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Every school/mass shooting in the US brings about a flood of social media posts calling for gun control. And those, in turn, are followed by an entire deluge of responses which attempt to show that mass shootings are not caused by "people who shoot guns", but anything and everything else they hate. Here are some of my responses to the responses...
I think the way to deal with most societal problems is personal responsibility. If you just keep yelling "personal responsibility!" at people, you will never have to look for or understand the causes and solutions for problems that you've never had to face, and that makes the world a whole lot simpler to understand.
First, a disclaimer: I'm not a white guy trying to "explain racism" to the general public; I'm a white guy trying to explain racism to people like me, or at least people like I used to be: on-paper extremely anti-racist, but… missing some key facts. I know many people like that. I went to highschool with them. I was one of them. I still see them on Facebook. Some are in my family. (If you are not…
Back in the early 90s my dad brought home some "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do) pamphlets to put around the house. Even though I was still a Christian at the time, I thought it was a bit silly. It all seemed to be focused on things like whether someone said a swear word or showed a bra on TV, and I thought probably Jesus had better things to worry about. In the years after, I slowly lost my religion……
Talking about personal mental health issues is rarely a pleasant thing to do. Whether you talk about depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, or any other non-visible condition, you'll inevitably run into comments telling you it's not unusual, and "everyboy feels that way from time to time". Bonus points if they give well-meaning but unhelpful advice. Extra bonus points if they give condescending unhelpful…
I often recommend F-Droid to my Android-using friends. F-Droid is an alternative app store which contains only Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It's great because the apps are almost all not evil. Did you know that a flashlight app doesn't need access to your contacts, location, and pictures? Did you know that every app doesn't need to serve you ads?
You see it every year: when Pride month/day/parade comes around, some (presumably straight) people will ask loudly "Why is there no straight pride day?!"
Lately we've seem to hit critical mass on the transgender issue. As usual, the usual factions have aligned themselves with the usual sides, and not looked back. Unfortunately, even among people who, after a fashion, support transgender individuals, there are a number of problems. In the long and proud tradition of white straight cis men explaining things about persecuted minorities, I am here…
Columbus was a product of his times...
Download the app. Explore the source .
"Cultural appropriation" is a controversial topic [Citation needed] . It's one of those topics that cause many people to roll their eyes, and many others (on both sides) to lose their goddamned minds. But, there are (at least) two kinds of cultural appropriation: a silly one and a useful one.
A few weeks ago I spoke with a mom at a playground. She mentioned that our library does a toddler storytime on Mondays. So the next Monday, when I checked the library schedule and saw nothing about it, I was confused. A quick call confirmed that they weren't doing it this week, or all summer: school is out, so most of the events are geared towards older kids now.
Recently I had a revelation. My wife was doing a pharmacy internship for a month at a downtown hospital. Because it's downtown, parking is tight, so most of the hospital staff is required to park at a remote parking garage and take a 20 minute shuttle ride to the hospital proper (I assume surgeons and high-ranking doctors are exempt from riding with the commoners). However, my wife gets terrible…
I stumbled across the list Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail and thought "I've not written about atheism for a while! Why not?!"
I recently realized that I had been doing a science experiment! Ok, I haven't recorded any data, and there are no controls, but work with me here. The experiment is on people's expectations of gender essentialism. What's gender essentialism? Gender essentialism is the belief that certain behavioral traits are gender-specific: Men like sports, steak, beer, and fighting. Women like shopping, salads,…
I have a little story. Once upon a time, I quit my job so my wife could go to pharmacy school and I could be at home with my daughter. We'd live off our ample savings, but quitting my job meant losing our insurance, and we went without for several years. Then I began to get nervous , and found a cheap "disaster plan": it had a highish deductible, but everything after that was covered at 100%, so…
My little family had a bit of a bummer of a March this year.
I've now published several Android apps on FDroid . I released them all as opensource apps under the GPLv3. That means other people can see my source code, modify it, and re-release it, or do most anything else.
Doda The Exploda is a silly pseudo-pun I came up with, which I then turned in to a simple "hidden objects" game for Android.
LaunchTime is an alternative home/homescreen/launcher for Android devices. Its main feature is a side menu used to organize your apps into common-sense and configurable categories. It also features widgets, text search for apps, a QuickBar, links/shortcuts, unread badges, icon packs, themes, recent apps list, and portrait and landscape support.
A simple educational practice game for kids and adults.
I wrote another mobile app. I wrote it for several reasons:
A simple (and somewhat inaccurate) VU-style audio meter.
In the same vein as my recent articles , I want to comment on a meme I've seen shared numerous times: It chastises those who think people with talent have talent.
The tortoise and the hare had a second race, and this time the hare slept 2 seconds less and won.
When I was 17 or 18, I drove my older brother's 1979 Sunbird home one time. That doesn't sound that cool, but he (personally) had crammed a 400 small block in there. It was the kind of car that put out 100 decibels of low-pitched BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB when you just idled down the street barely touching the gas. For teenage-me, it was awesome. I was also fascinated by loud motorcycles and…
"Columbus was a product of his times. Sure he did some terrible things like have thousands of native Americans killed, raped, mutilated, and enslaved, but slavery was the norm then! The Mayans and Aztecs did the same things! Why single Columbus out as a bad guy?"
Here is a shirt I bought for my daughter a few years ago. I picked it up at Goodwill. When I saw it, I said (silently to myself), "Hey, my daughter likes The Incredibles , and she wears clothing, so this is a win-win!" Now, my giant, almost-2-year-old son wears it. But it wasn’t until last week that my wife and I saw something strange about it.
Monopoly. It's a game. Well, it's a game in the same sense that E. coli is a probiotic. And neither is a good way to spend an evening. However, Monopoly is, at the beginning, both egalitarian and capitalistic: every player has the same random chance of hitting it big. It's hopeful, almost, even if it's so slow it makes you wish you had E. coli instead.
Excerpt From "The Trump that got Thunk"
Fun fact: "Weight Watchers" and "Chubby Chasers" are different organizations, and have very different meetings.
It's the biggest threat our nation has faced in decades. You probably heard the news if you've been near any website lately: People are driving in the left lane, and it's terrible! They're not only driving in the left lane: they're driving slower than you want them to! <dramatic orchestra hit: bum bum BUUUUM!>
It's been slowly dawning on me that I have no idea why I read news articles. I'm not going to do anything with the information I receive. I mean, I've known who I am (not) going to vote for the last year, or the last decade if I'm thinking generically. Knowing the exact phrasing of whatever crazy thing Trump just said is not going to push me one way or another.
In a recent Facebook post I compared Pokemon Go to Fantasy football: I feel that Pokemon Go is a bad thing: Instead of chasing made-up animals, people would be better off putting together the perfect imaginary football team, or explaining to their Facebook friends exactly how their non-favorite candidate will destroy the world. I was just a one-off, good-natured joke aimed at those who think their…
I made a new web application. It's a simple drum looper with sounds I extracted from Hydrogen drum machine. Check out Drummy In The Tummy ! (It's a dumb name, I know.)
Tired of hunks of your body falling off? Don't go to the doctor! Our diligent researchers scoured the web for a few minutes and put together a list of essential oils you can probably use to cure up your leprosy real fast.
"So, you only believe in what you can see, hear, or touch?" It is a (somewhat derisive) phrase you might come across every now and again if you don't believe in the supernatural. It's inevitably followed up with something about believing in love, freedom, or subatomic particles. After all, the reasoning goes, if you don't believe in the supernatural because you can't see it, how can you believe in…
Researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered that no common food ingredient is actually a deadly poison, even white flour, sugar, or those with chemical-sounding names. This comes as shocking news to many people, who had assumed most foods were, in fact, life-threatening substances.
I'm not one to make fun of the overweight and obese (being a member of the group and all), but… while I try to avoid mere cosmetic judging, I think pointing out negative consequences of obesity is sometimes OK. So, that's what I'm here today to do: talk about problem obesity… Your website is just too fat.
A long time ago, in some class I don't remember anything else about, and in an unknown grade level, I remember the teacher going over the topic of logical fallacies. From that day, I remember mostly the ones with funny names: the "bandwagon fallacy" (everyone believes it, so it must be true!), the "red herring fallacy" (bringing in unrelated), the "ad hominem fallacy" (it's wrong because you're…
No, I'm not talking about Ray Stevens.
"Oh, dear, we are all like that. Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all - the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren't; one sect knows…
Introduction to the Jungle.
Isn't it funny how guys hate to be perceived as gay, even for a second? Anything associated with gayness or femininity is instantly discarded. They won't hug or touch hands. They're even afraid to express emotions or cry! Men are so insecure in their masculinity! LOL!
Because, apparently, many state legislators are doubling down on proving how Christ-like they are by refusing to associate with those they think of as sinners , I thought I push the thing I wrote a few years ago back to my front page: Yell "FREEDOM!!" a little louder…