Did I Just Make The Hardest Starwars Shirt Of All Time???

shoutout to my best buddy in highschool who once told me "you speak like how tumblr users write their textposts" and i was mortified for a second but then realization hit me and i rebutted with "wait how do YOU know how tumblr users write their textposts???" and we were both like

This list includes doctors in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe!

Even if you're not the target demographic, please share for any of your friends who may be.

And if you or someone you know would like to be added to the list, there's a place for that!

Travel Reimbursements

Overly draconian/miserly policies for funding/reimbursement of things like work travel or business purchases in gov and institutions is not be jerks.

It's performative.

To demonstrate to others, particularly working class and conservatives, that their taxes and donations are not going to fund frivolous things or being used by employees to benefit themselves. The real enrichment and benefiting is done by the rich/powerful people who make those rules and piously follow them while milking the system for contracts, kick backs, and pet projects.

It doesn't hurt them to pay a few dozen or a few hundred extra dollars here and there for business travel. The rest of us down here at the wage slave level are hurting and 50-100 bucks a day means so little to the rich, but so much to us. It means so much to me if I'm paying for my own meals or uber rides & tipping waitstaff out of my pocket.

Most of the rich travel at the per deim level anyway and could be making a little bit of spending money if they knew how to live like we do. And really, I don't care if some wage slave gets in on that action with their own job and makes an extra 50-100 bucks a day traveling for work. It sounds glamorous, but if you have a real life, it sucks. And if it doesn't suck, well, at least you have that going for you.

It means so much to me if I bring home an extra $200 for mileage. Why would we begrudge that to each other? It costs our masters practically nothing and we are so angry if another wage slave gets a little extra pocket money but don't lose our shit at the raping and pillaging the rich do to us every single day.

And it's because they are assholes and hope you will spend more of your own hard-earned money instead of using the piles of cash they keep around to wipe their asses with.

Recognizing propaganda and reminding yourself why it is BS does a huge amount to reduce the effectiveness of propaganda.

But, let the reader be aware, this does not make propaganda ineffective. It still works. It just takes longer. Some people fight it better than others. But for the average [White] American, the time we are 40 or so, we internalize too much of it find ourselves falling asleep into the American Dream and identifying with White upper middle class suburbia, status quo, the cops, American Empire, Capitalism, and billionaires.

A really good hamburger could save America.

There are a ton of foods that taste so much better and are so much more satisfying and pleasing to me in every way.

But nothing hits like a good burger. Every American needs a 5 guys within easy errands distance.

I think that burgers taste like America ought to be. Burgers taste like freedom and liberty. And I think that a good, juicy fresh burger cook out could save America.

We can have an app to match up members of opposing factions for a BBQ of well made hamburgers.

# BBQforAmerica

Sit down and talk about your favorite burgers and burger joints. Compare recipes and hints. Crack some cold ones and tell some stories. Heal America 2 families at a time. And those nice normal weird families might have friends for life. At the very least they will tell everyone they know about the nice loving normal and weird family and all the chisme. It will humanize each other. Eating a good burger with someone else can bond Americans for life.

Burgers could heal America.

Followers of the mother goddess Cybele were famous for whipping themselves into religious ecstasies. Modern historians love to use the word “orgiastic” to describe her worshippers and their rituals.

One of the stories associated with Cybele is that of Attis, a shepherd whose love for Cybele was so great that he castrated himself under a pine tree in a fit of religious enthusiasm and died. Many of the rituals associated with Cybele attempted to recapture both the intensity of Attis’ devotion and the bloodiness of his act.

All this struck the normally staid Romans as a bit too, well, eastern. They tended to look down on the Persians, Egyptians, and so forth as too emotional, too effeminate, and too undisciplined.

Powerful Romans worked to mainstream Cybele, turning her from a wild mother of nature into a placid Roman matriarch. Cybele was incorporated into less intense new rituals — games, animal sacrifices, that sort of thing — orchestrated by powerful Romans; her priests were not invited to these events. The wild rites associated with her seem to have faded away over time.

Augustus, the first emperor of Rome, was especially interested in using Cybele. Though he had overthrown the Roman Republic, he positioned himself as a traditionalist, someone who would bring back “traditional” Roman values. In doing so, he promoted a vision of Cybele as the “Magna Mater” — the great mother of Rome. She was now portrayed as a virtuous Roman matriarch, often without her lions:

Here’s another Roman depiction from around the same time, which attempts to incorporate all of the symbolism associated with Cybele. We have the lion, which signifies her power over nature; a cornucopia, symbolizing her role in providing abundant harvests; and her crown, representing her role in protecting Rome’s cities.

{WHF} {Ko-Fi} {Medium}

Medium

The Strange Journey of a Blood-Soaked Mother Goddess

Cybele’s transformation from wild mountain mother to Roman matriarch

Email to my first year students about the career assessment the university forced on them:

A little over half of you have not taken the assessment yet and you are making the presenter on Monday nervous. Please finish your SII Assessment before the Monday class so you can have it to look at during the class.

To help you find it: on 1/10/24 the link to the Strong Interest Inventory was emailed to all [redacted] students with the subject "SII Assessment,”  sent by [redacted].

A note on the results you will get:

These results tell you about yourself now. You are not carved in stone and you will not be the same person (at least in several important ways) as you are today. The career you choose, the work you do, and the life you live will all change you and you will change and adapt to live and thrive in those places as best you can. In some places, your personality will still be stressed no matter how much you adapt. There are parts of you that won't change. The person I became in the past few years to do life in the way I do today is not the same person I was when I was happily chasing mosquitoes around and helping run our restaurant back in early 2000's. Or the person I had to be to thrive in a research lab a few years ago.

The main point is that this assessment tells you about yourself now, but not who you will become or what kind of job you must work to be happy and fulfilled. 

You will adapt, improvise, and overcome. Use the assessment to learn about yourself. Maybe you do want some career ideas. Maybe you just want to see which directions you want to grow in based on what you already know you want to do. You realize you don't spring forth from your mother's womb ready to be a nurse, doctor, or research scientist. Or father, mother, spouse, or whatever. You suck at those things in the beginning and learn to do them better. And your personality grows and changes to meet your new challenge.

Our ability to adapt and find unexpected solutions are the keys to human success. (along with being highly social and always having community/help)

If you have dreams and desires that don't line up with what the assessment says, or life goes sideways on you and you end up driving a taxi, understand that for most situations you will change and adapt and learn to become amazing and happy in that new situation. Even if it has a rough beginning.

So take it all with a grain of salt and treat it as a tool, not an oracle.

Peace,

Yours Truly