.”
We recently discussed the Eleventh Circuit ruling against Cartwright and the university over its discriminatory-harassment and bias response team policies as violative of the First Amendment. The Eleventh Circuit overturned a district judge’s rejection of a preliminary injunction against the policy: “[I]t is imperative that colleges and universities toe the constitutional line when monitoring, supervising, and regulating student expression. Despite what we presume to be the very best of intentions, it seems to us substantially likely that the University of Central Florida crossed that line here.”
In oral argument, the university’s own lawyer struggled to define the terms or to say whether particular statements might be deemed prohibited. The court noted:
“The discriminatory-harassment policy’s imprecision exacerbates its chilling effect. To take just one example, what does it mean for one student’s speech to ‘unreasonably . . . alter’ another student’s educational experience? Both terms — ‘unreasonably’ and ‘alter’— are pretty amorphous, their application would likely vary from one student to another, and the university’s totality-of-known-circumstances approach to determining whether particular speech crosses the line only makes matters worse.”
Just as the university spent a huge amount of time and money to fight for these unconstitutional rules, it has litigated the matter over Negy to seek to strip him of his job and all benefits due to his exercise of free speech.
After teaching psychology at the school since 1998, Negy, 61, was fired in January 2021. As Cartwright turned the weight of the university against him, Negy had to sell his house to pay his lawyers.
The arbitrator noted that, while the school added objections to his teaching style, Negy received outstanding teaching reviews. Moreover, he noted Negy “demonstrated a willingness to entertain some change in his style of instruction; however, the record is devoid of any clear evidence that any member of his management requested such effort.”
Chad Binette, assistant vice president of UCF communications, indicated that the university remains undeterred by these losses. He stated that “UCF stands by the actions taken following a thorough investigation that found repeated misconduct in Professor Negy’s classroom, including imposing his views about religion, sex and race. However, we are obligated to follow the arbitrator’s ruling.”
What is not clear to me is how Cartwright retains his position as president in a Florida public university after such a record of attacks on free speech and academic freedom. He has not only sought to impose anti-free speech conditions on faculty but spent copious amounts of money seeking to preserve those rules and uphold those actions. These principles are the essence of any university and their abandonment constitutes a rejection of Cartwright’s obligation as a university president. I would not support his termination as an academic but, as an administrator, he has shown a serial failure to defend his faculty and free speech. Until university presidents are held accountable for failing to defend free speech, they will continue to yield to every flash mob that forms on a campus.
Delusions of Adequacy 