I personally think astrology is destructive to the people who take part in it. I see a lot of arguments along the lines of, “people have fun with it and it gives them comfort” etc. and if that’s all it was, that would be fine, but anyone who’s met someone really into astrology can see that it primes people to apply a totally illogical and incoherent framework to problems in their lives. The problem with that is that you’re never going to grow and learn as a person if you continually grab for this totally illogical tool in your emotional toolbelt every time one of life’s challenges arises. You’ll never reflect on the emotional genesis of a lot of your feelings or responses to the world if you just think, “I did that because I’m a Leo” or whatever. You’ll never get to, “I realize now that I responded to x situation negatively because y factor happens to be a trigger for me and I need to be conscious of that in the future” if you never get past “I responded to x situation negatively because mercury is in retrograde.” Overall I think it’s a toxic trend in our society that prevents people from being able to grow in a healthy way.
So Israel is suddenly ready and willing to discuss peace terms but that gosh darn rascal trump is up to his ol’ mischief and is rallying against it because it’s going to make Kamala look too good?
I don’t buy it.
There are times where people walk away from a piece of media with a weird interpretation and are accused of “no media literacy” and it’s a bit harsh because the piece of media might be more subtle in its politics or message or whatever, but bioshock literally opens by delivering a libertarian screed and then IMMEDIATELY showing you the havoc and ruin that resulted. There’s not more than two dots to connect. It’s so on the nose. How could you walk away with a different interpretation?
Marx failed to consider pussy in bio.
New York State will probably go red at some point in the next twenty years. It’s got an incredibly rare combination of some of the wealthiest capitalists in the country living in the same electorate as some of the poorest and most disillusioned. People forget that Trump was born, raised, and became wealthy in this state. That it has one of the most overfunded police departments on the planet. This kind of rhetoric would be expected from someone like desantis, but instead it’s coming from New York. Crazy.
The weird thing is I don’t think I ever actually heard him stutter. He speaks incoherently and says inappropriate things but he doesn’t repeat the first sounds of his words. It never really made sense as an excuse.
He has a stutter.
It’s got all the hits. Huge 
energy. Extremely patronizing toward younger people.
I just listened to it. Save yourself. I’ve been so thoroughly owned with facts and knowledge - almost all of which did not care for my feelings - that there’s no coming back. It’s over for me.
I did not have a raging political discussion, however I did have my sister, who considers herself a leftist but probably doesn’t know who Marx was, attempt to express her extremely vibes-based politics in entertaining ways. She showed up to our dinner late and extremely high. A family friend of ours came for dinner who is from South America and is extremely cool, often regaling us with stories of El Salvador and Chile in the 60s. She’d fit in on the site. She brought up Allende and my sister rolled her eyes and said that he was just like “every other mediocre white man who is overconfident”. I asked her why she felt that way and she said she was “just kidding”. I later brought up the book the Jakarta Method and my sister said that “what is happening in Jakarta and the other places in Africa is terrible on both sides”. She then said she’s in favor of the rest of the world adopting the American dollar because it would be “more socialist”.
The subject of the CIA came up in the context of intervention in South America, and my sister related it to the CIA distributing crack in American inner cities in the 80s. This stood out to me simply because I was surprised she knew about it. She then talked about the healing power of psychedelic medicine for about forty five minutes.
Later on, we watched Its A Wonderful Life, which she said was “a good argument for why we need to replace capitalism with Bitcoin” during the scene when Uncle Billy loses the money. I didn’t even ask. I love her and I actually do think her heart is basically in the right place but she’s like a random number generator and seems to invent her completely incoherent world view as she goes along. I’ve thought about recommending at least some theory but I kind of think she’s happier and pretty much harmless in her mind castle.
The backlash to the backlash to the thing that’s just begun
My older Cuban relatives were staying with us in NY the month of September 2001 from Havana. We actually took them to the World Trade Center a few days prior to the attacks. My principle memory of 9/11 was them laughing and celebrating and my dad getting mad at them.
Googling around but not seeing anything - did something happen in France?