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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • My parents took me to see doctors, who told them it was just growing pains and suggested I exercise more to lose weight. I saw three specialists and had a bunch of xrays before anyone noticed the shady spots on my cartilage. Osteochondritis Dissecans occurs in 15-30 people out of 100,000, and most of the primary care doctors I’ve had in my life had never heard of it.

    I can’t blame my parents for that. I can blame them for a lot of things, but they did their best.








  • Amendment 1 would have made it easier to form “specialty courts” that have jurisdiction outside of their parish.

    Amendment 2 would have lowered the maximum state tax rate and made it harder to raise taxes. It also would have moved money from the state savings to the general fund where it would be easier for the current administration to spend it. It also would have weakened property tax protections for non-profits and churches.

    Amendment 3 would have made it easier to put juvenile defendants on trial as adults and send them to adult prison. Juvenile detention is expensive, while adult prisons are profitable business because slave labor and atrocious living conditions.

    Amendment 4 would have made it easier to fill vacant court seats, especially on the State Supreme Court.

    All four of these are horrifying power grabs that you see at the beginning of a fascist coup.



  • Practically every single major pop music writer has faced a legal challenge. The more successful a song, the more people come out of the woodwork to cash in.

    There are no new notes, no new chord progressions, no new rhythms, at least not in the mainstream. People love songs that sound vaguely like something else they already know, because those melodies and rhythms are associated with emotions already. So popular artists are constantly trying to make new songs that sound like songs people already like.

    This is not a new phenomenon, and it’s why music trends all seem to congeal around a singularity until people get sick of it. It happens in all genres, even experimental music like jazz, dubstep, and screamo, where people try to push the limits of taste and art. Eventually patterns emerge and find the repeating cycle of success, saturation, and surfeit.

    And sometimes that works out for lawyers who want to get paid.


  • I always tell my kids, you can try your best and still fail. Sometimes you will succeed without any effort at all. Luck will affect the outcome of anything you do.

    But you have to be ready for the luck. You have to work hard to be in a position to take advantage. Hard work can mitigate your failures, and any effort you put into doing your best is never wasted because you’re trying to be the best version of yourself.

    That’s why you try. Not because you might win and get wealth and fame and glory. You try because you want to be the person who tries.

    See also, honesty, kindness, generosity, forgiveness. These are not things we do to be rewarded. The universe (not to mention other people) is going to let you down more often than not. You should still be honest and kind and generous and forgiving and hardworking because that’s the person you want to be.


  • Conservativism, in all forms, is not a real ideology. It’s narcissism. A conservative will redefine conservative values based on their own identity.

    So the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” idiot is lying to themselves about who they are. They want fiscal policies that benefit themselves, and they don’t want to be labelled a bigot, but they are fine with bigots in office as long as they get the fiscal policies that benefit themselves.

    Ask them what they mean by “fiscal conservative,” and they will probably vaguely gesture and say “lower taxes.” What they mean is “lower taxes for me.” Fiscal conservatives still want to spend government money on programs they like. They want boondoggles in their backyard, earmarks and pork barrel projects, and social safety nets as long as they are the recipient (Medicare, Social Security, Veteran benefits, etc.)

    They want to frame it as responsible restraint. Pull funding from programs they don’t understand, like scientific research, or don’t like, like foreign aid (except of course if strong ties to their home country).

    And when they say lower taxes, when pressed, they will describe how their property tax or income tax or capital gains tax or death tax is really bad “for the economy.” They want good schools and roads and infrastructure, but they want someone else to pay for it.

    Calling themselves conservative gives them license to be as selfish as they want to be without having to admit that they don’t actually have any values.