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Miscellaneous Rambling

Way to go, Tiger! I'm not a huge golf fan, but I follow the Majors: The Masters, the PGA, the US Open, the British Open. And this is one of the best golf stories ever. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

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I was kind of blown away by that Tweet by Massimo Faggioli (see yesterday's post). I listened to a lot of Patrick Madrid's commentary on the essay, and I remember thinking, "This is a great piece by BXVI, but he's not the Pope. Madrid can call it a 'bombshell,' but it's not." Well, based on Faggioli calling for sanctions on BXVI and at least one person calling for him to be silenced, it appears it is, indeed, a bombshell.

It's not a terribly-daunting essay, btw. Only 6,000 words: ten pages of 12-point font. I'm partway through it.

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The new podcast is up: Episode 30: The Healthy-Fat Binary in Postmodernism and Time. Show Notes:

Dumplin' Take 2: I revisit that horrible Netflix movie, Dumplin'. It turns out, the movie is, indeed, an attack on healthism and a celebration of fatness. It's an attempt to invert the binary. Joe Rogan helps explain it.

Time: Why is everyone so stressed for time? It's because we're so wealthy, there's a ton of cool stuff to do.

Lightning Segments: Spotify music recommendations, big player on Rodeo Drive, moronic sports bars, gay admissions at the University of Michigan.

SHOW NOTES

DUMPLIN' TAKE TWO

Alright, back to Dumplin'.

Fat is considered in social justice circles as the disfavored binaries.

Remember binaries: They're the social justice warrior's satan.

Words carry no meanings. Therefore, truth cannot be communicated. Therefore, everything you think you know is merely subjective . . . no application to others. Therefore, all social “realities” do not refer to objective reality: So, bums aren't bums in the sense that they have less objective worth to society than, say, Bill Gates. They're merely considered bums because the power structure tells us they're bums . . . there's no truth to it, and the social “reality” (the “narrative”) can be changed willy-nilly: no “social reality is any better than others . . . unless the new “reality” puts you in power, then it's better. J

Now, go back to the first point: Words carry no meanings. But we have social realities. Where do those social realities come from? The power structure. And their number one tool? Creation of binaries. They use binaries to privilege people on the favored halves of the binaries.

Heterosexual - Homosexual

Male ”“ female

Colonialist ”“ the colonized

Christian ”“ Muslim

White ”“ Of Color

Binary is the devil. And social justice warriors see binaries like Joseph McCarthy saw communists and people in Salem saw witches: They're everywhere. And they attack them as ruthlessly as McCarthy and the people of Salem.

Rogan interviewed “the 'Sokal Squared' academic hoaxsters Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay.” I was like, “No way! I love that story,” so I listened to it this weekend. It's episode 1191 (October 30, 2018). Highly recommended.

Dumplin. Recall what I said. Maybe “fat” is now considered the disfavored half of the binary, with the power structure positing “fitness” as the good half, so that has to be fought against.

TIME

New survey says each American has only 4.5 hours of free time a week. Lots of problems. What is meant by “free time”? Is it time after “primary obligations” (define again). But there's something to it.

EVERYONE (even the social justice warriors, I suppose: so much stuff to f' up, there just isn't enough time in the day) in this world agrees on one thing: time is scarce compared to the way things were in, say, the 1950s . . . or even 1980s.

Very assured Daniel Hamermesh: Spending Time: Our Most Valuable Resource. March 25 episode of Econtalk

Very simple: 3 times real income (things we can buy); 15% longer life expectancy: Past 50-60 years.

There's so much cool stuff we can do.

The art of a fulfilled life is to be energetic without tension, dynamic without agitation, serene but not aloof." RD

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