Been mentioned hereabouts before, but here it is again: “It’s A Wonderful Life” does *not* have a happy ending.
Jimmy Stewart was, indeed, one heck of an acting unit.
In the end, this movie is the story of a man who allows himself to be used for the benefit of others. He is ground down, his dreams ruined and stripped from him, all to make other peoples lives easier. It’s well known that Ayn Rand didn’t like the movie due to it’s anti-capitalist portrayal of bankers, but it’s also true that George Bailey is pretty much the anti-Galt. The perhaps ironic thing is that in a movie that Rand apparently despised, the character that she should have hated the most on a philosophical level ends up broken and miserable, with a future full of dooooooom. Basically, George Bailey ends up punished because he did not try to be a John Galt-like figure.
Remember a few months ago when I discussed the engineering concepts of “That Looks About Right” and “That Looks About Wrong?” Guess which one this is.
You know that the driver of the truck hectored that skidsteer operator into doing that over some serious objections. And you just know that this was the result:
I’ve been there. A lifetime ago I worked in the hardware & lumber area of K-Mart and loaded way too much stuff into cars not rated for it.
“Where do you want these twenty 80-pound bags of cement?”
If you want an example of “worst kind of person,” the kind who seem to have no self control whatsoever… well, here ya go:
Yeah, the guy shouldn’t have followed her. But the way she femsplains to the officer puts her about two seconds from a taserin’. Entertainingly, the subject here, one Tara Dublin, wrote up a blog post explaining her side of the event and, wow, is it just jam-packed with all the “boo hoo poor me the whole world is out to oppress me” stuff we’ve all come to expect. Instead of considering that, just perhaps, she comes across as an unhinged nut, she leaps to the conclusion that the reason why the cop dares to tell her to behave in a rational fashion is because it’s a Manspiracy from the Patriarchy. “They use the words “unhinged” and “crazy” to belittle me and revictimize me.” No… “they” use “unhinged” because you demonstrate an inability to control your emotions.
Additionally, her explanation of the origins of the event does not jive with the actual video evidence, taken by a security camera. She was sufficiently unpleasant that the other guy took her to court to get a restraining order against her for stalking; but they only caught two episodes of stalking on camera and apparently Washington state law requires three. Still, she apparently got a talkin’ to from the judge.
One good thing: she’s got herself an IMDB page. I *suspect* that, just maybe, there might be just a wee bit of snark in the bio:
Tara Dublin has recently become known for her one-woman web-based satirical black comedy, “Public Meltdown”. The show follows the trials and tribulations of a desperately unlovable and unwanted failed radio presenter, “Tara Rocks”, as she navigates through life in a state of permanent mental break down, lurching from self-made invented drama to self-made invented drama. Shot in a guerrilla fashion using limited equipment – and often encouraging members of the public to become willing (or sometimes unwilling) characters in the complex comedy – the show has managed to gain significant viral success. As a method actor of DeNiro styling, Tara has made a point of creating social media accounts for “Tara Rocks” and continues to post in character.
The National Alliance on Mental Health (“NAMI”) publicly heralded the September 2016 episode, “Flipping the Bird”, as an “…intense, emotional, yet compassionate exploration of what it means to live with mental illness. The wit and humor of the situation, along with her protracted battle of wits with an imaginary green frog ‘Pepe’ and the unnamed imaginary ‘Racist Roider’, successfully examines the great tragedy of uncontrolled mental illness without making it seem fake or contrived. In this episode, Tara Dublin has done more for bringing the plight of the mentally disadvantaged into the public eye than anyone else in 2016.”
I dunno. Just have a feeling that that might not be her *authorized* bio.
And because why not, I took a gander at her twitter page/feed/whatever so you don’t have to. All I can say about it… Trump has successfully invaded and colonized her mind. What must it be like to be so obsessed?
So it might be fair to inquire as to why I care enough about this incident froma year and a half ago to post about it. Well, two reasons:
On one hand, it’s jsut plain entertaining. That’s reason enough.
On the other hand, politics aside, this level of obsession and lack of self control and lack of self-knowledge is not only bad for the individual… it’s bad for *society.* Society would be a whole lot better off if people were on the whole more dispassionate, not more passionate.
Now, everyone can go a little emotional from time to time. For example, I would not have liked there to have been videos of me from after Raedthinn died. It was… unseemly. How about when Obama was elected? Meh. I believe my reaction was on the order of “well… poop.” But like everyone, driving out among the great mass of other crazy drivers can make emotions go into overdrive. But that’s when you *most* need to be calm and logical. And something I’ve noticed since becoming a concealed carry license holder: the knowledge that I have a pistol in my car or on my person? That makes me *more* thoughtful. If you have any sort of brain at all having the physical manifestation at hand of the concept of “sometimes there are consequences” it makes you think, even if only just a little bit more. And sometimes “only a little bit more thought” is all you need, the difference between doing a U-turn in the middle of a residential street in order to get out of your car, curse someone and flip them off, leading to unknown and unknowable consequences… and just grumbling under your breathe and driving on and going on about your day.
The president believes that the United States owes nothing to anyone—especially its allies.
Heh. You know, I like that. I would like it better if it was directed somewhat better – more at our adversaries, less at our allies – and if it was accepted for use *within* the US. As in:
Person A: “You have privilege and owe me reparations and need to suck up to me and grovel and apologize and feel bad and guilty for existing!”
Person B: “I owe you nothing.” whistles a merry tune, strolls off
So at one point while I was recently driving partway across the continent I hit a restroom in a gas station and noticed that someone had scribbled something crude and vulgar on the wall of the stall. And the thought that hit me was… “Hey, didn’t this stuff used to be everywhere?” It dawned on me that this sort of thing, which used to be inevitable and abundant in public men’s rooms, now seems to be almost entirely absent from at least the ones I’ve been in.
Is this other people’s experience as well?
A few hypotheses came to mind to explain that change:
1) I live in Utah now, so the great majority of such places I’m likely to visit are in Utah. Utahns are, on the whole, less uncivilized than people in many other regions.
2) Social Media Explanation 1: Those who used to use bathroom stalls as advertising for their perverted shenanigans now have Tinder and Grinder and Democratic Underground.
3) Social Media Explanation 2: Those who used to use bathroom stalls as a way to post hoax phone numbers to torment friends, former friends, ex-girlfriends now have Facebook
4) Social media Explanation 3: Those who used to use bathroom stalls as a way to scribble down jokes now have the CNN comment sections.
5) Social Media Explanation 4: People just don’t carry around pens like they used to. Hard to text a message to a stall wall.
6) Society is less coarse and crude now than twenty years ago.
7) People who maintain public restrooms are more diligent at cleaning the places up.
I suspect a whole lot of my experience is down to #1. Perhaps if I went to less civilized regions like Chicago or California, I’d see scribblings galore. Explanation 6 is almost certainly laughably wrong but, hey, completeness. Explanation 7 seems not unreasonable.
Norway: from 1970 to 2009, IQ dropped 7 points per generation
Britain: Since WWII, IQ dropped 2.5 to 4.3 points per decade (which would be WOW)
The journal article itself is paywalled. It would be interesting to see if the researchers covered such details as the effect of migration.
The “Flynn Effect” had shown an increase in IQ scores during at least the first half of the 20th century. A lot of the thinking was that that was due to environmental rather than genetic effects… improved nutrition and healthcare making for healthier bodies which led to healthier brains. So a drop in recent decades, durign which life life expectancy and environmental issues have all generally seen a continuation of improvement (if you think the environment is in trouble, you shoulda been here in the seventies when rivers caught fire and Italian Indians cried at the side of roads), if the environment was the main driver of IQ changes, the increase should have continued. I wonder if the improved physical conditions led to an improvement in the *potential* for IQ, meaning that any one individuals IQ was allowed to maximise, while at the same time the improved conditions had changed the basic equations of natural selection, meaning that the dumb, who would’ve died young and their offspring would have been few, are now living longer and having many more dumb little babies who get to live long enough to have a lot of dumb little babies of their own.
Of course, there are a bajillion other possible causes. While the environment has definitely overall improved, perhaps some trace chemical – something used in plastic water bottles or commonly prescribed drugs, who knows – are slowly making us teh dum. Perhaps the educational system has been dumbed down in recent generations. No, really! It just *may* be barely possible that we’re miseducating the kids. Maybe importing the third world in vast numbers to replace the native populations is starting to have an effect. Maybe the aliens are beaming bozo rays down onto Earth to dumb us down, either to keep us from going out there and causing a ruckus or to eventually weaken us for conquest. Who knows. We’re just not smart enough anymore to figure it out.
Is that title clickbait? I’m shocked, SHOCKED that you might think so.
Look, we all know that cats are awesome. But we also know that cats are murder machines. They kill smaller cute ‘lil critters with a joyful relish that is only matched by humanities own love of slaughter. Efforts are often and widely put in place to sterilize or outright exterminate feral cat populations because cats do serious damage to bird populations.
But… what if cats weren’t around? This video makes the hard-to-argue-against point that in a world suddenly without cats, humanities numbers would plummet and civilization would collapse precisely because our fluffy little friends murderous nature is protecting the entire planet from a very serious threat. (note: not a good video for folks what don’t care for seein’ critters kill other critters)
Humans sleep soundly in their beds because rough cats stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
Some photos taken as the sun crawled up behind the very distant Nebraska horizon a few weeks ago. Note the reflection on the clouds above, a phenomenon that the camera does not do justice to. Very striking in person.
