Topical Tyrants
I thought up a battle cry: Skincare for rashes, rashes for Skinwalkers!
Today's duckstack flavor: pop rocks
Sleep well, a sleep well, in a field, off on its own. You can dip the ladle in and draw forth a spoon full of just, golden stars, from deep in the earth, a refreshing sip, sure to quench your thirst1. It tastes of harmony and peace, but electric, but in a good way. Drawing forth a second time yields: The Duckstack.
It was asked of me by someone who was probably very asleep at the time whether all duckstack subscribers get free elbows. Yes, you do get free elbows. Two of them. Make sure not to lose them.
The Duckstack is a patriotic publication, so we have been getting into the war spirit by planting fake trees in enemy soil, which produce no CO22. This sabotage is sure to ensure the defeat of The Duckstack’s many foes, which consist pretty much exclusively at this point3 of our paid subscribers.
History
Mini civilizations, quite uncivilized.
This week I’ve been returning to my old haunts, by which I mean, Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf fortress is a free computer empire-building game, except the creators decided to replace graphics with “complexity itself”. Though nearly impossible to play, the game stands in a class of its own in moddability, and realism, for example dwarves do not have health, instead the game designers simply keep track of every organ and tendon in a dwarf’s body. Much easier that way. I’ve been resuming an old project: Farming ducks, which I have modded (modified game files) to be made out of steel, and then training them for war. It is going well, I have 80 ducklings.
Aside from that, things have been pretty much same old same old. I installed a toilet which leaked, so I fixed it, so it leaked from somewhere else, so I fixed it, so it leaked from the wax ring, so then I had to take the whole toilet off and start over, and then I installed a washing machine which leaked, so I fixed it, but it leaked again, so I fixed it, and then the drain pump broke, so we need a new one, and then our utilities told us what we thought was on autopay wasn’t working so they were cancelling our service, so we fixed that, and then our home insurance told us our house is ugly4 so they were cancelling our service, so we have to fix that, and then our toddler has still been very sick so we’ve been taking him to the doctor, but the car broke5, so we got in the other car, so that car also broke6, so we are probably going to go out for fast food because cooking makes dishes which I think we have enough of.
The kids are still cute, however. I asked the toddler to help us clean, I asked him “Can you get all the toys and put them in the middle of the room?” and he said “No”, but then he thought about it and lisped “I can, but I don’t want to.” Which I thought was a pretty fair and understandable articulation, so I didn’t make him put away toys that day.
Later we were all sprawled on couches with him on the floor, when he asked for the littlest one’s diaper wipes “so I can wipe the floor”, so one of us kind of half heartedly lazily tiredly kicked them across the room to him and he chimed in response: “Hoo-ray!”
Putting on his shoes we commented “oh your shoes are getting tight, you must be growing big!” and he said “uh huh! I’m growing big to REACH THINGSSSS”, this is a kid with a plan.
With all these current events happening, it is common to see Ukraine flags in everyone’s social media bios, one friend saw all of this (he describes himself as “fed up with the cringe virtue signaling”) and put up a Russian flag, which is such a bold social faux pas that you just gotta find it hilarious.
Those Who Don’t Know History
Are doomed to repeat whatever is present.
It is, I think, unfashionable to be politically tuned in.
There is the idea that very online people are weirdos concerned with weird stuff making molehill mountains for fun, or autism, but I’m starting to suspect that all this stuff actually matters. The suspicion started when a show my toddler was watching about cars started telling him about how normal it is for cars to have two mommies, and every so often one of my wife's friends divorces their spouse and turns trans7. Eventually, I start to wonder if your neighbor’s BLM flag represents a little more than patriotism to their favorite political sports team.
The unofficial8 governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, just yesterday published a teary eyed (he is always teary eyed) screed against Russia, which he could not point to on a map, about how patriotic and inspiring the American propaganda coming out of Ukraine is. Apparently he does not know Ukraine is a “Nato thing”9 Which means loosely, according to Putin, “A vassal state to America”. Read that link, it will instantly make you more informed than literally everyone you know about what’s going on.
Now, I do not consider myself “informed.” I try to be, on many issues, but these guys are literally on the other side of the planet and don’t speak english(?), so there’s a lot of layers of barriers to my understanding of what’s going on. I think, in something as big as war, if I was going to pick a side, I’d want to be really confident the side I was picking was the right one. That seems like an important decision to me. But I know I don’t know a whole lot, so I would abstain from supporting or decrying one side or the other, both of which are almost certainly committing “war crimes10” which I would find abhorrent. So I know I don’t know a whole lot. But I know I know more than the governor of Utah, who has on so little agitprop replaced our flag with a Ukrainian flag11. There’s a concept I was first introduced to by a guy pennamed “Mencious Moldbug”, which is that people like to care a lot about things they aren’t close to, to avoid caring about people who actually matter, and I suspect it is some of this. Everyone wants to feel moral, and if you plate feed them a “cause” then its really easy to massage that morality itch without having to put in the work, which was literally Satan’s plan in the pre-existence. Labor saving devices, except for morality. So here they are, publicly joining a side in a decades long conflict that they just heard about yesterday, which is how they conduct themselves in every other aspect of life too.
Everyone wants to be a leader, but nobody wants to be worthy to lead.
I recently heard, to my great grief, about a friend who is losing his family to divorce. This divorced was caused by, obviously, therapy. Now, I’m Very Online™, so I know a whole bunch of things, like “Trauma is a manipulative buzzword”, and “most therapists follow no proven methodology, and just tell you you’re perfect just the way you are12”, and “Therapists, along with Journalists and Academics, form a priest caste for the New Religion, and their only role is to pump you full of ideology”, and “Therapy’s benefits are usually indistinguishable from just having a high status friend to vent to”, and “therapists are mostly demons wearing human skin”. Now, I’d obviously like to think my arguing habit benefits my life somehow, so I’m biased towards thinking of it as informative and useful to me, but again, I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that I’m actually right. And its awful, because you shouldn’t have to be some insane religious extremist keyboard jockey13 to protect your wife from being psyopped into hating you, or your kids from being groomed into centering their worldview on sex, or getting yourself memed into sloth and emasculation (forfeiting/foisting all responsibility onto your wife and making yourself loathsome and a burden to her14), etc.
My friend’s story is, (from my weird Extremely Online point of view) extremely stock: She went into therapy for childhood trauma, she came out thinking he was abusive, and months of reaffirmation caused her to, like the girls of Salem, start to believe something was actually going on15. Now she’s ripping the marriage apart, dropping like an egg yolk the four kids in the middle, because resentment was indulged to the point of psychosis, which modern therapists are incentivized to encourage.
Memorize this: “Resentment indulged.”
As I am Very Online™, these things are obvious to me, but it seems to me that normal people are totally unaware of them. There’s so many memes about trauma and victimhood that people internalize without even a chance of fighting back, “normies” are just wandering around, sitting ducks (begging my pardon) for a literal mindfield of extremely unhealthy things to just blow up underneath them, over and over and over. This isn’t the first therapist divorce I’ve watched16 and I hate it, I hate it every time, but what could I have done? I’ve done all I can do, which is to just keep screaming into the void, railing against the overton window in futility. But… there are people with more influence than me.
People like Ukraine Cox.
Thought leaders who have totally, wholesale, abdicated their responsibility to lead. Men who were allowed to gain power without wisdom, an apocalyptic failure of gatekeeping, democracy, and humanity.
And these people, these so called “leaders” (tyrants would be a better term, a word that much better captures their bureaucratic impulse), they are doing these things. Which would not bother me, were it not for the passion they simulate. The dishonesty, the unwillingness to own their marigold-picking, apathetic posture, their lack of respectability. That is what is repulsive. I think any sane man of integrity cannot look upon it without utter revulsion.
Mosiah 29:17 For behold, how much iniquity doth one wicked king cause to be committed, yea, and what great destruction!
The State of the Nation
More news on Russia:
But only if you’re worthy, as Isaiah said when he was talking about this Isaiah 29:8 It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be, that aight against mount Zion.
Or oxygen either, for that matter.
I’ma be real with you I haven’t been keeping real close track of how many people have sworn mortal antagonism against my 30 subscriber email newsletter
pretty much verbatim
radiator exploded
alternator failed
I’m speaking of genital mutilation not car transmissions, which are are their own problems, see footnotes #5 and #6
I make the rules here
This is the scientific term
Its only a crime if you lose
I guess I live in Ukraine now?
you pay them to do this, so you know its genuine
girls want a guy who contributes more than just company, but many men go into dating with the attitude that such is sufficient contribution for a girl.
“I think that it can be shown that the great majority of difficulties between brethren, arises from misunderstandings rather than from malice and a wicked heart, and instead of talking the matter over with each other in a saint-like spirit, they will contend with each other until a real fault is created, and they have brought a sin upon themselves.” -Brigham Young
I’ve seen four of these so far, maybe more