Loftwings and Demons

Hating the French for their revolution(s): Wrong

Hating the French for what they did to the Algerians (and so many others): Correct

Had a dream that I was with some people and we were fleeing pursuit in a car. The person driving was someone we knew in the dream but who doesn't exist in real life. In the dream she also did a lot of planning for how to avoid being found. We all played board games with each other when we found places to hide for a while. It was definitely a stress dream but also one of the more interesting dreams I've had in a while.

I used to envy other animals and what I perceived as their trouble-free lives, but becoming vegan really changed my perspective on that. I realized that however powerless I am to affect the world around me, that would be many orders of magnitudes magnified if I were any other animal on Earth. At least as a human, I have more power to make use of the benefits of a human civilization built to benefit humans and to impact its direction, even if that power is still small. Humans certainly do not have equal power in this regard, but we do have power greater than that of other animals, who have no voice and no significant standing in our society. And in the case of domestic animals, being property can never be a significant standing regardless of one's quality of life, and means one's fortunes are tied entirely to the fortunes and whims of an owner whose motives are unknowable and very possibly in conflict with their own desires and needs.

And this is why I'm now glad I'm human and not any other animal. Other animals must deal with natural disasters, attacks by humans, subjugation, war, famine, and disease just as we do, but do not have access to the same tools for dealing with that that we do. It's the same reason why I prefer to be an adult than a child--because I have greater power and autonomy as an adult than I did as a child. The added responsibilities are a small price to pay.

There's something I find very soothing about math, even when it frustrates me. I think it's just that it's a discipline where logic isn't only valued, it's required. It's not like a debate, where people regularly succeed through sophistry and lies. If you speak a mistruth to the universe in its own language, no matter how eloquent or how confident or how much you believe that lie, it will still tell you 'no'. You cannot move it to believe an untruth, no matter how passionately spoken.

While I will look at a lot of different recipes for inspiration, I think it's important to be careful about substitutions. A lot of times I've seen a recipe online where someone asks if they can substitute one or more of the core ingredients.

Now usually they can, but at that point what they should be doing is looking for a different recipe altogether. Because different foods prepare and cook differently. So it's a lot better to use a recipe that actually uses the ingredient they want to sub. If they cannot find such a recipe on the internet, that probably means that either 1) they need a more thorough search technique or 2) that's really not a suitable substitution and they should reconsider how they plan to adapt the original recipe.

For example, since I am a vegan who also needs to eat gluten free, I often cannot use the conventional recipe for a food. What I don't do is expect is to be able to make a simple substitution into a recipe where the original centers meat and wheat. No. Instead I find a recipe by someone who has already made the necessary substitutions. Preferably more than one so I can get a better idea of what's likely to work (since some people...make bad recipes).

I think it's actually not true that celebrities and the powerful are somehow always changing for the better but the average person who I have a grudge against is forever tainted and evil. Even if I'm not willing to forgive someone for what they've done to me, I acknowledge their capacity to change for the better, and I hope they will so they won't hurt other people like they did me. And I think ordinary people are actually more likely to improve themselves than people who expect to have a massive following of adoring fans/syncophants regardless of what they say or do. Somehow I just think that enormous amounts of unconditional adoration just tends to make people worse, actually.

I think a lot of times people mistake support of the status quo for practicality when there are many times these things couldn't be more different.

And if we're talking about the geopolitical situation of the world today, this is absolutely the case. The current state of affairs is entirely unsustainable. Continuation of current trends ensures an inevitable collapse. Even if we just look at the situation with climate change alone, we can see this.

Rapid change is inevitable and unpreventable. The best way to find both hope and practical answers lies not in digging our heads in the sand and ignoring that fact, but in accepting the necessity of change and helping to move that change in a more positive direction. Each of our contributions individually may be small, but together they can add up to more than the sum of their parts.

Cooking can be hard work, but it can also be aromatherapy.

The Sith are kind of inherently edgy, but that doesn't mean that all the Sith are edgy to the same degree. So, time to rate them by how much they exemplify the Sith trait of edginess. For this I will be using my very scientific Edge Factor metric. So let's get started:

Darth Sidious: 6/10. Not a maximally edgelord aesthetic. Spends much of his life pretending to be an inoccuous good guy, which is diabolical but not edgy. Also by the time his aesthetic becomes more edgy, he's well established as an authority figure, which is not a particularly edgy role. Edgelords are more about tragic rebellion than ruling: so in this respect Sidious is a victim of his own success. All of *his* rebellions were successful, which *is* tragic, but not for him.

Darth Tyrannus: 4/10. Look, cut him some slack, he's not used to this Sith stuff. Still, he does have that tragic rebellion thing going for him re: the Jedi and Yoda.

Darth Plagueis: 5/10. Leave him alone, he just wants to do his evil science. Scalpels are edgy, right? Anyway surely he can just delegate the edginess to his apprentice? He wants to get back to his experiments. Little too much authority for the necessary rebelliousness, and takes *forever* to rebel against Tenebrous, though he does try to (unsuccessfully) end the rule of two.

Darth Maul: 10/10. Someone understood the assignment. Classy all black attire. Single earring. Double-bladed lightsaber. Rebels against Sidious multiple times, but never vanquishes him. Dies tragically trying to get revenge. Maximum edge.

Darth Vader: 8/10. Solid edge aesthetic and history of tragic rebellion, but gets points deducted for position of authority in the Empire.

Darth Bane: 8/10. A little too successful so gets a deduction for that, but the aesthetic and rebellion are *off the charts*. Guy rebelled against his father, the Jedi, *and* the Sith. Not to mention the face tattoos and invincibility beetles have incredible edge energy.

Darth Zannah: 8/10. Again, too successful for maximum edge, but solid aesthetic with the face tattoos, plenty of rebellion, and a tragic willingness to sacrifice her closest relative for her ambitions all makes her Edge Factor competitive.

It's a lot better to argue against opposing positions by steelmanning them than by strawmanning them. This can enable you to not only more effectively argue against an opposing position, but to better understand your own position, as it will call to mind many nuances that are often overlooked for the sake of simplicity. It is however also easy to think an argument isn't being strawmanned if you're using a real argument.

But the truth of the matter is, most of us make bad arguments all the time. I don't think most of the arguments that I or anyone else make on an average day would stand up to scrutiny if properly and rigorously analyzed. I think the truth is that we (many times quite understandably) simply choose to devote our brainpower to other matters. Making a good argument is hard--making a good argument compelling doubly so. Making bad but compelling arguments can often be more effective than making good ones, which further undercuts the motivation for people to make good arguments.

My point is that even arguments people are legitimately making can be selected in a way so as to strawman that position, and in fact this is the easiest way to select arguments to refute. Don't mistake sincerity for quality.