⛧ First Church of Hypocrisy, Blasphemy, and Self-Righteousness ⛧

On the subject of aerodynamic spaceships: I love the Borg cube ships. They know there's no air in space, they don't need aerodynamics. If they did, they could easily replicate the best aerodynamic forms, but no. No air in space, so we make our ships these big honking cubes. Respect.

The only dumb thing about them is the spherical Borg ships they keep inside the cubes. Looks cool, but realistically the Borg wouldn't do that. They're all about practicality and efficiency. It's much easier to fit smaller cubes into the big cube, that's what they would do. Either that or they'd make their ships like Rubik's cubes, with the various squares able to break off so one big cube could become many smaller cube vessels. Be harder to fight a bunch of smaller cube ships than a single large cube ship.

Honestly my only problem with the Borg is they don't value consent. If they were a hive mind consisting of only volunteers and never forcibly assimilated anyone, never hurt other civilizations except in self defense, they'd be the coolest and best civilization in the whole Trek storyverse, IMHO. Honestly, there's a lot of times I would volunteer to be part of a hive mind and get away from the suffering inherent in being an individual.

To my mind, a true Mandela Effect isn't a simple thing like people misspelling Berenstain Bears or getting Fruit Loops and Froot Loops mixed up. Going back to the original event that started the Mandela Effect as a meme: some people were surprised to be getting recent news of Nelson Mandela while he was free and apparently the President of South Africa -- nay, not merely surprised but SHOCKED because they remembered him dying in prison. This wasn't a simple "He's still alive?" thing like happens to me a lot. No, they specifically remembered him dying in prison. Many of them also remembered a televised funeral for him after he died in prison. So when they later saw he was alive, free, and the President of a country, that wasn't just "Oh they dropped off the radar so I assumed they'd died," that was more like "BUT I ATTENDED HIS FUNERAL!!!"

Like, it's still explainable as "human memory is absolutely ridiculous and shouldn't be trusted for anything," but like... the whole reason people started associating the Mandela Effect with the possibility of going full Worf Son of Mogh through the multiverse is because it's one thing to accept that "oh I was just misspelling that thing" or "oh I guess they were alive after all" after assuming for no real reason that someone was dead... it's another thing entirely to accept that your brain not only decided someone was dead but also fabricated a false memory of an entire news cycle and televised funeral about someone's death and then completely missing for years the very real news about him being freed from prison and made President of an entire country.

THAT is a Mandela Effect. Not "oh this brand wasn't named what I thought it was" or "that brand's logo isn't how I remembered it." No, a Mandela Effect is when your brain for whatever reason invents a false memory so specific and elaborate that you'd sooner believe you're going The OA through alternate universes than admit your brain is capable of bullshitting itself so hard.

Another good example is the Bible quote about the lion laying down with the lamb: I've seen even hard-core Bible scholars go apeshit about the fact that that quote isn't in the Bible, at least not in that form. The real quote is "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them." Though this one admittedly is borderline, only making it as a Mandela Effect because so many people including people who study the Bible for a living have misremembered the quote so wildly.

My point is, true Mandela Effects are abso-fucking-lutely bizarre, so fricking wild that even people who know how horrible human memory is should be like "Okay yeah that's creepy as fuck." I have over the years come across more than a few Mandela Effect instances that made even me go "Oh there's no WAY human memory is THAT bad! Maybe there's something to this 'lost in the multiverse' idea after all."

On that note, while bizarre specificity is a good sign of a true Mandela Effect, the BEST Mandela Effects not only have bizarre specificity but also have multiple people around the country or around the world independently remembering the exact same oddly specific false memories. It's one thing for lots of people to remember Nelson Mandela having died years before he did for real, it's another thing entirely for hundreds or thousands of people around the world to specifically remember weeks of news coverage of his death in prison, and for all of them to remember watching his funeral on TV, only for him to turn up alive, free, and the leader of the very nation that had imprisoned him to begin with. That is bizarrely specific to start with, and then on top of that, so very many people remembering the same oddly specific false memory? It truly does boggle the mind.

(There are better examples I'm sure, but I can't recall any at the moment.)

There have been a lot of things that have happened over the years since Robert Anton Wilson died that I would have loved to see his perspective on, and the Mandela Effect is one of those things, because it ties in so well with his philosophy about how our brains create their own reality tunnels, but the coincidences of the same complex and oddly specific memories being generated independently by so many different people around the world would fascinate him, as would the conspiracy theory angle.

About Scooby Doo:

1. It's not actually a crime to scare people off your own property. So many of the Scooby Doo "villains" weren't doing anything wrong at all, and are in fact victims of harassment by these weird kids and their talking dog.

2. Talking dogs must be pretty common in that world, as nobody seems to find Scooby Doo remarkable.

3. Either that or all the kids in the mystery gang are high from Shaggy's dank weed fumes and are having a shared hallucination about his dog being able to talk. Possibly all their adventures are the result of someone cutting the pot with LSD.

4. I think Shaggy and Fred are both gay and are an item. And Velma and Daphne are totally boinking as well.

5. Scratch that. I think, given the "free love" vibe going on in the show, that the Mystery Gang are a polycule. (With, I hope, the exception of Scooby.)

Also, today I discovered that Shaggy's last name is Rogers. Shaggy Rogers. SHAGgy ROGERS. His name basically means Fucky Fucker in British slang.

Occasionally I am known to dispense nuggets of wisdom, even if unintentionally. This is something I sent to someone on FB who was complaining about their family hating them:

Family are like neighbors; sometimes the only thing you have in common with either is proximity. And like neighbors, you don't have to give a shit about family, especially if they don't give a shit about you. Go out into the world and find a new family, like I did, even if you have to assemble it one person at a time. The family you choose is always superior to the one that sheer dumb luck strapped you with, even if you got lucky enough to have amazing blood family.

Furthermore, if your blood family doesn't give a shit about you, that says more about them than it does about you. It says their taste in humans sucks ass, which means their opinion of you is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle. And if it's perfectly acceptable to divorce a spouse because they're a bad fit for you, it should be at least equally acceptable to "divorce" your blood family for the same kinds of reasons. Anyone who tries to tell you that you owe your family something because your parents happened to have the spunk and egg that made you, and did the bare minimum of feeding and clothing and sheltering their kid, or y'all grew up together... well if they tell you your bio-family deserves your respect or whatever for any of that, you can rest assured that those people don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. You didn't ask them to do any of that. They made their choice to have a kid, and however much or little they did for you after that is their choice and not yours. If a relationship is a bad fit, it's a bad fit, and ending that relationship should never be shamed for any reason.

TL;DR anybody who doesn't like you for everything you are, feel free to tell them to fuck off, and go find somebody who *does* like you for everything you are. You don't owe them shit. But you owe it to yourself to cut toxic people out of your life.

The other day, there was this post I saw on Tumblr that was talking about some service that will bait "your man" with a "catfish" to see if he's cheating. I read it to understand it, and then scrolled by like "Ooookayyyy..." But today I thought about it again, because it bugged me. My initial response to it today was "Boy it would be funny to see that backfire on somebody. He gets the catfish and he's like 'Who is this? How did you get this number?' She keeps trying to bait him, and he's like 'I don't have time for this BS' and blocks the number."

But then I started to think about why the post bothered me so much, and I figured it out. First, that the whole thing of trying to out a cheater, that whole culture of jealousy and doing all kinds of privacy-invading shit to try to out a cheater, just struck me as creepy and wrong somehow. I wasn't sure why, at first, but now I know why: because if a man were doing that shit, most of my fellow feminists would be calling him out on that bullshit, calling him out as a stalker or an abuser or something (not sure the right term). But because it's women doing it, oh suddenly it's crickets all around.

Now I'm not saying the two things are equal in their wrongness, no. Men have a lot of social power and privilege that means when they do that kind of jealous boyfriend thing, most of society supports them, to a point. It's viewed as a sign that he cares, that he's protective, when in fact he's anything but. And the way men and women express jealousy (perhaps even how they *feel* jealousy, but that's speculation) is very different, generally. In our culture, female jealousy tends to be based out of insecurity, fear of how they'll manage without their partner, and a lot of times out of fear that their partner either doesn't love them or doesn't respect them. So their expression of their jealousy expresses these feelings, and then can and often does lead to stuff like trying to out a cheater, and if the suspect is not, in fact, a cheater... well, that can damage a relationship.

Men, on the other hand, tend to express jealousy in a very territorial manner, fighting with others over their territory. Male jealousy (in the West, anyway) also tends to be more violent towards women because of how they're taught to objectify women. Women are their property, and if that property refuses to cooperate, they can get rid of that property, one way or another (or so they tend to feel).

So no, not the same in their wrongness at all, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be called out just because the person doing it is a woman. Feminism means equality of the sexes, and therefore posessive behavior needs to be called out and disparaged regardless of who's doing it.

But at a more fundamental level, what bothered me about the post was that I just don't 'get' jealousy. I've posted before, I think, about how I just don't 'get' jealousy, mainly because I'm fairly sure I've never felt it, ever, in my life. I have felt a lot of emotions in my almost 33 years of life, but never jealousy, from what I've been able to figure out. Which I feel grateful for, because jealousy pushes people away; jealousy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And it would be a really difficult life being pansexual/bisexual (as well as polyamorous) and jealous all the time, so I feel I dodged a bullet there.

Sure, I've felt envy here and there, but envy and jealousy are not the same thing. Envy is an emotion that makes you strive to achieve something; you envy someone's bike, envy makes you go out and earn money to buy your own bike. You envy someone's political power, envy helps you strive to achieve your own political power. You envy someone having a lover, it helps you strive to get your own lover. Whereas jealousy is fearful and posessive; you feel jealous of someone's bike, jealousy makes you steal their bike. You feel jealous of someone's political power, jealousy makes you tear them down or kill them. You feel jealous of someone having a lover, you try to posess their lover (or them, depending on preference). You feel jealous of a loved one talking to others, it makes you act in a way that is posessive, controlling, and hoarding---and nobody likes being the object of jealousy; and thus, jealousy and love are mutually exclusive. Jealousy may arise from a certain kind of "love" (selfish love, if you can call that love, which I don't), but when jealousy arises, it pushes love out; the two emotions cannot coexist for long.

Yes, I said it; jealousy and love are mutually exclusive emotions. Oh, it may not seem so, but it's been my observation that what a lot of people mistake as the emotion of love is actually something else, some kind of pseudo-love, and not real love. Real love is not jealous, and is not selfish. But pseudo-love is entirely selfish, and highly prone to jealousy. That whole "you complete me" or "I can't live without you" stuff is not love, that's pseudo-love. I have only ever felt real love, non-selfish love. Not saying real love is selfless, though; real love is neither selfish nor selfless.

Another point of clarification: the emotion I deem "selfish love" is not the same as occasionally being selfish in a relationship, even when that selfishness is a little excessive. Selfishness can be good in small doses, but it's toxic in larger doses, and large doses of selfishness can occur even in a relationship based out of true, non-selfish love.

Where "selfish love" differs from real love is in its most basic qualities; selfish love is a fear-based emotion. Out of fear of loneliness, one may cling to another in what they think is love, but is actually fear. And if the other person loves you back, either genuinely or also out of selfish love, the relationship will always be tenuous at best when one or more person in a relationship is feeling selfish love. Wait, let me coin a better term for selfish love: phoboeros. (Foe-boe-air-ose, from phobos meaning fear and eros meaning love).

This line of thought kind of clarifies my thoughts on polyamory versus monoamory, too. Because polyamory, by its very nature, makes phoboeros self-defeating. People who are only letting themselves feel phoboeros are not going to last long as polyamorous people, because they're just going to constantly be jealous and miserable the whole time if they try it. Of course, phoboeros is always self-defeating no matter what, but it's a lot easier to manage a relationship based in phoboeros if one is in a monoamorous relationship. Which is NOT in any way implying that all or even most mono relationships are based in phoboeros, that is not even REMOTELY what I am saying, but I have to add this little proviso because I'm sure SOME moron will read my post wrongly and make an entirely inaccurate assumption about what I'm saying. I am merely saying that polyamory does not lend itself well to phoboeros, that poly relationships based out of phoboeros will fall apart a lot more quickly than a mono relationship based in phoboeros will. Which should be a self-evident fact.

But yes, the primary thing I want people to walk away from this post with is, that we need to call out stalkery/possessive behavior in relationships regardless of the gender of the culprit, because that’s shitty behavior no matter who is doing it.

I have, in the past, reblogged things on Tumblr like "Israel versus Palestine is genocide" and "If Israel laid down their weapons, there would be peace." I naively believed this. But after talking with a very knowledgeable friend of mine, I have found that the truth is far more complex. It started when I shared those two points of view with my friend, who is in her 50s, and she told me anyone who thinks either of those things is a damn fool. She then gave me reasons why.*

When Israel was declared a country, nobody was evicted. It wasn't like the Native Americans being forced from their homes and slaughtered. It was just "this area here is now Israel" and a lot of Jewish immigrants. Perhaps it was a stupid idea, done for stupid reasons, but whatever.

Sure, there were a lot of Palestinians who left, but my friend (who is in her 50s) informed me that most of those were people leaving because they were certain that armies of their fellow Arabs were going to swoop in and drive out the Jews. So they left because of racism. And they were very surprised when that didn't happen. And among those who stayed were a lot of people who were trying to make the new situation work. Yes, there were (and may still be) Palestinians as well as Israelis trying to make it so both groups can coexist peacefully.

Yes, the Israelis have a whole army at their disposal, but the Palestinians fighting Israel are aligned with terrorists. These terrorists have lots of money and their weapons are deadly. If there's a genocide going on in Israel, it's not just Israelis dumping on Palestinians, it's both sides trying to wipe out the other, while innocent people on both sides, who just want peace, are getting caught in the middle.

So I'm going to stop reblogging either Israeli OR Palestinian propaganda from now on.

* = I even told her about the pictures that suggested that Hamas missiles are all puny and basically duds, and she said it smelled like bullshit. Hamas, like Al Quaida, are well-financed terrorist groups.

Heaven is for slaves who spend all their lives being beaten down mentally and emotionally by the demon Yahweh (AKA "God"), and wish to spend their afterlives continuing to be beaten by the demon Yahweh, though they think it's some kind of "reward." In truth, Heaven is the carrot all their lives, and then it becomes a whip to lash them.

Whereas Hell is a place for free people, who are good people without "God," go to party, fuck, or whatever the Hell else they want to do after they die, without any consequences, and without all the poor damned Yahweh slaves pooping the party.

So if someone tells you to go to Hell, or that you'll end up in Hell when you die, THANK THEM for their blessing!

Slave: "You're gonna go to Hell when you die!"
Free person: "Thank you for such a profound Blessing! May you, too, be so Blessed as to end up in Hell when you die, so you may party forever with the Lord of the Earth!"
Slave: (look of blithering confusion on their face)

It doesn't matter if you believe in Hell or Satan or any of that stuff, even! It's just hilarious to confuse the crap out of the idiot Yahweh slaves!

I felt this bit from a meme post deserved its own post.

92. Do you want to get married?
Honestly, no. I used to wonder why so many people were obsessed with gay marriage. I couldn't understand why straight people get married, even, and even though I'm pansexual, I didn't get why gay marriage was so important. But then I found out about the rights and privileges that go with marriage, and because it's a matter of gay people needing the same rights as straight people, I began to support it, even though I still - to this day - can't fathom why anyone would want to tie themselves down like that. Sure, I understand living with someone you love, done it myself in fact. But the act of marriage is such a difficult thing to go through, legally speaking, and even harder to extricate oneself from, and it implies permanence; it defies the fact of life that the only constant is change. I can understand making a non legally-binding oath to try to live together and love one another for as long as possible, even if the type of love you feel changes, and I admire those who can manage it. I just don't see the point of getting yourself tangled up in a legal mess like that, when there are no guarantees. Hell, if it's a matter of what happens to your stuff after you die, a will can take care of that without marriage.

Personally, I think non-married lovers should have at least some of the same kinds of rights as married couples, like hospital visitation rights. It seems a bit unfair, to me, to say "you have to take this humongous legal risk in order to visit your loved one in the hospital." I can understand ownership of property and money being decided, at least in part, by marriage; some of the legal tangles are a very good idea. But hospital visitation rights... friends, family, non-married loved ones, anyone special in your life should have to right to visit you in the hospital unless you specify otherwise.

My parents, by the way, are divorced. And it was a bit of a surprise, honestly, when I got the news. They had always gotten along great, as far as I could tell; but a lot had changed since I'd last lived with them. (Though they still love one another, and still meet with each other to talk; they just can't live together anymore.)

Still... my opinion of marriage is one I've had for many years before that happened, so I had that belief despite the fact my parents seemed to be in a very long and very happy marriage. Their divorce only reinforced my previous belief, that marriage is a lot of hassle for very little gain that I can see. So marriage equality is something I support even though the whole notion of marriage seems silly and outdated to me.

TL;DR = I support marriage equality even though I think marriage is an outdated and stupid concept.

I recently saw, not for the first time, a graph showing how much more advanced we would be if the Roman Empire hadn't collapsed. The graph blamed Christianity.

Now, it's no secret I don't like most modern Christian sects, but in all fairness to the early Christian religion (which was generally pretty cool until the Catholic Church set up shop), they're not entirely to blame for the downfall of the Roman Empire. In fact, they were probably the most minor factor in the whole frakking fustercluck.

See, the thing was, the Roman Empire was just doomed. Its armies were overburdened trying to keep peace internally *and* fight wars on multiple fronts, in an empire that was just too damned big for the technology involved (not to mention the fact that, while its people were diverse, it wasn't so much a melting pot as an unstable powderkeg). To try to make up for these failings, the government kept raising everyone's taxes to pay for everything needed to keep order. Which went over about as well as you might expect; worse, even.

There were more insidious problems, though, problems tracing back to its beginnings. For one, they used lead pipes for their water supply, because lead was easy to work with, and they apparently didn't know or care that lead is toxic. This can't have been doing their sanity any favors. Second, their men had this obsession with bathing. Which is alright, if you do it right, but not only were they bathing in leaded water, the idiots had this whole ritual of switching from boiling-hot water to freezing-cold water several times for some bizarre reason, which was basically killing their sperm cells and their ability to make more.

So we've got war on multiple fronts, fuck-ass high taxes with little to show for it, lead in the water, low fertility rates, bloody goddamn "games" played with slaves, angry slaves, and barbarians all around (and within) that wanted nothing more than to bring the bastards down. Compared to all that, a few persecuted Christians was no big deal.

The only way I can see how Christianity might have contributed was its obsession with morality. Because the Romans, being ignorant of anatomy and not being huge on science, misinterpreted their declining fertility rates as the anger of the gods. Whether this was Christianity's fault for putting ideas in their heads or not, I don't recall. And it may well have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I dunno. All I know is, they had a fuckton of problems and Christianity was a really small one compared to the rest.

Hmm... high taxes with little to show for it, an overextended empire eating money to maintain itself, angry enemies all around trying to bring it down, wars on multiple fronts, pollution playing havoc on fertility and health, and a strong dose of ignorance and moralizing... why does that sound so familiar? *coughcoughUnitedStatescoughcough* Gee, I have no idea at all why that's so familiar sounding. :-)

PS = Not to mention the fact that neither Rome nor Greece had any reason, what with all the slaves, to use steam power and so on for anything more than flashy toys or things to impress people at the temples. Now, if there'd been a major slave rebellion, or a plague, or something, then maybe. But I think it was a case of Rome *had* to fall, for something new to arise. Watch "Connections" starring James Burke, sometime.