One more thing: the real story in the Dune universe, for my money, is the Butlerian Jihad.

I just started The Expanse this week! I haven’t really gotten into a sci-fi show since probably Battlestar Galactica, but The Expanse has really grabbed me.

A monocle, maybe?

Full IMAX for this one with 1 of my old time friend who went with our group of friends to see Lynch Dune when it was out in theaters back in the 80's.

Man, seriously. As someone who was bullied a lot before there was an internet, I get a little upset at the implication that IRL bullying isn’t as bad as cyberbullying. Bullying is bad no matter how it happens. It can really mess a kid up, especially if their home life isn’t ideal or their parents are just clueless. 

All of our divisions are actually just “assholes” vs others.

There’s a famous saying, “The internet is alcohol. It doesn’t change who you are, but it does lower your inhibitions.”

Personally, I think that should become the new metric for judging the value of a scientific paper, replacing the old ‘number of citations’ thing: what’s the ratio between internet commenters who say “that’s nonsense! these people clearly have no experience of the real world!” when they read your paper and internet…

I’ve always felt this way about the moral panic we had ten years or so ago about school ‘cyberbullying’. People were running around screaming about how the internet was enabling poor little Bob’s mean schoolfriends to say mean things about him, and why this meant chatrooms should be banned. No, people, Bob’s mean…

Idk, I feel like we could of come to that conclusion simply by opening up a history book, lol. A lot of the assholes in the modern day, are following a long legacy of American exceptionalism.

I guess we’re going to have to modify the greater internet fuckwad theory:

I mean, when you see the number of people willing to put their real name, picture, etc. on social media accounts where they share the dumbest, most hateful shit imaginable...it’s pretty clear that anonymity isn’t the largest factor in online trolling. The real multiplying factor is like you said the ability of toxic…

And frankly, calling them ‘incels’ is a bad joke. As if they’re not choosing to be raging pieces of toxic garbage that nobody wants to be with or around. That makes their social life 100% their choice, ie voluntary, ie the opposite of *involuntary*.

Based on a very limited sample size (in my small social network ) I can see that. The biggest trolls posting Covid and climate change denial bullshit are also the biggest assholes in the group in real life.

I personally feel like the covid crisis has given us the best data ever on just how many people are raging, self entitled jerks. This is just more confirmation that we are beset on all sides by morons and a-holes.

I have yet to see a coffee service.

** boiling is rarely an ideal method of turning good ingredients into anything other than a future repressed memory.

To this I say: first, if you don’t go to sleep like a good boy/girl, Lovecraftian monsters that hunt in the halls outside your bedroom at night will steal you and gift you unto the maw of madness