I see people over and over again underestimating people and overestimating brands. Everyone said Apple was going to remain innovative and unstoppable even after the passing of Steve Jobs. People kept thinking Trump was a flash-in-the-pan candidates. It's just part...
Three Weak Words
I have always felt like "I feel like" as a phrase was disingenuous: Writing in The New York Times, Molly Worthen, an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, calls out the three words you should stop using: "I feel like ... "...
On Facts
From an After the Fact New Yorker article: Lynch thinks we are frighteningly close to this point: blind to proof, no longer able to know. After all, we’re already no longer able to agree about how to know. (See: climate change, above.) ... In England, the abolition of...
trust in a person vs trust in God
One of the interesting things that comes out of marketing Christianity as a "personal relationship with God" is people take that paradigm to mean one can trust God the way one trusts a person. When one trusts a person it is an implicit expectation that they'll...
Mental Health and Christianity
Great comment on a thread on the Ex-Christian subreddit asking why Christians are so uptight about Mental Health treatment: Because a mental illness is essentially an illness of the consciousness, which is what people probably mean when they talk about a soul. So in...
used on you
There is often a very easy explanation for the beliefs one uses to navigate this world of ours. How beliefs are used. People figure if someone is using a belief on them it must be good enough for them to use. A few hypothetical examples: Susie is a 23 year old...
truth
For many in my generation a lie is simply an incongruity between actuality and what is presented verbally. Truth then just becomes when words and ideas match up with experienced reality. Daniel Masterson is an effective dating coach but more than that he is a truth...
Sizing Someone Up
Great tool for sizing someone up. Breaks social class down to components. I'm high on the education level for having a B.S. but that's about it. This tool is great for those of us on the spectrum who may not be privy to social cues (I wasn't in high school). Of...
Discouraged Worker Article
Really good article on discouraged workers: Those silences significantly trouble me because of their ethical implications. Two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers — Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas — argued that communicative reciprocity is what...
Shaving and Socializing
I don't mind shaving. I do not have facial hair, I have wires growing out of my face. So when I shave most of the time I'm not actually shaving, I'm just playing a tug 'u war with hair. So I'm not really shaving most of the time, I'm just fighting and scraping,...