Fizzzzle

Okay, so I'm deferring to your expertise on the medical stuff, so I just have questions. For example, if someone has a genetic admixture of only 40% west african, but they physically present as black and identify as black, how would you reconcile that with "they're black, therefore we gravitate towards [x]," when they are predominantly not? If that makes sense. Also, the way people thought about race 2000 years ago is not the same as the way we've thought about it for the last 300 years. Not even close. Yes, ancient Greeks and Romans had physical descriptors of people because that's what humans like to do. We like to categorize things. But it wasn't used to ascribe anything other than basic physical attributes. For example, they might use a term for a region that meant something like "the land where people have dark skin," or they might refer to people from that region as a physical descriptor, but it wasn't tied to an ideology. You have to remember, in Greek and Roman societies, something around 25% of people were enslaved, especially in urban areas (in Sparta slaves made up a vast majority of the population). The overwhelming majority of those people did not look any different from your average citizen. They didn't have nearly as much reason to associate race with social class the way that we do today (not to say they never did). The way the idea of race changed in the late 17th-century/early 18th-century onward specifically evolved to reflect the fact that lots of white people had lots of brown/black people enslaved in much of the new world. It was a fairly rapid change. Slavery, at least in much of Europe, hadn't been (officially) a thing in hundreds of years. Initially, in the 16th century, they rationalized slavery of the natives by cloaking it in evangelism. When enough of the native people died and the labor source started to dry up, they started to import Africans, and initially they justified it the same way. But then... what happened when their enslaved populations started to adopt Christianity? .... then they needed a new reason to justify what they were doing. And so our modern concept of race was born. A whole lot of white people were really uncomfortable reconciling the subjugation of millions of people, so they came up with reasons for why it was okay. THAT is fundamentally why it was different than race in ancient times.

True enough. Even in South Africa they still used mixed race as a common category, just like how in America we used "mulatto" for a while.

So, like... Race (at least our interpretation of it for the last ~300 years) absolutely IS a construct white people made to make themselves feel better about colonialism and slavery. That's a fact. There is zero to little genetic reason to separate people based on race. However, *because* it has been a cultural construct for roughly 10 generations of people (not that long if you think about it), you can't just say it doesn't exist. We willed it into existence and we can't just pretend it isn't there. There are people who live different lives than you do because of how society perceives their race. Even if it's made up. My favorite examples are Trevor Noah and Barack Obama. Noah's father was a Swiss German, damn near as Aryan as you can get. Obama's mother was a white girl from Kansas. Shouldn't that mean they are both equally black and white? ... No, they're just black. Basically until we figure out how to unfuck 300 years of social programming, I don't know what this is meant to achieve. We know that we can't solve racism by pretending it isn't there anymore (see: the last 50 years). On the other hand... Maybe it would be a good idea to legally remove questions about race from everything... I definitely think it would be a good idea to remove race from medical forms (you can get down a rabbit hole about health problems that affect black people more than white people or vise versa and whether it's a tail wagging the dog situation, and I'm not qualified to speak on that) .... I don't know, man. Point is race shouldn't exist, but it does. And I feel like until we really figure out how to unfuck ourselves, we have to treat it like it's a real thing, even if it's not.

I think you're thinking of Sucker Punch. That was Zack Snyder.

I don't know, sure, whatever. I completely forgot those movies existed.

Yeah but I'd let her cheeks clap my dick until there was nothing left and be happy about it. .... what were we talking about again?

You must also think about the death of the monoculture. When we were young, for the most part, we all watched the same TV shows, listened to the same radio stations, watched TRL, and went to the same movies. Nowadays you have people like Mr. beast who averages more views per video than the Super Bowl yet it wouldn't surprise you if the average person had no fucking idea who he is. That breeds dedicated fandom. It's easier to think that [insert thing] is MY THING. Because chances are you don't know anyone personally who is into that thing like you are. So then you start to feel possessive about that thing because it has become a defining trait of your personality. P

The world needs more of you

Not since 2003. I survive off of cocaine and the blood of virgins.

Turns out all those people protesting for the last 70 years kind of had a point when you get into it. Believe me, I'm actually in the middle of writing a piece about the jail system (which I don't know if I'll ever finish, it's too big). There are thousands of people in California alone who have been sitting in jail for over a year and haven't been tried. There are a few hundred who have been in jail for 5 years and haven't been tried. Granted there's a whole lot of complexity to the issue (the more serious the crime, the longer it takes to go to trial), but ultimately it does come down to "rich people stay free while they await trial, poor people get their lives destroyed for crimes they haven't been convicted of yet." It's fucking infuriating.

... Is watching people dance who don't know how to dance. It might sound like I'm making fun of them. I'm not. I fucking love it when I see some awkward white guy just be like "fuck you, I'm cutting a rug whether you like it or not" and he starts just flailing about like a beached dolphin. It's a supreme display of confidence that I can only aspire to. The thing is also that people respond to it. You want to get a room full of people dancing? Just get an awkward white guy to start imitating the mating ritual of a jellyfish in the middle of the dance floor and everyones day just got 10x more fun. Point being... Be that guy, at least once in your life.

I went once where they asked for volunteers for something. Can't remember what it was for. But it was a thing.

Next you're going to tell me Jones soda is out of business and I'll be like WHAT?! ... Oh, I haven't seen them since I was in high school, that makes sense.

Hell they don't even cover fucking parking.

This is their first election since the Ukraine invasion, right? If so, it's interesting. Neighboring wars usually make people more hawkish, but the right can also tend to be fairly pro-russian, and those two things don't necessarily jive at the moment.

One of my professors in school told me to never skip jury duty for exactly that reason. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who is on trial and innocent and imagine what kind of people are going to be on the jury. Would you want the jury to solely consist of people who are too stupid to know how to get out of it?

Louisiana politics is... something else. One of my friends used to arbitrate government contracts in Louisiana and he straight up told me Louisiana is the only state in which getting ANYTHING done with public funding requires walking into the meeting with a briefcase full of cash. And that crosses both parties. The street in front of my apartment in New Orleans was half filled with dirt, and had been for years. Why? Because a sewage pipe needed repaired, so they dug the street up, but the money to put the road back in got... misplaced. So now it's just dirt. And it will remain that way until the right palms get greased. The people of Louisiana will vote for Satan himself if he makes promises of ending corruption (spoiler: no one ever does it)

Booooooooty butt butt butt butt butt booooooooty butt butt butt butt butt. ... What were we talking about again?

Now you know why I never express that opinion in public

tbh I like most of Taylor Swift's music up through like 1989. It's not music that I would choose to put on the jukebox, but I don't mind when it's on. Anything she's made in the last 10 years is not really my jam. I fucking HATE "shake it off," though. Can't fucking stand that song. Beyonce is a different story. I actively dislike 90% of her music. It's just noise to me. I think I heard "Single Ladies" so much that her voice became repulsive. Like, you know how if you get so drunk on a certain liquor, the smell of that liquor forever makes you ill? That's how I feel with Beyonce's voice. Only I never liked the song in the first place, it was just EVERYWHERE, and it bores into your ear holes.

My old roommate listened to almost nothing but Taylor Swift. I shit you not... Almost nothing. I lived with her for almost a year... Almost exclusively Taylor Swift. In fact im even liberally using "almost" because I'm just giving her benefit of the doubt and assuming there must have been some point she listened to something other than Taylor Swift and I just didn't pay attention.

Good luck enforcing that.

Personally, flying and time zone changes fuck up my poop schedule. Maybe it's spending an entire day flying, maybe it's the sleep change, maybe it's airport food, maybe all of the above, but I don't shit for days after a long trip

This is honestly kind of what I was worried about when they said they were beefing up the IRS. Will that mean higher accountability for corporations? .. lol, no, you silly goose. It will just mean more average people getting nickel and dimed over right offs, because those don't take 7 years of appeals and court battles.

Can't wait. I'll probably have to wait until after the weekend because I'm really busy, but I'll probably binge it in a day.