Billy Doesn’t Want to Hit Himself in the Head with a Hammer

There is a person named Billy who lives in a world where the most common cure for a headache is hitting yourself in the head with a hammer. But Billy doesn’t want to do that. Billy thinks that hitting himself in the head with a hammer will actually make his headaches worse, but when he says this, everyone laughs at him and calls him names. So Billy keeps quiet about his beliefs. He even sometimes lies and tells people that he does hit himself in the head with a hammer,…

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How I Became A Capitalist

For nearly 20 years I identified as an anti-capitalist anarcho-communist, but ironically in the last four years, as those ideals have exploded into the mainstream in response to Trump, I have gone the opposite direction. It was just a few months before Trump was elected that I started a job at BNY Mellon, one of the biggest banks in the world. I felt like a sellout, like I was taking part in some great evil. But I started the job and it was really easy, but they also kept me…

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Building a Meaningful Life – Kalin’s Religious Sermon

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an atheist, but this is not intended to mock religion. It’s more an exploration of how I would approach these ideas if I were to believe in God. Are you feeling lost and alone, like your life has no purpose? Welcome everyone to Kalin’s imaginary church where we want you to know that God loves you regardless of who you are or what you believe. But I’m sure you’ve heard that line so many times it’s lost all meaning. And that’s what…

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Why I Love Elon Musk

Update: So I wrote this a number of years ago, and since that time, Elon has gotten more and more nasty on Twitter and has said some hurtful things. But I won’t change the title of this piece because I still have a deep love for this man. He has expressed deep hatred for me and people like me as well as many people I care about. But I’ve always believed actions speak louder than words and at the end of the day, his words are just words. They are…

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Why We Need to Invest More in the Space Industry Even Though We have Problems Here on Earth

This is a deeply problematic question. The subtext behind this question of course is, “space travel holds little to no value to humanity.” Also, “space travel somehow takes away resources from things that actually help humanity.” Both of these subtexts are so false that it feels like gaslighting to informed people. The child-like over-simplification of such a complex issue feels to space enthusiasts as though it is deliberately designed to make us feel stupid. That may not be the case, but that is how it feels. This question is rarely…

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Automobile Trauma is Just as Valid as Other Forms of Trauma

Years ago I had a girlfriend who was terrified of automobiles. Whenever we would drive anywhere, she would grip the handles in terror. A few times she would even break down in tears if someone cut us off or I had to hit the brakes too hard. She would sometimes chant to herself “it’s perfectly fine. We’re safe. It’s all safe. This is all perfectly safe.” It recurred a few times where we would need to drive somewhere and she would have a panic attack, then she would call herself…

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Millie’s Pipe Dream

Once upon a time there lived a young girl named Millie. Millie lived in a little village, where everybody loved each other and everyone seemed happy except for one problem: they were a long way from the river. Every day, most of the villagers had to walk a long trail down a cliff to fill up their buckets so they could have water to cook, bathe and wash dishes. Every day for years Millie walked this trail several times, carrying a bucket of water for her mother, then her sister,…

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Toxic Anti-Capitalism

In my early thirties I dated for a couple months a woman whose best friend was dating a millionaire CEO of a software company. I hung out with him a couple times. He may be the only millionaire I’ve ever had drinks with outside of a work event. He bought me a cheese plate once and talked about the history and significance of each cheese. He seemed like a pretty normal guy. You never would have known he was loaded. He would write these long, deeply emotional emails to his…

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The Secret, Oddball Thing that Offends Me

I have a weird story/confession. Before today I’ve only ever spoken about this to the few people I mention in this story. I’m hearing so much talk lately about the words people use surrounding gender and thinking about how easily the wrong words can offend. I personally don’t understand a lot of the emotion surrounding gender, but I do have one thing in my life I use as reference to try to help me understand. I didn’t attach my identity to my gender. Instead, for whatever reason, the main things…

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Why I Try to Communicate Even When it Seems Hopeless

Almost 20 years ago one of my closest friends was a Nazi sympathizer. He would lay out in order which races were better than which and go on about how Hitler was just in a hard situation and did what he had to against the Jewish invasion. Some pretty gross stuff. We would argue nearly every time we hung out. He believed the world was all a competition, race vs race and we all needed to stand up for our race. I argued that no, we are all humans and…

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I got Death Threats for Being a Technology Enthusiast

Last weekend I received a series of death threats from a very old friend. Some of you may remember a post I made a few months ago about Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Well, that post scared him pretty bad, because of Skynet and stuff, and I did not realize how it had affected him. Then last week I made a joke in favor of certain artificial intelligence technologies and he sent me the death threats in audio form that you can watch in this YouTube video. There’s three things I want…

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Space Events Happening in 2021

The space industry is on track to make 2021 even more spectacular than 2020. Here is everything happening in 2021, in order of awesomeness. NASA already had a mostly successful static fire test of their not reusable Space Launch System in early January 2021. It’s still scheduled for its first launch in late 2021. SLS is basically Space Shuttle 2.0, outdated and overpriced, it’s almost already obsolete but will still be cool to see it fly. Joe Biden put a moon rock in the oval office, subtly signifying his support…

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Sarah Blakely Thought Real People would Work Better than Mannequins

I recently listened to a Masterclass by Sarah Blakely and was very impressed with all the ideas and perspectives she offered on business and entrepreneurship. I’m making data-management software and she makes shapewear for women but there was still a ton of ideas I can apply to my own mission. She told a story about going into a manufacturer where they were producing clothing and found they had three mannequins they used for sizing. A big mannequin, a skinny one, and an in-between. So Sarah asked something like, “Well where…

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Worker Uniforms are Like Socialized Medicine

Let’s say we have two executives in a board room debating about whether or not the company should make the employees buy their own uniforms. Our hypothetical character named Jim likes this idea and says “By having employees buy their own uniforms we can clearly point to X dollars in savings against our bottom line. Other companies that do this don’t see much pushback from employees.” So another executive I’ll call Susan replies, “I think this policy will ultimately harm our bottom line. Employees may feel ripped off, like we’re…

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Deliberately Shockingly Immoral

One day in seventh grade I peed in a urinal and someone I’ll call Miles came up behind me and jump-kicked me as his friends looked on and laughed. I fell on the floor and peed on myself and they all just laughed and called me a loser. A couple minutes later I had picked myself up and pulled up my pants. I was so angry I wasn’t thinking or behaving rationally or thinking about consequences. I ran out of the bathroom and found Miles halfway down the hallway, standing…

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Snakes on a Plane 2: Bears on a Cruise Ship

Snakes on a Plane was made in 2006, 14 years ago. For some reason we still don’t have a sequel. We have Fuller House on Netflix but no Snakes on a Plane 2. This is a serious problem requiring a creative solution. I decided it was my duty to suggest a few ideas to turn this cinematic masterpiece into a franchise. Ideas include: Ants in a Car, Scorpions on a Bus, Hornets on a Train, Spiders in a Hot Air Balloon, Bats on a Submarine, and Honey Badgers on the…

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Mr. Spock, Bill Hicks, and the Guy Who Gave Us a Tow

It sounds cliché, but one of the most meaningful things I ever saw on television as a child was The Wrath of Kahn where Spock gave his life for the Enterprise and said, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” This made perfect logical sense, but emotionally it didn’t truly sink in until much later. In 1996, Tool released the album Ænima, which I listened to almost daily through my junior and senior years in high school. The album features comedian Bill Hicks…

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My Red Cross New Orleans Trip

When the coronavirus lockdown started I quickly became desperate to get out of the house and do something, so I volunteered for The Red Cross. It took six months and a whole lot of back and forth but I finally got set up to deploy to a disaster area. So for the end of October they sent me to New Orleans to help with the shelters after hurricane Delta (while they were still recovering from hurricane Laura). I don’t normally have the time to write journal type entries but I…

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A Really Gross Video of Joe Biden

Someone in my facebook feed posted this video and I felt it required its own post. It’s a collection of clips of Biden getting really touchy with some women and young girls. It’s pretty gross and makes Biden look like a pedophile. I’ll post it at the bottom. This is disgusting behavior and I’m not defending Biden. I’ll get to him later. But the fact that someone made this into a music video speaks volumes. I’ve seen Trump supporters express great humor at this. This reinforces my theory that many…

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22 True Stories of non-consent

I’ll start with a trigger warning. This is a rapid-fire series of true stories from my life, each of which made me think in some way about consent. I may be a white male from an upper-middle class family but I’ve still seen some shit. Consider yourself warned. I think all humans face enough non-consensual situations to fill a book, so we have to pick and choose which ones will be significant. These are the ones I chose. You can jump around if you feel like it since most of…

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I Committed a Hate-Crime. Here’s How it Happened.

I’m finally telling this story after all these years because I have been seeing a lot of Trump supporters and apologists who believe that the epidemic of hate crimes against minorities right now is mostly invented. What people often don’t understand is how hate crimes actually function and how the victims are just as likely to hide the incident as the perpetrators. This makes them very easy for conservatives to deny and ignore. But these things do happen. They can happen to anyone and they can be committed by anyone.…

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