Roll Toll
The Milky Way Galaxy as a cinnamon roll... That's the most terrifying thing.
Duckstack on the dance floor
Welcome, welcome! Congratulations on your new Duckstack! You may be a little confused1 but you needn’t worry, there are actually 5 ways to commute to your daily2 duckstack.
For example, for you more physical types, the Duckstack Bicycle trail is extremely scenic, and only a 40 minute ride from home3. There will be reliably low traffic and you’ll get in your exercise at the same time, just be sure not to go off the trail or you’ll be eaten by carnivorous plants.
For you more aquatic types4, we do have a tributary river that takes you very close to The Duckstack that sees thousands of boaters every day. So traffic will be really bad, but you won’t pay a penny for gas. Not all boats are created equal, and while there’s nothing stopping you from strapping some logs together and sailing to work, a lot of people already do that, and you wouldn’t want to be boring would you? Also sometimes a tidal wave sweeps the river of everyone so be sure to wear your seat belt.
Arial Travel is also possible for anyone who can pilot or ride passenger on a plane, hang glider, zip line, or space station. Our state of the art landing pads will catch you with minimal injury, or minimal additional injury if you opted for the jump from a space station method.
Can you walk to the Duckstack? Yes, if you have enough legs. Currently you have to have 70 or greater.
What about just driving? Yes, you can drive. If you’ve got a car nobody but the carnivorous plants are going to stop you.
A most remarkable article on Christianity giving up on chastity
Its remarkable in that I am literally remarking upon it, you cannot dispute this
I mentioned last week in my post which you may have not read5 that people are governed by culture far more than they govern themselves by law. My friend Bennett commented once that when he was reading the scriptures it was really weird to him that God should punish entire nations, but that the older he gets the more clear it is that many sins occur most strongly at a national level. Or as perhaps Joseph Smith put it (I don’t know if he actually said this I’m just making it up) “We are not saved individually, we are saved or damned together”. A massive amount of people simply swim in the school of fish, and if the school breaches on a rock and gets everyone eaten by sharks, well, its not like any individual made that choice.
On that note I came across this week a write up of the sexual revolution- one of a few major movements that started in the 70s and snowballed into civilization catastrophic egregores.
The article specifically seeks to analyze Christianity’s response to the changing culture, which has been by and large simply to update their stack to the new religion. I see very few Christian churches that take chastity seriously- I am friends with Catholics who joke about their affairs, evangelicals who slept with many, many people before marriage, and I am not exactly friends with any Episcopalians but you know how their situation has gone.
“The question arises — how could these people think of themselves as conservatives when they basically adopted all of feminism for their own daughters?
Well, the answer is one word: abortion. Roe v. Wade gave conservatives cover and a rallying point around which they could focus in a consensus way while basically caving into the rest of second wave feminism full stop. One’s social conservative bona fides was secured by being strongly anti-abortion, even though one supported the rest of the feminist program for girls and young women.”
-From a link in the article
Age of first marriage has risen across America, and across all churches to roughly 29 years old. This means that during the teenage years, when everyone is most horny, their libido is insufficient to spur them to marriage. You can roughly translate that to mean they’re hooking up and not marrying, they’re using porn or prostitutes as an outlet, or the average 18 year old is now as horny as the average 65 year old, take your pick. And its hard for institutions to move to counter a cultural force, because the institution would need to have its own culture, and the biggest culture most people are capable of building is “We at <corporation> strive to be accepting and welcoming”6. I’m no exception, building a culture is a skill I’m still learning, I only know the basic principles, things like “a strong leader’s personality trickles down”.
But if you don’t have your own culture, everyone who isn’t mounting an active resistance to an invading culture is going to tend to assimilate. Its a school of fish sort of thing, and this isn’t even an attack on their intelligence- its just group dynamics, something you calculate and can predict on a mathematical level. Nobody has no paths of least resistance, and nobody can be on guard to all social pressures constantly, and constantly countering all social pressures is inefficient and not even necessarily a good thing anyway. Many social pressures are positive!
An example of this, a friend recently lamented that his daughter loves to wear immodest clothing. maybe my more secular readers will laugh at this but its very important to him, and his daughter insists modest clothing just “isn’t cute enough”, or that her friends will think she is weird, or that modest clothing is hard to find and just grabbing the cute thing is easier. And its like, you can rule this situation with an iron fist, but without understanding she’ll probably just revert once she’s out of the house. She’s exposed to the forces of cultural monstrosities with at least as much day-to-day impact in her life as her parents.
So what can you do? The way I see it, she needs patriotism. In some way or another, she needs to find value in dressing differently than others, and the easiest way to do this is to give her pride in being “a peculiar people” as the Book of Mormon calls it. Essentially, you build a mini-culture that your family pilots into mecha-battles with the outer culture of “The World” or “Babylon”. As cultural pressures tighten and become more toxic, instilling ourselves and others with “purpose” may be the skill that makes the difference between survival and extinction7.
History (fake)
2 histories and a lie
Never have I ever fallen off the same building twice. Affirm: I will never fall to my death again. Never have I ever climbed mount Everest. Affirm: girls do not actually want tall guys, I hope. Never have I ever won at hop scotch. Affirm: I will never learn the rules of hop scotch. Never have I ever stared at the sun until my retinas scorched out. Affirm: I will brush and floss my retinas twice a day89. Never have I ever driven on the wrong side of the road too much. Affirm: laws are made to be broken, but not by me- they are meant to be broken by someone who is going to die. Affirm: I am never going to die
hsitory
Halloween Philosophy from my 4 year old: the skeletons inside you are not evil skeletons.
I thought I had an ear infection so I got some $2 ear wax medicine. As I lay on my side and the fluid bubbled and hissed in my ear, breaking apart and dissolving the illness that had beset me of no consent of my own I thought “isn’t that a good metaphor for Christ”
I wanted to do something productive but ended up giving the kids (merited) baths on repeat the whole night.
The toddler loves putting legos on his fingers like olives. “Halloween decorations!” he declares.
Jethro did something particularly egregious and deliberate this week so we gave him a light spanking. Talking to him afterwards, we explained what he had done and asked “and was that a good thing?” and he thought about it and then said “Well, the spanking was a good thing… But it wasn’t very nice.” That was pretty insightful.
Then he tried to convince us he didn’t need to be strapped in to the car seat, because he “can just hold on, like this!” and then he proceeded to demonstrate how tightly he could grip the car seat. Well he still got a seat belt but its good to know there’s another layer of protection there if he needs it.
A nurse asked Jethro how tall he was and he put his hand against his forehead and said “I’m this tall!”. He wasn’t even standing, he was sitting in a chair.
Driving home Jethro exclaimed he needed to poop. We told him “we’re five minutes away from home, can you hold it?” and he said “Okay, but I can only hold it 6 minutes, so hurry!” He has been timing himself, I suppose
The toddler found a necklace somewhere and we took it off him so that he wouldn’t like, strangle himself or something, which caused a wailing meltdown with the cry of “My pretty!” when it was taken away.
The toddler got a happy meal because Jethro always wants happy meals. When we got home the toddler yelled his own name and was like “Open it!” and then he roarrred with effort and ripped it open, chicken nuggets go flying everywhere- “my burder10!!!!” he yelled
HOROSCOPES
It was a cloudy night so we only got four of them.
ARES: Ares had its stars kind of swirling around each other really fast, so I’m going to say that means that you also must twirl around really fast. Good luck!
Pisces: the Pisces stars were sort of obscured too but from what I could tell you are destined to win at everything. Hope there weren’t any caveats to that that we couldn’t see, hah hah!
Cancer: Cancers stars appear to be turned off this week. Look for ways to conserve energy! Don’t do it for veganism. Do it for cancer.
Sagittarius: Your stars are all mixed up, totally different positions and colors. I don’t know what happened but you better mix your life up too. The more uncomfortable the better. Wear really bright pastels that clash incredibly with your personality, just like these stars conflict with what we know about… Oh wait a minute, I’m just looking in the wrong place lol. Had the telescope on backwards. Ah yes, Sagittarius, your zodiac appears to be all busy playing video games and couldn’t be bothered to send a message, but I’m sure they hope you’re doing well, would love if you could come visit some time, and that the grandkids are doing great.
same tbh
weekly
“whose home” uhhh Joes
At least some of our readers are ducks, right?
I don’t expect you to read every Duckstack post. But I do expect you to know what’s in them, being able to recite them word for word to any police, judges, or prison wardens you may meet.
This slogan has been on the wall pretty much everywhere I’ve ever worked
Vulnerability to modern mores is being selected against, from an evolutionary perspective, harder than possibly anything has ever been selected against in the history of mankind. 1 children, zero children, and then the line dies out.
My retinas will be the most hygienic you’ve ever seen
Your retinas will be sobbing with envy at their beauty
“Noo my burger” (google translate)
A mini culture is key for our kids, so they can get status and identity from something other than Babylon. Unfortunately, it takes more than you and your family to build one. Everyone has to be on the same page which is tough because has their own customized pressures they like to indulge. Almost as if, we're supposed to build Zion around something else... hmmm.