“Where men are forbidden to honour a king they honour millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.”
— C.S. Lewis
“The “drunk” hypothesis, recently elaborated by Slingerland (2021), argues that the benefits of alcohol consumption far outweigh its many harmful health (Zhao et al. 2023), reproductive (Van Heertum and Rossi 2017), and social (Klingemann and Gmel 2001) consequences. Specifically, Slingerland argues that intoxication facilities life in an unusual ecological niche to which humans have adapted − one that requires culture to thrive and survive. Whether it is tools, clothing, norms or institutions, people in all societies, even the most low-tech ones, depend on cultural technologies and innovations. But these solutions to life’s challenges are beyond the capabilities of any single individual. Instead, they require a “collective brain” and cultural transmission, which in turn cannot happen without large-scale social cooperation. And this is where the role of alcohol drinking comes in. As intoxication reduces cognitive control, it may enhance lateral thinking and lead to more creative insights (Jarosz et al. 2012), as well as more openness to bond with (Sayette et al. 2012), cooperate with and learn from others. In addition, some scholars (Katz and Voigt 1986; Smalley and Blake 2003) argue that it was primarily the desire for alcohol (not food) that motivated hunter-gatherers to begin cultivating crops, settle down, and live in large, dense groups. Getting drunk may have subsequently helped to alleviate stress (Levenson et al. 1980; Peele and Brodsky 2000) that could easily arise from this dramatic change and life in cramped, hierarchical societies. Alcohol may therefore have been essential for the rise and maintenance of human civilization.”
Sam Neill (2025): “It’s not a happy place, America, and I wasn’t happy there. I’m interested in the condition of America now. It beggars belief what’s happening there now. When you hear a slogan like Make America Great Again, it makes a sort of weird sense because America could be great again, but at community level. Not with sort of strange billionaires making weird decisions”
Parents who raise their kids on realistic content are performing a kind of soul circumcision without anesthesia, and they do it proudly. they buy the little books about sharing and recycling and how divorce is okay, sensible books, vetted books, books approved by some committee of childless phds who decided that dragons are psychologically destabilizing. and then this denuded little creature grows up and wanders out into a world that is absolutely crawling with dragons, real ones, humans who feed on humiliation, women who collect men like scalps, landlords, banks, algorithms, addictions, each one an ancient monster. and the kid has nothing, no stored narrative of the small weak thing prevailing, no memory of stones becoming bread or dead girls waking up. his parents gave him nutritious facts and he stands there starving in front of his first real giant with a stomach full of information. meanwhile some other kid whose grandmother filled him with absolute garbage, nonsense talking wolves, magic beans, boys made of wood, walks up to the same giant and something old activates in him. he knows somewhere deep in the meat of him that giants are a problem with a known solution, that has been handled before, by smaller people than him, with worse weapons
It’s been revealed that the black woman Democrats put on a pedestal for “bravely” riding a train with Patriot Front members was engaging in indecent exposure on the train moments before the photo was taken and has a lengthy arrest record.
Snake in MGS4 is OLD SNAKE, the word SOLID SNAKE minus IS (being). FOXDIE, created to kill him, mutates into a weapon that kills the world in Snake's womb. The man who saved the world becomes a threat to the world in the end. This is superimposed on the BIG BOSS.
Everyone with an Adderall prescription which is basically half the nation now acts and speaks like an escaped mental patient having a manic episode and we're supposed to accept this as a completely normal and unremarkable state of affairs, the same as taking Aspirin or something.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
Life can be enjoyed one thing at a time.
Outside, it feels like hell is falling from the sky.
People fighting.
People hating.
People lying.
People trying to take from each other.
But inside your own heart, you can still swing the sword of happiness.
My wife.
My daughter.
My friends.
One by one.
Count them.
Today, I found another small happiness.
Just one.
If people all over the world spent a little more time doing that, maybe things would be different.
Maybe that's the virus we need.
Not hatred.
Not fear.
A virus that spreads gratitude.
A virus that spreads effort.
A virus that spreads laughter.
A virus that makes people look at what they have instead of what they don't.
I still believe the world can become better.
No.
I still believe we can make it better.
Somehow.
Some way.
No matter what.
Human beings were not born to take.
We were not born to destroy.
We were born to give.
We were born to build.
That's what I believe.
A world where people wake up and remember only that.
A world where people spend more time protecting than hating.
More time building than breaking.
More time sharing than taking.
Even the powerful would be richer in such a world.
A thousand times richer.
A million times richer.
So God, if You're listening...
Please.
Let us keep counting our blessings.
One by one.
sometimes I get drunk alone in my apartment and I watch old butterbean fights and through the intoxicating power of beer I try to inhabit the mind and body of prime butterbean. How amazing it must have felt to be a big fat nasty mothafucka with ham hock hands and a head of lead
In American slang we often refer to money as “benjamins” this is a subtle reference to Benjamin Netanyahu, an American folk figure who takes all of our money
Make no mistake: The US government will socialize the immense costs of subprime AI. They will force us all to eat the losses, while the perpetrators of the biggest fraud in history abscond to private islands. Be ready, because a deliberate rug-pull is the plan.