Saturday 30 March 2024
Thursday 28 March 2024
Tuesday 26 March 2024
Monday 25 March 2024
Saturday 23 March 2024
Religion anywhere is a threat to atheists everywhere.
Friday 22 March 2024
Hard limits: quiet quitting video games revisited.
Thursday 21 March 2024
As drowning men fight against the ocean, I am the tide, etc.
Think about the idiom "out of your depth": you're thrashing around, not because you're mad at the ocean. What he's doing, in this sense, is defensive: he isn't really mad at me, he's just out of his depth. And I'm not mad at him, either: he said, "it's been nice knowing you", and my reply was, "You still know me, you just don't think it's nice anymore" —followed by a winking face. ;-)
I am surprised that anyone is surprised (by my critique of the vegan movement) anymore.
The first time I spoke to Erin Janus, she said to me —as I recall— that she'd never seen a critic of the vegan movement who was indeed vegan before. That was many years ago (and Erin Janus herself is now no longer vegan) and pretty much every thesis I've had to state about what's wrong with the movement —in principle and in praxis— has been expressed clearly, again and again, both in deadly earnest and (often enough) as satire and parody.
Today I see that two people unsubscribed from my channel while watching my latest video, that had the modest sum of 1,500 viewers when I checked (the title of the video in question being: Stop donating money to Earthling Ed: he's a liar and a goon).
One person unsubscribed while watching The Vegan Movement: Failed Strategy, Failed Tactics.
Another one person unsubscribed while watching my critique of Joey Carbstrong (Joey Carbstrong is Wrong: Anthropology, Ethnography, Revolution).
Fully three people unsubscribed while watching The death and rebirth of the vegan movement: a FIVE HOUR conversation with Sky.
I emphasize "while watching": if someone made up their mind later (even if just a few seconds later, after closing the window playing the video) the statistic wouldn't be tracked in this way.
These are small numbers, but it's nevertheless worth saying: HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that this is still news? How is it possible that my message (on this topic) is still shocking TO ANYONE, especially someone who had already subscribed to my channel?
Monday 18 March 2024
Too Cute to be Easy.
Thursday 14 March 2024
Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear.
This is James Aspey. This was his facial expression while he was reading my comment —perhaps in a moment of recognizing who I am and where he remembers me from, perhaps not.
Tuesday 12 March 2024
Saturday 9 March 2024
Friday 8 March 2024
The ladybug on its blade of grass, the sun in its sky, etc.
One point I did not quite communicate (in my unedited performance) but that a few of you may have picked up on implicitly: it may seem salient to reproach the animals of the forest for living and suffering "for nothing" from the perspective of the sun, on the scale of the solar system revolving through the eons, that these are motes of dust relative to a galaxy comprising innumerable solar systems, but this is irrelevant. We can evaluate the life of the ladybug relative to the scale of the blades of grass, and find what is meaningful within a human life at its own salient scale, and within its salient span of time (a mere century!) and this is not diminished with reference to the relative infinity of the stars in the sky. This is seemingly salient, but (in fact) it is not: we do not subtract anything from the ladybug (nor from the works of Shakespeare, in the human realm, etc.) with a comparative reference to the lifeless clockwork we see grinding away in the sky.