Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
Yeah, I admit, I’m biased against dentists. My friend’s sister is a dentist. She’s great. Still, they use those tools on people every day.
Maybe they do need hugs. Maybe that’s how the ultrasonic scaler will be redesigned into something more humane.
Teachers - need hugs
Dentists - do not need hugs
Dads - need hugs
Corporations - do not need hugs
CEOs of Fortune 500 companies - need hugs, but only if they’re exploring how to undermine extractive, exploitative, fascist-leaning capitalism. Otherwise, no hugs
Cartoonists - need hugs
Union leads - need hugs
Weapons manufacturers - need the cold embrace of obsolescence.
Blue handprint.
Analyst + therapist = analrapist
Pascal’s Wager
Buying pants. My thick thighs make most pants not fit well. It’s annoying and was more embarrassing back in HS. My GF at the time really liked to shop and shop with me. I had to shoot down her plans a lot.
I hated wearing corduroy as a child. The zip-zip sound while running or walking was an embarrassment.
I’m glad that people’s bodies are more accepted now. I’m glad to see more kids who are accepting and promoting body positivity.
That just wasn’t my experience.
There’s a bunch of these thought experiments that try to posit scenarios where C is violated.
Here’s one I remember from uni involving scissors. Similar to what OP was thinking, but really really big scissors.
Magneto’s power set could be very useful and easy to manage. Magnets can certainly be made stronger and weaker. He/I would need to build up to any dangerous level of magnetic power, so meditation before sleep would be clutch. Bullet-proof, flight, what amounts to telekinesis, and the ability to manifest any metallic object is fairly incredible, yet unobtrusive.
Also, Forge’s power set would be pretty nice to have. Can engineer, build, fix, and invent literally anything. Solve any technological problem at will. The photocopier would never be broken. Wait, does anyone still use a photocopier? The only thing that’d be annoying is becoming everyone’s IT department.
Jamie Madrox is also a great contender. Instant dupes of myself at will (and, yes, magically, they come with clothes).
These are my answers.
Panic.
Panic that I’ve overslept; that I’ll be late and this will be the first and last straw; that I’ve lost my job; lost my house; that I’ve relegated my family to an existence at the fringes of society subsisting on canned beans, dandelions, and wild greens; that losing every shred of self-respect and all prospects of any improvement in my life.
Yep, panic is a pretty solid motivator.
Read Chomsky’s Understanding Power (2002) and Manufacturing Consent (1988). It’s been an oligarchy since at least the 1980s. It’s Reagan’s fault. Jimmy Carter — rest in power —was the last, best hope for the kind of America that humanity wanted.
Read the Fred J. Cook’s The Warfare State (1962).
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was right about the Military-Industrial complex. It used to just be weapons, technology, energy, and heavy industries. The associated industries have metastasized to include entertainment, finance, housing, and education.
How annoying is it to have idiotic anti-intellectuals running nuclear superpowers?
Socrates.
This man upheld his right to think his own thoughts and to go where the evidence led him. He stood trial and was sentenced to death.
Now, the most powerful people do not think, have zero principles, disregard evidence, and would gladly have others die to secure their power.
That the Xanatos gambit is what I now expect from all good villains. Any villain worth their salt has a way to defeat the hero — even captured, killed, or frustrated.
Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, an aid worker will get shot, or a truckload of humanitarians will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan”. But when I say that one little old CEO will die, well then everyone loses their minds!
December 23, 1995: On a wooden basement staircase, in an empty house, with no heat, with my dog. My parents lost the house. All our stuff had been moved out. Our nervous dog wouldn’t settle. I couldn’t leave him. That was the last night I slept in the house where I grew up.
December 1998: On a basement floor near Ottawa. At least it was carpeted. Hammered after some party near a college. In the night, some angel draped a blanket over me. Best feeling of my life to that point. Some guy’s sister was kind to us.
May 2009: Coober Pedy, Australia. Slept in a hostel that was in a mine. Slept underground in a room with bunk beds and no windows. It was weird. Felt like a bomb shelter.
December 2011: Wadi Rum, Jordan. Slept outside under the stars on a sleeping mat on a rock of biblical proportion. The guy in the tent next to ours was snoring. Loudly. My partner couldn’t take it. We dragged our mattresses out onto a rock 300 m from camp. I reasoned — scorpions were less likely to find us. Coulda been wrong. Still here to tell the tale.
I’ve slept in some weird places.
That RTJ video is one of the few I’ve loved since it released.
Then, I discovered Kendrick Lamar had made a video for Alright. Wow.
According to Article 27 of the Rome Statute, all wanted persons are equal before the court, including heads of a state or government. No immunities under international law may bar the court from exercising its jurisdiction.
“No international court has ever found that a head of state or high ranking individual has immunity before it, and Article 27 was meant to codify that principle,” [says] “Leila Sadat, a leading expert on immunities and former ICC special advisor on crimes against humanity[.]”
The immunity loophole found in Article 98 (1), according to the judgement, must be read in context and interpreted in a manner that is consistent with the object and purpose of the Rome Statute, meaning that it should not be read to carve out an exception to Article 27’s clear provisions.
… the reference to state immunity under Article 98 (1) is related to the immunity of a state and its property, not its leaders or officials.
Epstein. 'Nuff said. There’s even a herpesvirus.
And Douglas. This may just be in my life. Nonetheless, it is what it is.
What do rank and file military realize they have to start refusing certain orders?
When do the Americans cut off the supply of certain weapons?
When does the Israeli populace see that a radically new direction is needed to secure peaceful relations “from the river to the sea”?
Oh boy, do they ever! I don’t think I could be a vet. Too many really sad situations.