You might be interested to know that carbonara dates back to the 1940s & 50s and the story goes that after the capture of Rome, American rations were used to create the dish. So powdered eggs and bacon are the most “authentic” carbonara. The people who run all over town for guancale and the tattooed cheese are the foolish ones by my sensibilities.

Even little babies know the difference between mommy and daddy. The shift in attitude that’s required to reform transphobia (I know) means digging into the basement of how you think of yourself and the people you love. This is threatening, it’s scary.

For the conservative, a trans person should not exist. It contradicts the ‘natural’ hierarchy or is a rebellion against God. So their must be an alternative motive: sexual perversion. So you connect the dots between “scary” and “sexually deviant” and pedophile is the natural result.

Calling a trans person a sexual threat soothes the dissonance by shifting the identity “trans” into something where the repulsion and fear make sense. Pedophilia is a box where you can put people whom you fear and hate them actively without the need to examine your own motivations or ever, ever have to look at it from a trans perspective.

The aircraft carrier is about power projection. Kinda weird for a “defensive” force to want some.

You never see cats working with the police.

The best argument for Jesus’ existence comes from Christopher Hitchens.

It goes like this: We know the nativity story is made up because of the census. There was a census near the time, but it was after Harrod’s death and cannot fit the story. But why fabricate the nativity? Probably because Jesus of Nazareth is supposed to be born in the “city of David”: Bethlehem. So then, if Jesus was invented whole cloth, why not make him Jesus of Bethlehem and save the aggravation?

Eratosthenes is a word I can only hear in Carl Sagan’s voice.

Just a reminder that Hamas is the recognized government in Gaza. Israel reminds us of this fact constantly in it’s attempts to justify their collective punishment. But I see now that Hamas have Schrodinger’s legitimacy.

The framing their they’re going for is worthy victims vs. unworthy. It’s a pillar in the project of acceptable mass murder.

Remember, it’s not Thunberg’s argument that aggravates the reactionary. It’s her status to make the argument in public, and be listened to! It’s the degradation of having to listen to the ideas of a “little girl”, that’s the pebble in their shoe.

Just a nitpick. Death of the author states that any interpretation that can be backed up with the text is valid. Notice that two valid interpretations are not necessarily equal interpretations.

So no, it does not mean that any interpretation is valid, much less any interpretation is as good as any other.

This is the best explanation of “death of the author” I’ve heard:

Suppose I make a shopping list for my wife to go to the store. But the reason I make the list is to get her out of the house so I can sext with my paramour. Before anyone else sees the list, I’m hit by a bus and killed.

Now, the authorial intent is to get my wife out of the house. But that meaning is completely lost upon my death. Sure, you can go to the store and follow the list, but you can never decipher my intentions from the text.

As media criticism, “death of the author” depreciates “authorial intent” as less than useful and instead of doing a biography of the author to understand the work, you simply focus on the test and only the text.

Rotting potatoes might just be the foulest odor on earth. Worse than rotting flesh.

I read once that an entire family in Eastern Europe was wiped out by potato fumes. First the mother descended into the root cellar and was overcome. Then each other member one at a time went looking to see where everyone had gone only to succumb each in turn.

There are computers made bespoke for Amish people. It’s basically just a desktop loaded with a word processor and a spreadsheet program. You could easily cook up something like this with a Linux distro and an older laptop. Maybe even a Chromebook.

I think your kinda shooting yourself in the foot by fucking with Reddit, YouTube, and Facebook. Those things run on dopamine.

OSHA did 911.

Think about it. We know that the buildings were destroyed in a controlled demo. The whole point of a controlled demo is safety. What kind of a diabolical organization would murder 3,000 people using the best safety practices???!!!

That’s a prime rib roast and it’s beautiful. That’s closer to Med Rare than Blue.

Someone mashed it with a fork to get those red juices to the surface. (mioglobin, not blood) And that bright red color of the flesh is because it was just cut off the roast and is only just being exposed to oxygen.

There is no market solution to capitalism. Something, something, tools of the master.

Breaking the “rules” of masculinity.

Many years ago I worked for a medical company. A coworker (Boomer dude) and I were demonstrating a lift mechanism when I made the joke: last time I got in a harness, there was a safe word.

The joke killed, but my coworker was mad for weeks because in the joke, I implied we were going to have sex.

“Gods eye” view is a common idiom for a third person perspective. That’s probably what they’re referencing.

“Cannot speak for my intentions” is gas-lighting. Of course mind reading isn’t a thing, but It’s perfectly reasonable to infer intention from action. If not, serious crimes like murder would be impossible to prove.

There are people in by life that have difficulty telling the difference between something that can’t be known with precision, and something so mysterious that any explanation is as good as any other. Some people are vulnerable to this kind of thinking.

Most Christian ideas about hell are from Dante and Milton laundered through loony toons. And in Milton’s version, Satan is the protagonist.