The government has no authority to say you can’t protest — even in a pandemic — and it doesn’t matter what the protest is about.

Just because you care about one issue doesn’t mean you have to be a complete sociopath about everything else.

Well, we’ve successfully moved the debate from how to reform the police to whether to not people are overreacting to their cities being looted and set on fire.
It isn’t the protestors fault. I don’t know what they can do to keep rioters from taking all the headlines. Does seem like someone has to take charge, though, with some actionable proposals other than everybody post a bunch of black squares to demonstrate how much they care.
Wish I knew how to turn enthusiasm into long lasting political change, but I don’t have a lot of experience at it. Hopefully someone will figure it out!
I do have one recommendation, though: Stop all the chiding of people getting too worried about their property being stolen and burned down. It makes you look like sociopaths and gets everyone to hate you.
It also seems to implicitly imply the looters and rioters are the same as the protestors, which is really counterproductive.

You’re can’t use stats to tell people they’re too worried about the horrific killings of unarmed black men they keep seeing and you’re not going to convince people horrified by rioting that they’re focusing on the wrong things. Telling other people what to feel doesn’t work.
A common political fantasy is that you amass so much power you can just completely ignore the cares and concerns of your political rivals, and that is a constant recipe for disaster.

Is that really how murder charges work? You can’t go “We think it was 2nd degree murder, but it was at least 3rd degree.”? You have to pick one, and if you get it wrong, he gets off scott free?

I’ve never used the term “snowflakes” unironically, but it’s pretty tempting anytime you see the left completely freaking out that they were exposed to an opinion they really really disagreed with in a left-wing publication.
Let me tell you: You all have numerous opinions just as terrible as Tom Cotton’s, but we’ve all learned to tolerate you. Calm down.

People each day are seeing looters stealing with impunity and rioters attacking people. Of course they’re scared and want the military to do something.
It might be a bad idea, but to convince anyone of that, you have to stop being a bunch of sociopathic dummies about everything.

This is a golden age for people who were worried about whether or not their condiment manufacturer likes racism.

If you defund the police, how are you going to take people’s plastic straws and AR-15s?

And you can’t have socialism without a lot of people with guns. You’re not going to get everyone to voluntarily go along with your idiotic ideas.

I don’t know why the store Target has found itself such a… Oh.

To actually make things better takes humility. You have to actually listen to the other side and not just dismiss their concerns.
It’s too high a price to pay.

Are the left going to be able to admit that police unions are bad without also admitting that teachers’ unions are bad for many of the same reasons?
It’s not a popular value, but being able to fire people who are bad at their job is extremely important. There are countries where it’s difficult for any company to do that—no matter how incompetent the person is—and it’s terrible for everyone.
Except the incompetent.

The NYT should run an editorial called “We’re Gonna Make Ya Squeal!” and it just be a list of right-wing talking points like “Guns make you safer” and “Abortion is this nation’s greatest evil.”

A bunch of really terrible people think they know what opinions should be allowed to be expressed and which shouldn’t.

Libertarians should develop echo chambers like the left so we can pretend “taxation is theft” is a widely-held, unquestionable opinion and then go completely bananas if we’re exposed to anyone saying anything different.

Is there anything more shortsighted and dumb than the left’s flirtation with violence?

Things just keep getting worse. First it was a pandemic. Then it was rioting. And now it’s getting exposed to a contrary opinion in The New York Times.

The frequency of people getting killed by the police is sort of missing the point. There is just this extra horror that there are these people out there who can suddenly decide to victimize you and there is no recourse.
Maybe there is some recourse if it was caught on video. Maybe.

People are coming up with conspiracy theories about the job numbers to avoid the obvious conclusion: Trump is a very good president.

Obviously, Tom Cotton’s great editorial inspired everyone to get back to work.

The left not only surrendered on gun control with the riots, but climate change. Who is going to trust “experts” after they said going to the beach would kill grandma but rioting is just fine? Everyone knows now what they claim is science is just partisan nonsense.

Me after they abolish the police:
“You have to pay your taxes.”
“No.”

Maybe the solution is some sort of reverse Purge where once a year laws apply to the police.

I gather the left’s faith in angry mobs means they’ve never studied history and can’t think more than twenty minutes into the future.

I wasn’t sure what it would be like releasing my first sequel. I was worried because then you’re just selling to the subset of people who read your first book, but it ends up a sequel is all a big scam to sell more of your first book and that works really well.

It seems like it’s easy to be optimistic if you look at history. Man, we’ve been through a lot worse.

Swam in the lake today. There was a sign at the lake, though, that said the lake is full of COVID (unless you’re there to riot).
Not a lot of rioting at the lake. It’s hard to set things on fire in the middle of water. If you can manage, though, it’s a good place to riot because police can’t swim.
Me, I’d riot in the middle of a forest. No one to bother you out there. Can riot in peace.

I think our problem was listening to experts when we should have listened to people who still are perts.

I don’t know if antifa is like the soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy but they are kind of like C.H.U.D.s.

Biological sex was invented by religious extremists in the 1950s.

Much of the cultural issues these days are a bunch of people running around yelling “Two plus two equals five!” and everyone else deciding if it’s worth the headache to say anything. I guess the equation changes if you’re a billionaire.
Now you know the real reason the left doesn’t like billionaires.

The fish were biting like crazy this evening, and the kids were identifying the real fish we caught because they had caught the same ones in Animal Crossing.
I recognized some from Red Dead Redemption 2.

LEFT-WING PROTESTORS: “Punch yourself in the groin!”
REGULAR PEOPLE: “You’re saying we should all punch ourselves in the groin?”
LEFT-WING PROTESTORS: “No, idiot. That’s not what that slogan means. It’s much more nuanced than that.”

Always felt like the trans movement went straight to yelling “Bigot!” and skipped over the step of explaining what in the world they’re talking about.

“Two plus two equals Thursday! All right-thinking people know this!”
“I don’t understand.”
“TERF!”
“Wha… What does that mean?”

After listening to The Piano Man for the thousandth time, I think I finally got what the song is about: a guy playing a piano in a bar.

We must abolish the police and leave enforcing the law to personal paramilitary groups funded by billionaires. To be protected, we must win favor with the billionaires, which could perhaps be as simple as subscribing to Amazon Prime.

I remember comic book stories where they blamed all the costume criminals on the existence of Batman, and I guess now people are blaming regular criminals on the existence of police.

Muggers only mug people to get attention to. Without police (or a Batman), they’d stop.

Journalists are debating whether they should keep pretending they’re anything other than political activists.

“Antifa is basically the same as the people who literally fought Nazis but the people who literally fought Nazis are racists and should be cancelled.”

If any newspaper wants me to manage their editorial page, I’ll do it. I think all your opinions are dumb and I will tell that to people’s faces and I will make them cry. Cry for how stupid they are.

I’ve developed something I call “Critical Hit Race Theory.” It says we can end racism if we all roll a 20.

Equality is very much a religious concept. It’s built on the Christian concept of the soul — despite who we may be externally, deep down we are all eternal beings of equal value before God.
It has been treated as a secular value — and people are free to say “There’s no rational basis for this, but I choose to believe it” — though I wonder how long it can last by itself, cut off from a more organized religion.
Now, I very much believe in a secular government — I don’t want other people with force of law deciding what are the right beliefs — but paradoxically that government is built on top of a few religious concepts it’s important everyone buys into.
Equality and rights all stem from the concept of the soul — that there is something special about each and every human life. These are not things you believe thinking people are just some random product of evolution.
Anyway, this is important to keep in mind when we’re trying to figure out how to fight racism. This is a battle about a radical religious concept. You try to un-anchor it to religion, it’s unclear where it could drift off to.

Let’s look at the bright side: We never have to ask: “I wonder what the president is thinking?”

Do you think the Nazis were convinced they were on the right side of history?

So many people think the big distinction between them and the Nazis is that they’re really extra super-duper sure they’re right about everything.

Would have loved to be a conspiracy theorist back when the Titanic sank.
“They want us to believe an iceberg took down the biggest ship ever made. Ice can’t cut steel!”

We need to abolish the police and settle disputes with dueling. If you see someone doing something you don’t cotton to, challenge him to a duel.
“You besmirch my honor, sir. Guns at dawn!”
Doesn’t that sound more civilized?

Man, that would work on me to make sure I was nice and polite to everyone as I don’t want to get up at dawn.
“Can’t we duel in the afternoon?”
“No. Too hot.”

“The police should be replaced with monkeys armed with tasers riding sheepdogs. You need to read this 5,000 word article about how that is not in fact a stupid idea made by a dumb person.”

So we got rid of the police and it ends up we didn’t need them at all. We all imagined crime.

Maybe like how Dexter was a serial killer who killed other serial killers, we need mobs that try to get people fired who join internet mobs.

I think the problem with the “defund the police” idea is that it’s stupid and crazy. The Overton Window can encompass things that are either stupid or crazy, but it’s too ambitious to try to get popular support for an idea that’s both.

When they defund the police, if you’re a serial killer, you’ll get a free pamphlet on how not to serial kill.

I don’t know if I pitch Christianity enough, but a religion with a concept of forgiveness is way better than all those other weird belief systems people buy into these days.

I like how the Mortal Kombat movie on Netflix is promoting itself in its rating.
“PG-13 for NON-STOP MARTIAL ARTS ACTION!”
The actual rating is “PG-13 for non-stop martial arts action and some violence” because I guess martial arts doesn’t count as violence. It’s art.

I just remember the Mortal Kombat movie as the first video game movie that wasn’t unwatchable and also that it was a bit of a ripoff of Enter the Dragon.

Gone with the Wind is one of those movies I always felt I should see but never really wanted to.

Know what would be really progressive? Removing all the movies from this year for all the things in them we won’t know are offensive until 50 years from now.
We’re looking out for you, overly sensitive grandkids.

If Trump keeps acting this way, he could lose handily to Biden.
Or lose narrowly to Biden.
Or win narrowly against Biden.
Or win handily against Biden.
No one knows.

I went and got an antibody test. It’s neat going out because everyone is wearing masks. It’s like we’re all in Red Dead Redemption Online.

I don’t see how absolutely everyone doesn’t realize what a terrible idea it is to suddenly single out a Trump tweet for fact checking on Twitter. It’s like having to explain not to lick a hot stove.
“But I see some melted sugar on it. I can’t imagine anything bad could happen.”
And to clarify — which again is another thing I think should be obvious — what makes this a terrible idea has nothing to do with whether Trump is impotent or not to retaliate.

American used to have a uniting value — “Snitches get stitches” — but people have forgotten this and now we have Karens.

I don’t like it when my code doesn’t work, but I love debugging.
The duality of man.

The ultimate goal of every Karen is to head an HOA.

You can’t check facts because you’re a partisan moron, and acting like you’re above it and some arbiter of truth when you’re a myopic idiot only makes things worse.

Everyone wants to get celebrated for the intensity of their hatred because they think they have the good kind of hate.

Since Twitter is a publisher according to Section 230, that means it can have a RICO conviction under the Logan Act.

Were the 1992 Los Angeles riots considered successful?

I didn’t watch the George Floyd video. I assumed it was pretty bad because the cops were immediately fired, and I’ve seen the videos where no one was fired.

My assumption is that by far most of the protestors are not violent, but those making excuses in support of rioting are actively trying to undermine that view.

A private company has every right to censor even the President of the United States on its platform, I could just do without them pretending it’s all objective when they’re simply other awful people with awful views making decisions for partisan reasons.
Every time they censor, they simply highlight what they never even considered censoring. You’re bad people too; you don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong.

I’m libertarian(ish). And a Christian. That means I view lots of things as really really bad but also don’t think they should be illegal.

I take all the “Rioting is good actually!” from people who aren’t rioting with a grain of salt. So much of everything these days are a performative “Look how righteously angry I am! Don’t I just care so much?”

Bright Side: Things can’t be that bad if we still spend most of our time arguing about really dumb things.

If Biden was president, 100,000 wouldn’t have died from COVID-19 and 40 million wouldn’t have lost their jobs because he would have pulled the “Stop Pandemic” lever in the Oval Office that is right next to the “Economy Do Well” lever.

Wow, they make it hard to know how much things cost in the Minecraft economy. My 6yo son spent $9.99 to buy 1720 coins and then bought a DuckTales world for 1170 coins. Try to do the math in your head on how much dollar-wise that world was.

Winchester is playing with a toy I had when I was a baby. How do I explain a rotary phone dial to him?

It’s funny how with phones “dial” now means “push buttons,” though I do see how we got there.

What is the solution to what happened to George Floyd? I don’t think a few more seminars for police officers are going to do it; there needs to be some big law change about police and use of force.

The left-wingers who hate Elon Musk are just as big as a-holes as him, but they aspire to nothing more than making people mad on Twitter while he aspires to making people mad on Twitter and putting people into space.
Do something useful, and I’ll give you a little leeway on being an annoying person. But everyone here as no more aspirations beyond being a pest.

I’ve seen a bunch of tweets today from people supporting rioting, but none from anyone participating in rioting. It’s a bit of a mixed message. Riot for thee, but not for me.
In economics, you call this a “revealed preference.”

Between the coronavirus infections and rioting, this year really reinforcing how smart not living in a city is.

We have a fire raging, and thanks to our democratic system, you have a choice of two very different types of gasoline to pour on it.

“I’m so concerned about injustice that I’m going to be a complete sociopath about those harmed by rioting.” -common sentiment

Say a prayer. For everyone.
It still doesn’t seem any of us are on a good path, but there is one.

I’ll tell you what won’t fix these problem: Carefully making a selection between Trump and Biden.
I’m get frustrated with how many people respond to this with “You just got to get out and vote!” That has been the refrain for decades. That ain’t it, chief. We’re also talking about cities that have been under one party rule for decades. Maybe new strategies are needed.
But I’ll tell you what will make all this worse: Getting really into partisan politics. Our elections are basically the opposite of trying to get people to come together. They’re designed to make a wedge.

You have white liberals sitting in comfort and safety encouraging poor neighborhoods to be burnt down for “justice.” They’re morally no better than the most ardent racists.
We have huge injustice, and so many think they can fix it by stacking more injustice on top of it. They don’t actually want to fix things; they want that brief flash of feeling righteous and will sacrifice anything for it.

Don’t conflate the rioters with the protestors.
That’s aimed at the left who thing they’re “helping” as much as the right.

White supremacists are dumb. If riots were some sort of conspiracy by them, there would be lots of hard evidence.
The hear hoof beats, think horses answer for out of towners stirring things up is it’s a bunch of SJWs who think they’re “helping.”

It might help if a prominent politician offered some sort of solution to excessive police force other than “We’re going to try to be more concerned about this sort of thing.”
Whatever it is, probably not going to be popular with police unions.

You know how everyone with two brain cells to rub together said encouraging the violence of antifa was a bad idea…

Don’t even need the KKK with all the left-wing whites encouraging burning down black neighborhoods.

Time for space! Things aren’t as bad now as they were in 1969 when we landed on the moon. My dad watched that from Vietnam.

Maybe instead of donating to people burning down black-owned businesses you should donate to those people who lost their businesses. Seem crazy, celebrities, but give it a thought.

This whole thing has really exposed left-wing racism. So many really think basically all black people are reacting to injustice by burning down their neighbors’ businesses. The only difference between the left and the KKK is their reaction to this extremely racist idea.

So what sort of people do you think riots are going to most motivate to vote?

It’s incumbent on people who aren’t out there rioting but think what happened to George Floyd is horrible—which I believe is a supermajority of Americans—to finally come up with something substantial to do, such as taking on qualified immunity.

“Krab” is closer to real crab meat than antifa is to people who actually oppose fascism.

I have to applaud everyone on the left and right for lots of great ideas on how to make things worse, but let’s keep brainstorming.

A bunch of people tearing down and burning Democrat controlled cities is sure going to teach Republicans and the right… what exactly?

Probably not a good idea to trust the people who think burning down your business is a good thing to provide you health care.

Though no one has actually seen one, scientists have theorized what a single A battery looks like.

The protestors deserve justice — more than “we feel bad” with no substantive measures taken. The rioters and other people just trying to make things worse deserve justice against them. More importantly, the people hurt by this need help. We can manage all of this if we want to.

They’re called “antifa” because none of them could figure out how to spell “fascist.”

I double-dog dare the Democrats to propose some gun control measures right now.

“There is no reason anyone needs an AR-15!”
glances at the news
“There is no reason anyone needs more than five AR-15s, per household member.”

If you downplay people getting their livelihood burned down, you don’t look like you really care about black people. You just look like a sociopath.

All I know about the 1619 Project is that the main architect on Twitter is of the type of left-wing troll I regularly mute because they never appear in my timeline retweeted by the left but only by the right in the context of, “Look at this idiocy!” and why do I need that?

The problem with condemning awful things Trump has done is you can’t be sure how many you’ll find out the day was completely made up by journalists. You really need to stick to statements you saw him say on unedited video.

It’s important to get out and vote in 2020 for the least harmful incompetent.

If you can’t bring yourself to say burning down random business is bad and should stop, then stop pretending you care about injustice.

Man, this sucks for Hong Kong. They need a lot of support right now, and the main country they’re looking to is all “We have plenty of our own problems to deal with right now.”

Good news: Joel Richards, who narrated the first Superego, will be narrating Superego: Fathom. It will be a while until it’s ready, but the audiobook is coming.

It feels like all the attention gathered by the protests will be wasted if people don’t coalesce around a few actionable demands.
I’ve seen some such as ending qualified immunity and reducing the power of police unions. These would change how police operate—and there would be many trade offs for that—but it seems like that needs to be done. The perception is the rule of law doesn’t apply to the police.

I’m hopeful we can come out of all of this stronger.
America has been through worse.

It’s weird how an appeal to “science” has become a substitute for thinking.
“Science said to do this, so we don’t need to discuss the matter any further.”
That’s not… that’s not how science works.

If you think science tells you to take a particular policy position, you don’t know what science is.

This all comes back to something I’ve said before: There’s no such thing as a non-religious human being. The dichotomy is organized and disorganized religion.

I’m about a 1000x more interested in seeing Phil Lord’s and Christopher Miller’s original take on the Solo movie than the Snyder Cut.

“Did you know there’s a slightly less mediocre version of a mediocre movie?”
I’m about as baffled as to why I’m supposed to care about the Snyder Cut as I am about why I’m supposed to care about what Greta Thunberg has to say.

While Winchester is still a baby, being a dad of someone with Down syndrome feels like a delayed thing. I don’t know if I’m ready for people to look at him differently.
Maybe it will help to have a weird dad. People can look at me differently too.

My big advice on how to be happy and rich is first learn to be happy then get rich. It’s a huge mistake to try to do it in the other order.

It’s a few days late for his birthday, but I got my 7yo son a Baby Yoda doll. I have redeemed myself as a father.

As much as I don’t care about the Snyder Cut and have no intention of subscribing to HBO Max, I actually feel really happy for all the people who were looking forward to it as I really did think it was never going to happen. I hope it’s everything you want it to be.
I just assume it’s going to be a slightly-less mediocre version of what we got.

Costco had a limit on bacon — one per customer. We need to end this soon.

Pro Tip: So you never have to worry about mixing up “your” and “you’re” or “there”, “their”, and “they’re”, just use “yar” and “thar” in all cases.
Yar welcome.

The trailer for the next Christopher Nolan movie looks pretty cool—and usually the trailers make his movies look boring but I go see them anyway because Christopher Nolan.

Every bad conservative idea was once a bad liberal idea that the conservatives of the time didn’t work hard enough to stomp down.

Christopher Nolan makes scifi look so prestigious while still keeping it accessible to a wide audience.

There’s at least as much evidence that Biden is a racist as there is of Trump.

Instead of demeaning yourself to support a candidate, you could just not support a candidate.

We need to get Biden direct access to Twitter like Donald Trump.

If you’re looking at politics with any other expectations than “How do I get the most entertainment value out of this?”, you’re going to be severely disappointed.

After you read Superego: Fathom, make sure to be a cool dude and write a review. I read every review, so this is your chance to be read by me. I’ll even give you tips so you can write better reviews of my books.

Masks are for sissies. When I rob a bank, I want them to see who did it. Yeah, I took your money, and if you want it back, come at me—but it ain’t gonna turn out well for ya!

Did Biden’s statement mean he plans to murder any black person who doesn’t vote for him?
Probably.
Should the military be sent to stop him?
We should consider it.

Last time I wore a mask, I got a big bag of candy. If you want me to wear a mask, give me candy. That’s my policy.

We should reopen the economy so everyone has more money to buy my books. Just put your hands over your mouths so you don’t give each other the ‘rona.

Man, marketing is hard. Just buy my book, ya dummies!

Man, marketing my books is annoying. It’s like trying to force-feed a dog steak. “You’re really going to enjoy this and thank me for it later, you stupid mutt!”

I decided I finally needed to trim my beard, but I took off too much. I’m so new to this. I’m just learning my optimal beard length, and apparently it’s much longer than 7mm.
I have never tried to grow it out before. I just assumed it would only be a patchy mess, but I found out it actually fills out nicely after a certain point. I’m just learning how to maintain it. My father never had facial hair, so I’ve received no instructions on it.

I don’t identify as a libertarian, but I don’t think I have any views left that disqualify me as a libertarian.

Kids’ tee-ball was finally canceled. They were going to finish the spring season in June (it’s been on pause since Spring Break), but they just announced it’s canceled. We’ll see what happens come fall ball time.

I still don’t get those people who think it’s wrong to be a landlord. How over-privileged do you have to be to think you deserve housing for free?
Like what kind of free housing? A mud hut? Or do you think you deserve electricity and indoor plumbing—things 99% of people throughout human never had.
Bunch of spoiled rich kids who convinced themselves they deserve all their luxuries.

The only one taking money from you for your housing who doesn’t deserve it is the government.

Internet, plentiful food, modern medicine, electricity, indoor plumbing—you don’t deserve any of those things. Those are thing you magically got by being born in the modern era, but no one owes them to you. You start thinking you deserve them, you’re going to lose them.

Superego is my attempt at serious writing, but I think my seriousness level tops out at like an episode of Firefly.

I’ll say the same thing about Trump golfing I said about Obama golfing: There isn’t anything I’d rather them be doing.
In fact, if we had a president who did nothing but golf, he’d be the best president since Coolidge.

“Hmm. Should I vote for the obnoxious garbage fire or should I vote for the side that’s made it clear they despise me and want bad things to happen to me?”
Democracy is fun.

My 4yo daughter suddenly exclaimed the other day: “Uh oh. I think I hate the government.”
Way too young for her to suddenly become a libertarian.

Winchester loves pulling himself to standing now. And climbing. If the stairs aren’t blocked, he is gone.
And he thinks the word “No!” is a very funny word. And the louder we yell it, the funnier.

My older son drew me this. I asked what his methodology was to determine I’m the number one dad, but he didn’t have a good answer.
I don’t think this is official.

Much better would be to give me something that said “#23 Dad.” That would have made it seem like there was an official ranking and I ranked really high.

Was it late on a Friday when they named the essential vitamins?
“They’re called uh… vitamins A, B, C, and D. Let’s go get beers.”

I don’t know what you say on Memorial Day. It’s certainly not “Happy Memorial Day.” It’s more of a reflective day. Now, I always think of my father who passed away in 2012 from ailments associated with Agent Orange exposure.
I hope with current circumstances, we’d be a bit more reflective on how our current civilization is not some guaranteed thing we all get automatically but is something bought with much work and sacrifice. All that’s required of most is simply to appreciate that.

If you want some free reading, you can check out Superego: Personality Test, a short story prequel to Superego focusing on fan-favorite Dip, Rico’s AI personal assistant.

I’ve never gotten in a twitter argument. I just make arguments that are just too powerful for people to disagree with me.

As much as I like writing short humor pieces, I think novel writing is my favorite. There’s nothing quite like getting a whole plot to come together with barely having anyone at all act completely out of character.

I’m excited for SpaceX. It’s nice to have something forward-looking right now.
Maybe my son can grow up to be a commander in Space Force and fight… I dunno, rocks like in that game Asteroids.
But seriously, I got four kids and I’m tired of all the great stories about space ending with “Ask Grandma about it.”

I don’t really get the mask resistance. If wearing masks helps make people comfortable about opening up sooner, then it’s a no-brainer to me.
It seems like the people arguing masks don’t do anything would be those wanting the entire country to stay closed.

“The virus is still out there and it’s going to kill us!”
“Nah, man. I got this piece of cloth. We’re good now.”

To me, wearing a mask just seemed like a nice thing to do as we start to open up and make sure infections are still falling, but apparently it’s become this dumb political thing.
I’m one of those who thought people were too docile in the whole “Hey, we’re shutting everything down, including churches!” which I don’t think the government has the authority to do, but I hope we all choose to do things that make it easier for each other to get through this.

I don’t see this Twitter fact-checking tweets leading in a good direction unless they just red-flag every single tweet by a politician.

Can’t wait for Twitter to flag a lie from a politician on the left and then see a bunch of people on the left squeal like stuck pigs.

I can’t believe Trump finally said something on Twitter that wasn’t true.

I just don’t get how anyone at Twitter thought singling out Trump’s tweets for fact checks will do anything other than end poorly.

Trump oversees a booming economy.
Trump oversees a crashing economy.
Trump starts a war.
Trump brings about world peace.
Trump cures cancer.
Trump downs a puppy for fun.
I think we know by now none of these things will move his approval rating more than 2-3 points.

Something that was pretty sad to me was seeing someone in Hong Kong pleading with Trump to do something, saying he’s their only hope. I’m glad that in the U.S. we never have to rely on the U.S. president for anything.
That said, I hope Trump steps up. That would be nice.

Trump could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot somebody and not lose any voters. Obama could have done the same thing and only FOX News would report on it while the other new stations said, “HiS onLY sCanDaL wAs WeARiNg a TaN sUiT.”

I’ve made plenty of pointers to pointers, but I don’t think I’ve ever made a pointer to a pointer to a pointer. That would be like Inception.

If you think there is a scientist who can answer when we should open the country up again, then you have no idea what science is and what its limitations are.

Bezos having a trillion dollars affects me as much as Bezos having a billion dollars which affects me as much as Bezos having eight dollars.

Don’t socialists need even more billionaires like Bezos to be nearly trillionaires so they actually can fund all their ideas by just taxing billionaires?
Right now, you could do 100% tax on the wealth of billionaires and that maybe funds the current budget for about 8 or 9 months. You need way richer billionaires — multi-trillionaires even — if you want to fund everything by taxing them.

It’s my oldest son’s 7th birthday so my wife made him a space alien cake because he likes Harry Potter or whatever.

Tired: #BelieveWomen
Wired: #DestroyWomen

I need to learn how to pronounce “Taika Waititi” so I can stop referring to him as “The Thor: Ragnarok director.” Then again, I once taught myself a mnemonic to remember how to pronounce “Shyamalan,” and where did that get me?

Mnemonic for remembering how to pronounce M. Night Shyamalan’s last name:
A redneck was out on his porch drinking beers with the king of Iran. Suddenly, a meteorite crashes right in front of his house. The redneck jumps to his feet, drops his beer, and shouts, “Shah! Muh lawn!”

Preacher (via Zoom): “Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins and came back to life?”
My 7yo son, sitting on the couch and not looking up from his Art of Legend of Zelda book: “Yes.”

Those “billionaires should not exist” people are like socialist Karens. Most people don’t care about billionaires, but they’re calling the police and saying, “Someone has way more money than me and you have to do something about it!”

Okay, so that Gloomhaven is not only quite a bit overwhelming with all the rules, but it is also really, really hard.

After all this, Texas is going to need to flatten the curve of Californians moving to Texas. Texas can absorb a lot more people from Texas, but not all at once. It needs to be spread out to keep the state safe.

ME: “Ooh. Look at the great prices on these games.”
BRAIN: “Come on. You’ve owned that new Star Wars game for months and still haven’t had time to play it.”
ME: “I can get Far Cry 5 for $5.”
BRAIN: “That is a really good deal.”

The U.N. sent in a special peacekeeping force to stop me since I keep using gendered language like “sexy dames,” but I shouted very loudly and scared them off.

I say we should push back and gender even more words.
Surgeonman
Presidude
Maleman Letter Carrier

The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic was much more realistic as their masks actually served a function since they all wore the same color mask. That way you could never be sure which ninja turtle punched you in the face — at least not enough to hold up in court.

“break” and “continue” always seem a bit like cheating. Might as well through in a goto.
There is such an aversion to using goto in a structured language, but when you compile it, the assembly code is nothing but.

My 9yo daughter watching The Mandalorian doc on Disney+: “They’re all ‘Here’s why we did this. Here’s the story we want. Here’s the feel we’re going for.’ I JUST WANT TO KNOW HOW THEY DID BABY YODA!”

The people who were going after Kavanaugh now saying they never said “Believe all women” is as textbook a case of gaslighting as you will ever see.

I still don’t know the difference between a “char” and an “unsigned char” and cast them back and forth with reckless abandon. A is A, man.
I’m guessing it would make a difference if you bit shifted them, but that’s all I can think of. And I guess in some math it would make a difference, but to me a char is a byte and I ain’t doing algebra with it.
I’d pretty much always just use uint8_t if they weren’t so annoying to type.

“Science says spin around.”
everyone spins around
“Science says cluck like a chicken.”
everyone clucks like a chicken
“Science says hop on one foot.”
everyone hops on one foot
“Stop!”
a few stop
“Ha! Science didn’t say!”

Barely understanding what I’m working on and getting it working anyway is what makes me both a brilliant engineer and a bad one.

Science was once something other than a fetish item for dumb people.

UDP is fun. It’s sending packets on the network without out a net. And they’re constantly falling off the wire.

The nine “Skywalker Saga” movies ranked:
1. The Empire Strikes Strikes Back
2. Star Wars
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Force Awakens
5. Rise of the Skywalker
6. The Last Jedi
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. Attack of the Clones
9. The Phantom Menace

If you’re not for ending city life, you just want people to die.

I assume our six-foot distancing rule is safer than Britain’s weird two-meter rule.

This is like Game of Thrones; I can’t keep track of all the characters in the Trump presidency. I mean, I know I’ve heard the name “Michael Flynn” before, but I can’t remember what his story is.

I’m glad they exonerated Flynn. He had nothing to do with his father’s meth empire.

Is there anyone who sees trying to get the phrase “Trump virus” or “Trump depression” going as anything other than naked politics by soulless partisans?
All they’re doing is making it clear Trump takes things more seriously than they do.

I liked the Seinfeld Netflix special. It started out slow — where I was like “Uh oh. He’s lost it.” — as he was doing a bit I think was only funny if you were in the audience. After that, it was classic Seinfeld.

Remember to give a lot of leeway to people on both sides — those freaking out about the lockdown and those freaking out about reopening. It’s not like any of us has dealt with something like this before and has some standard script to follow.

Weird how knowing one of the people who killed Ahmaud Arbery is a retired police officer helps it make sense to me, because first reaction was “Who in the world would think an armed posse is the response to someone looking around a construction site?” And then I was like, “Oh.”

Elon Musk wants to bring more jobs to Texas? But we already have too many darn jobs here because of our friendly business environment and low of cost of living. I just don’t know. Maybe if he sends me a Tesla, he can win me over.

It is little bit depressing that we have to spend time again explaining why racism is bad, due process is good, socialism is bad, and free speech is good. I thought we covered all this a while ago and moved on to new things.

Eventually California will have extremely rich people and homeless people and no one else.

“If the guy was so innocent, why did he stab me after I tried to strangle him?”

I think part of what’s caused people to jump to conclusions on Ahmaud Arbery is that the attempts at defense of the McMichaels has been so terrible that it only makes it look worse.
“Here’s video of Arbery going for the gun!”
“Wow. Those guys came at Arbery like complete psychopaths.”
“No, that’s not… And here’s video of him committing burglary!”
“Wow. That video proves he was killed for absolutely nothing.”
“No… he committed burglary of the heart!”

Elon Musk is probably the closing thing we have to a real-life Rick from Rick & Morty.

You can’t spend your way out of people not working. That’s not how a country’s wealth works.

Next playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2 I’m going to have Arthur Morgan where his mask even when I’m not robbing so as not to give TB to anyone else.

I’m actually getting a little worried hearing about all the existing characters that will be in The Mandalorian season 2. It was kind of nice being it’s own little thing.

When people are all “If it saves one life…” I start to fear we’re going to do this every flu season.
The full tradeoffs of opening versus staying shut down is a complex problem, and it’s foolish to put all that decisionmaking in the hands of a small number of fallible people.

Amash is running for president?
We already have Trump and Biden. How entitled do you have to be to think people deserve a third option?

All this pointing out hypocrisy is tiresome. Can’t journalists just admit they’re partisans working to help one side?

“You’re treating these two stories inconsistently. Why?”
“Well, one helps my preferred political party and the other goes against.”
“Oh. I guess that makes sense.”

TRUMP: “Have we tried smoking the virus out?”
BRIX: “Excuse me?”
TRUMP: “I’m asking have you studied settings small fires inside of people?”
BRIX: “Small fires?”
TRUMP: “Like the old man says: ‘Dodongo dislikes smoke.'”
BRIX: “Wha… What?”

I’m not worried about the singularity, but I am worried about what comes after it — the double-arity.

You can square this circle with Biden. Everyone just needs to apologize to Kavanaugh.

2020 is shaping up to be the least important presidential election of our lifetime. It’s really not worth getting bent out of shape about regardless of who wins. So chill and be cool like me. I mean, you can’t be as cool as me, but I’m an ideal you can strive for.

North Korea has put out photographic evidence that Kim Jong Un’s lookalike still alive.

If you want the press to state it as a fact when Trump is lying, they should also just state it as a fact that the Democrats are giant hypocrites on the Tara Reade issue.

My wife got us all dressed up in church clothes for couch church but then decided to leave the camera off of the Zoom meeting since our living room was messy. But God knew we fancy.

The left are like: “Oh yeah, I completely forgot I’m supposed to pretend I think Bush is basically Hitler.”

Before you make something a law, ask yourself, “Am I willing to shoot someone in the face over this?” Because it will be enforced by people with guns.

My advice for Democrats accused of hypocrisy on Kavanaugh versus Biden: Just apologize on how you treated Kavanaugh or shut up. Anything else makes you look like a ginormous tool.

It’s hard to think of a better director to announce for a Star Wars movie than Taika Waititi. I mean, he already directed the season 1 Mandalorian finale; that he can create great Star Wars isn’t even theoretical.

It would be perfectly cromulent for citizens to order a serving governor to have to remain in his or her house, but there is no authority for the other way around.
To be a good American, you have to question these things. It being a crisis is no excuse not to. Would have been nice if during WWII more people were like, “You have no authority to round up law abiding citizens into camps.”

I guess the question is when do we worry more about the unknown effects of keeping the economy shut down this long versus the more known effects of the coronavirus?

I never watched Little House on the Prairie as a kid, but my kids are really into it now.
“Daddy, Laura sold her pony to buy her mother a stove!”
“I don’t know who that is and I don’t care.”

Very religious show. For many Americans, religion is a very important part of their lives, but it seems like you rarely get TV characters like that. Last ones I can think of are Shirley from Community and maybe Daredevil.

A big problem with much of the left is that central to them is this pose that’s what’s motivating them is they really really care about others, but the loudest ones are such blatant a-holes it’s hard to buy that they actually care about anyone.
It’s not a small thing to make it look like Trump cares about the common man more.

If universities have these billion-dollar endowments, there’s the first place to go if you think someone else should be paying off these student loans.

You don’t actually know what’s going to happen and being really sure makes you dumb.

My main fear from the total shutdown of the economy is all the things that will happen that no one is going to predict because we’ve never done this before.

Never trust a libertarian who doesn’t make fun of libertarians.

So what are the estimates on how many this economic shut down will kill?

People claim Trump has made lots of mistakes in his handling of the coronavirus, but you tell them to name them, they just turn away and say nothing.
Oh, wait. That’s because they’re going to get their giant list.

I’m tired of all these ungrateful, whiny socialists ragging on Tom Nook and his loans. If it weren’t for him, you’d never be able to get to have a house on a deserted island in the first place.

It’s really like some journalists wake up each day going “How can I make the public less informed?”

You’d think being less horrible than Trump would be the easiest thing in the world, but going by his opponents, there is nothing more difficult. It’s even harder than not starting a new war in the Middle East.

I just realized I can only vaguely remember what Trump was impeached for. No one’s even brought it up since.
I could remember the details after thinking about it for a minute, but it wasn’t like how “Monica Lewinsky” immediately pops to mind when you think of Clinton. I don’t think the impeachment is even going to make the top 10 in most memorable things about the Trump presidency.
At least not THAT impeachment.

Some people get annoyed at how anti-Trump I am, and I understand because there are people I get annoyed at for how anti-Trump they are.
But I’m the right amount of anti-Trump. If you’re against Trump any more or any less than me, there’s something wrong with you.

I keep thinking of how effective Trump could be if he had a modicum of self-control, but then we also probably never would have heard of him.

Spending a day debating whether Trump did or didn’t tell people to inject bleach kind of does feel like things are getting back to normal.

Wait. I’m confused. Did Trump tell people to drink bleach or inject bleach? Because those are two very different things — one completely idiotic and the other absolutely brilliant.

I’m getting a little tired of people who couldn’t successfully follow an episode of Mr. Wizard talking about other people “rejecting science.”

I think everyone is going to remember this as the year Quibi was launched.

My 4yo used her allowance to buy herself a Rey doll. It’s like a Barbie doll, but comes with a gun.
Yes, I’m very happy my 4yo daughter is into Star Wars… even if it’s the new trilogy.

Everyone thought Rey’s last name was Sue, but it ends up it was Palpatine.

Was the name “Palpatine” ever said in the original trilogy? I somehow knew that name before the prequels, but I don’t remember from where.
Could the name have been on the action figure? I remember my parents mailing proofs of purchase to get me a Emperor action figure. That’s when I first learned what a “week” was in that it would take 6 to 8 weeks for it to arrive.
That brings up another old memory. I never got it, but I remember ads for how you could mail in to get an Anakin Skywalker action figure — but Sebastian Shaw Anakin. That one doesn’t really fit in canon anymore, does it?

“During these uncertain times, have a box of Cheez-Its.”

*Kim Jong Un’s sister takes over*
American Feminists: “Yas! Slay Queen!”
*Kim Yo-jong slays dissidents*

I was throwing a football around with my kids out back, and I my first thought was, “This is just like from the movie The Room.”
“Oh hai, offspring!”

I hate when my kids lie, such as saying they don’t like being tickled. They get tickled for that.

I think a difference between Kavanaugh and Biden is there wasn’t one accusation from the decades of Kavanaugh’s professional life while the accusations against Biden go along with his public creepy behavior.
Whether these accusations will matter with Biden running against Trump is another matter, but the whole thing shows the hypocrisy of the partisans who pretended to care about the accusations against Kavanaugh (if anyone doubted that).

Journalists are not “enemies of the people” — at least not all people. Democrats are people, and journalists will do absolutely anything for them.
I just mean they’re not betraying us to the ants or something.

“Fine” is a complicated word. It can mean “not great” (“How’s the food?” “It’s fine.”) or great (“fine dining”) based on context. It’s its own opposite.
“You’re fine.” can mean “You’re okay.” or “You’re beautiful.” simply based on inflection.

4yo holds up a magnet that is holding onto a metal bracket
4yo: “Look, Daddy! Magnet sticks to metal!”
ME: “Wow. How does it do that?”
4yo: “Um… The Force.”

Saying there are limits to freedom of speech is hate speech and you could go to jail for it.

With this ongoing pandemic and all the misinformation out there, it’s nice how journalists are constantly informing us how much they don’t like Trump.

Can’t wait until we get rid of that obnoxious, incompetent idiot Trump and replace him with an incompetent idiot who is marginally less obnoxious though most likely more pompous.

Graphics card benchmarks are always about FPS when playing Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto V with ultra settings, but I want to know what FPS it gets when you win at Solitaire.

Had to block a few people because they kept responding to everything I say with praise of how smart and right I am. I get enough of that in the real world; I don’t that online too.

Rights > “Science”

I don’t know how people will react when given the all-clear. In places where basically no one knows anyone who got sick and this is mainly theoretical, I can see people going “I got my mask and I wash my hands; I’ll be fine.”
New York, though, I could see people being more scared. Same for some other cities.

It’s people who don’t take the virus seriously versus people who don’t take the consequence of shutting everything down seriously.

I think one thing we learn from all the scientific models about coronavirus infections that also relate to climate change is that when scientists try to put specific numbers on predictions involving complex factors, they’re mainly talking out their posteriors.
I mean, seeing all the deaths with the shutdown, obviously, we’d have a much much larger numbers without these precautions, but all the models quoting specific numbers seem to have no basis in reality.

Can you believe Tommy Boy only has a 42% on RottenTomatoes?

There seems to be a group of people who were actively rooting for as many infections and deaths as possible so they could attack Trump and are now ridiculing the idea of reopening things any time in the next decade.

How did they get babies to eat before the invention of the airplane?

Some people seem to think this pandemic shows how we need a “bigger safety net,” but I don’t know of a safety net that can get people through nobody working unless that safety net is giant silos full of food.
You can’t eat money. And since most of it isn’t printed anymore, you can’t even heat your house with it.
You have to produce wealth first to be able to share it.

If only the whole world could be run by we Gen Xers, the only good generation alive.

So what’s the change of this radically changing cities? I’m thinking more people will be working remotely (no need to live near a city) and more fear of being tightly packed.

A big problem with the whole “go out as little as possible” is that supermarkets are now always out of half the stuff you need.
My wife was able to snag a package of eight rolls of single-ply toilet paper today. That was our first toilet paper purchase since before this all happened as we just happened to get our usual big package from Costco that usually lasts about 6 weeks.
The supply chain needs to make a lot of adjustments to this many people staying from home, but I don’t know if we plan to stay this way long enough for that and prices aren’t going up to motivate those changes.

I’m very curious to get some real numbers on Trolls World Tour. It’s the first big release to go straight to streaming, and how well it did could have a lot of implications for the future.

If you aren’t pushing back at least somewhat against all these new edicts from government telling people what they can and can’t do, you’re being a bad American.

Millennials will all be seniors by the time I master spelling “Millennials.”

Another Trump term sounds great, but so does a President Biden administration. I don’t know how I’m supposed to choose. I think I’ll just have to sit out the presidential election.

Some great evidence that I’m quite wise is that while I loved the pilot for The Walking Dead, I grew bored by the end of the six episode season one and never watched it again.

Am I a fun dad? Well, I say “yogurt” with the same inflection they say “Yo! Joe!” during the GI Joe cartoon title song, so you tell me.

Last time I cried, I was 5yo and had just been shot in the leg. My father immediately slapped me and said, “Be a man!”
I honestly can’t remember full out crying since I was a little kid. I have found myself more vulnerable to tearing up a bit since I had kids of my own. Last time was when the song “Running for So Long” played over the end credits to Peanut Butter Falcon.
Stoicism is a positive aspect of masculinity. Part of the job of a father is project a sense of stability for his family, and extreme emotions don’t do that.

I’m very in touch with my emotions. It’s easy because I have so few of them.

I think a problem with many on the left is they are used to being praised for their hatred and get surprised when something else happens.

I think I like Rise of the Skywalker better each time I watch it. It’s a big, dumb, earnest mess of Star Wars.
It also shows what a misstep it was to separate Finn and Rey for all of The Last Jedi, especially after they had that nice character arc (“You came back for me!”) in Force Awakens.

Partisans end up having to root for things being a big disaster because, if they aren’t, it’s good for Trump. The lesson is do all you can to avoid being a partisan.

Everyone really wants to hear from more millionaire celebrities how easy it is to wait this out.

My 6yo son saw me watching a video of Dan Crenshaw.
“Is that a pirate?”

“No. Politicians primarily steal on land.”

Started watching Devs — completely blind about it other than I knew Nick Offerman is in it — and near the beginning, two people started talking about a subject I knew (RSA vs. elliptic curve). I really braced myself, but they didn’t say anything too dumb.

The well-known FACT that it’s illegal to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater as never been applied more broadly. Perfectly legal: Yelling “Fire!” in a crowded stadium.
Also legal: Yelling “Poison gas!” in a crowded theater.
For it to be illegal, it must be a theater and “Fire!”

How many people care about climate change right now? We can barely go out and see the climate.

They’re taking our jobs and not letting us get haircuts.
The government is FORCING US TO BECOME LAZY HIPPIES!

Is everyone prepared if places reopen and it isn’t a catastrophe?

As a Christian, I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. We’re all sinners and we’re all beloved children of God.
Which also means, comedy-wise, I can’t punch down.

People like to have a religious faith in “experts” in times like this, but be wary giving anyone too much power or any predictions made on top of lots of complex factors.

Trump suspending immigration is pretty awful, but at the same time I’m kind of baffled at the thought of anyone immigrating right now.

Despite legislation, the minimum wage is and always will be $0 an hour.
It can be less than that, though, if you’re starting your own business.

The tradeoffs for reopening versus continuing to shutdown is one of those extremely complex things I don’t trust any expert on and think should be as localized as much as possible.

I see Beto is going on an angry rant. Did they fill in his skate park with sand?

Everyone agrees Little House on the Prairie jumped the shark when it added the wise-cracking robot.

I guess New York has been pretty successful. You don’t hear anyone talk about York Classic anymore.
I don’t know a thing about regular Jersey, but I’m just going to assume it’s leagues better than New Jersey.

Was always worried about how Jimmy was going to destroy Kim, and now I’m wondering if I was worried about the wrong thing. #BetterCallSaul

When the government hunts down and executes COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, they count that as deaths from COVID-19.

What Bernie Sanders achieved with his campaign was to prove his success in 2016 was just because people hated Hillary so much.

Once again, Bernie Bros, it’s time for you to admit that the Democratic establishment is smarter and better than you. Do not rebel against them in any way; that would destroy them.

If you put a bunch of hopes onto a politician, you deserve to be very disappointed.

People, calm down. They’re all terrible candidates with terrible ideas, and if you got excited for any of them, you’re dumb and everything that’s wrong with this country.

I’m still so surprised Disney+ didn’t have at least one of the Marvel series ready for launch. All they’ve had for original programming is the Mandalorian and a bunch of other shows no one finds worth talking about.

I was trying to explain silent movies to my kids, and I realized it didn’t make any sense to me. They had a phonograph at the time; why not just sync that up? It would take finesse, like syncing a RiffTrax with a DVD, but you assume people would hack it.
So it doesn’t make any sense. Thus, I don’t believe in silent movies.

I’m curious how many people will get this: What’s a similarity between Alien 3 and the 2nd made for TV Ewok movie (Ewoks: The Battle for Endor)?
The answer I’m looking for is both completely nullify the achievements of the previous movie (“I need to save Newt!” “We need to save our parents!”) by opening by killing off the people who the previous movie was about saving.
Maybe there are other sequels that are examples of that, but Alien 3 and Ewoks: The Battle For Endor are the only examples I know.

void Sleep(
DWORD dwMilliseconds
);
A function for magically fixing asynchronous issues.

When seeking treatment for depression, you can help move things along by disclosing ahead of time if you are the great clown Pagliacci.

Took a bit of suspension of belief for Brooklyn 99 this week as it was supposed to take place this April, but they were talking about things other than coronavirus.

My daughter was filling in her own history timeline and put coronavirus for 2020.
“That’s definitely the biggest thing for this year.”
Oh, man, I hope that’s true.

Training a baby is very easy if you are a good parent. I just tell my baby what things I don’t want him to touch and he studiously avoids them because he respects me.
It’s the same with my older children. Once, one of them whined and I told him, “I do not care for that. Never do that again.”
And he said, “Yes, father,” and never whined again. If you are a good parent, children will respect you.

RE: OANN, I don’t get needing a more right-wing alternative to FOX News, but people also want more left-wing alternatives to CNN and NBC News, so I guess there’s a market.

I guess my favorite Bible verse going from how often I quote it is “Am I my brother’s keeper?” I use some variation of that anytime someone asks me where something is.
“Where’s the baby?”
“Am I the baby’s keeper?”
“Yes!”

I love Trump’s “like a dog” formulation.
“He was thrown out LIKE A DOG!”
“He was fired LIKE A DOG!”
“He failed to account for a variety of complex factors when formulating his model LIKE A DOG!”

Many think the NYT is often hypocritical, but they really only have one principle — “blue good, red bad” — and they are never hypocritical about that.

Maybe someone should give those governors a puzzle or something so they have something else to do other than decide what items people are allowed to buy.

Trolls World Tour was cute, though it feels weird paying $20 for a rental. Kids are already rewatching it, though, so we’ll get our money’s worth.

If this coronavirus is really a big nothing and people are just playing it up, wouldn’t Trump have to be in on the conspiracy at this point?

I’m very resistant to looking at paying people who want to work but can’t as charity. So currently we have our housekeeper “on retainer.”
I mean, there is self-interest in this. I would prefer all the services and businesses I like to still be around when all this is over.

This pandemic is showing a failure of capitalism in that it requires people to work. Socialism is superior in that no one needs to work as everything is funded by heavily taxing five billionaires.

I listen to a number of econ podcasts, but I’m way behind so I’m currently listening to ones from early January. I’m excited to hear them catch up to where we are!

If journalists thought that one retweet meant Trump was planning to fire Dr. Fauci, then I can only conclude journalists are far dumber than the average American. If so, what’s the point of them?
I thought the point of them was to give us info we don’t know, but instead we’re the ones constantly having to educate them when they’re baffled by simple things.

I love my Baby Yoda tshirt, but it’s always trouble. Today, every time I tried to hand the baby back to my wife so I could get back to work, he’d start crying as he wanted to keep sitting in my lap and stare at Baby Yoda.

So what do I do with the coronavirus stimulus money? That’s a pretty big chunk of change, but so far my family hasn’t been financially affected by all this.

I think the president is really handling this well. I think the press is doing a great job holding him accountable. I think everyone else is knocking it out of the park in reacting to things in a calm, measured way. And if I can praise myself, I think I’m excelling at dry sarcasm.

Timothée Chalamet. Ansel Elgort. I don’t know where these names are coming from, but they need to stop.

The problem with direct deposit of the stimulus checks is that Trump misses an opportunity to send everyone a check with him smiling and giving a big thumbs up on it.

My main problem with Little House on the Prarie as a kid was I couldn’t get through the title without falling asleep. Hard to think of a more boring name for a show. Certainly doesn’t promise as much excitement as “Airwolf.”

I’m baffled by the people acting like what’s happening exposes some sort of fatal flaw in capitalism. That’s like thinking it’s a fatal flaw that a car won’t run without gas.

Anyone who thinks rent is theft should be given a right to free housing — that housing being a little mud hut. If they complain, they should have that taken away for being a whiny entitled brat.

RE China, it’s possible to oppose Trump without being useful idiots to even worse people.

How about before you criticize people who are helping for being too Christian or criticize Mark Zuckerberg for not donating enough millions, you show receipts that you did absolutely anything to help anyone. Anything.

“Someone once said ‘Don’t try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgements.’”
“Who said that?”
“You did. And it’s gendered and patriarchal. That’s why in the future you’re canceled. Anyway, this is all my way of saying I hate you.”

I’m only 3 episodes into Tiger King, so maybe I’m missing something, but can’t someone make some sort of cheap “tiger chow” that’s like what you buy house cats? House cats’ diet can’t be that different.

Now seems as good a time as any to grow a mullet.

So much different with kids shows how nothing needs an origin story. Like in a show for adults, if there’s a guy with a skeleton face, you want to know how he got that way. But never once as a kid did I even think to ask any questions about Skeletor.

I’m very curious what would have happened had the first time supermarkets ran out of toilet paper, they then raised prices to meet parity with demand.
It’s weird. We’ve decided that scarcity for everyone is more moral than raising prices. But bad things happen when essentials are priced far below their actual value.

The politicians in Vermont who came up with a list of things they thought were “essential” that retailers are only allowed to sell should be put in prison for a year with instructions to spend the time figuring out what they did wrong.

I think that amount of young people who like socialism is less a failure to teach economics than a failure to teach morality. You’re not going to listen to reason when you feel that entitled.

I think the most American, patriotic act possible would be to beat a Nazi to death with a Communist.

If Hillary were president, this never would have happened. She would have used dark magic to stop the coronavirus… though later the demon lord Azeroth would extract a terrible price.

Perhaps we should rethink our relationship with super-evil governments like China’s and maybe a few others.

Probably the biggest flaw of democracy is it seems to select for sociopaths and you’ll only get someone really fit for high office by accident (like Coolidge).
The advantage of our system is though our leaders are pretty much always terrible, it diffuses their power.
The people who are really fit to lead are the ones who would never seek it out. That’s why you can only ever get good leaders in a hereditary monarchy where the leader also has no choice.
Still, our system with only terrible leaders with less power outperforms that one.
In the Book of Samuel, God warned against having any kings at all (perhaps the most libertarian part of the Bible). If only we could get that system to work. I guess we would need a judge to arise to lead us out of this pickle.

“You’re really calling the cops over that? You know what they say: ‘Snitches get stitches.'”
“Can I… can I get a different 911 operator?”

Other than all the things going horribly wrong, things are going pretty well.

If aliens attacked, do you think we’d all band together then or would there be a bunch of people going “Let’s call it the Trump Alien Attack!”?

Watched Lego Movie 2 with the kids today (part of that free HBO). I didn’t hear much about it when it came out, but it was great! I love the “Not Evil” song.

Going to tell my grandkids about the deadly flu pandemic where I had to stay at home and watch streaming TV while having food delivered.

How about as a compromise, our only retaliation against China will be to imprison President Xi, but in prison we’ll give him all the honeypots he can eat.

I told my kids their punishment was no more screens for the rest of the decade. My 9yo argued that only meant no screens until 2021, and I’m kind of proud for her being that pedantic.

As I watch reporters criticize a President Trump for not being fascist enough during a pandemic, I realize reality has now gone so ridiculous it’s no longer a comedy and instead is some weird, abstract art house film.

I think I like Pandemic Legacy Season 2 even better than the first (just finished July). While in Season 1 it could be a little boring to repeat a month as nothing big would change, big rule changes can happen at any time in Season 2.

One of the biggest causes of tension right now in Better Call Saul is you have no idea how Kim Wexler is going to react in any situation.
In a way, she’s a good match for Jimmy. But you’re also pretty certain he’s going to eventually destroy her.

I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been to the Hague. I ordered the cheese fries. They said I must have confused them with something else. What is going on?

When I put the patch on my 4yo eye to help correct her lazy eye, I call it “Fury Time” since it make her look like Nick Fury. Also, it makes her mad.
She doesn’t know who Nick Fury is.

Does it ever bother you that chimpanzees don’t have mustaches?

What’s the most dangerous animal?
Man.
What’s the second most dangerous animal?
Centaurs. Because they’re half man.

Mammals that eat ants are weird. You got an anteater that spiky and lays eggs (echidnas) and an anteater that a big chunky, scaly lizard (pangolin). So don’t eat ants or you’re going to be a weirdo.

Why don’t the Democrats just admit Biden is a powerful, unstoppable force and end the primary?

I believe all women. Unless I don’t like what they’re saying.
I have the same policy with men. And macaws.

The same people went from “Trump’s a fascist and must be stopped at any cost!” to “Whoa! You guys are getting a little touchy about suddenly losing all your rights.” pretty quick.

I think the moon is much cooler when you can see it during the day when it’s just this huge rock floating up there in the sky. At night, though, it’s this weird glowy thing.

Just got Rise of the Skywalker on DVD and my 4yo daughter is way too excited to rewatch that mess.

My 4yo daughter’s ranking of Star Wars characters:
1. Rey
2. Ben Solo
3. Leia
4. Darth Vader
5. Anakin (really? also, redundant)
6. Obi-Wan
7. Finn
8. Ashoka Tano

Though Rise of the Skywalker is a mess and makes no sense, it’s a fun mess. I guess that makes it like Return of the Jedi.

I want to be like Jesus, so I never apologize.
I mean, I assume Jesus never apologized since he never did anything wrong. I guess I could also never do anything wrong to be like Jesus, but I think when trying to be more Christ-like, you need to be realistic.

So how are toilet paper manufactures handling this toilet paper stupidity? It seems like at some point someone has to raise prices until supply and demand stabilize.
Bad things happen when things are priced below their actual value, and right now toilet paper (and some other goods) are obviously priced well below their actual market value.

I thought that Marvel New Warriors thing was a lame joke some right-winger made up.

I can’t believe we actually need the government to give a giant handout and they can’t figure it out. They’re like that character from the Lego Movie who wants nothing other than to build a spaceship and you finally say, “Okay. We need a spaceship.” and he just freezes.

What if we need to eat more bats until we find the bat with the cure in it?

The government is going to send everyone enough money to buy an AR-15 — a nice one with like a scope!

So do socialist just hate all landlords?
I swear, there has never been anyone in all of human history more entitled and privileged than socialists in first world countries.

People don’t just need money. They need work.

Just got in the mail my renewed concealed carry permit, which is kind of ironic.

Rooting for Trump to fail right now is just plain evil.
Even the dimmest view of Trump has to admit a lot more people would be hurt now by Trump failing now than by him serving a second term.

Is anyone actually surprised by the jobless claims? Did you hear about the pandemic?

The proper name is “the Chinese Spanish Flu.”

Though completing the census sounds fun, don’t do it! It’s a trick by the government to try and count everyone!
I’m tired of these clearly unconstitutional government overreaches.

Dogs who tilt your head sideways when you don’t understand things, has that every worked?
“Oh. Now that I rotated everything twenty degrees, it’s all clear to me.”

A lot of people excited about reporting USA is supposedly the most coronavirus cases (believing China’s numbers).
Such weird times.

The point of journalism is to be objective and report the news, which they suck at. But instead journalists seem to think their job is to influence people to their point of view. Which they also suck at.

One of my favorite things right now is my 9yo daughter has started playing around on the piano until she figures out various video game theme songs. She now does a great version of the Legend of Zelda theme, Zelda’s Lullaby, and the Luigi’s Mansion theme.
Another favorite thing is that my 4yo, despite never having seen Arrested Development, does a pitch perfect imitation of Lucille being surprised by Gene Parmesan that she does whenever she’s excited by something.

Yeah, tough time for Biden campaign. Trump has this chance to look like a big hero and any time Biden speaks he just sounds like some random guy in the comments section going, “Here’s how I would have done it…”
I honestly don’t know what he can do that would actually help. It’s a tough hand for everybody.

In the darkest of times I cheer myself up by thinking of Hillary on election night 2016.

We’re showing our kids The Goonies. If they don’t like it, we’re getting new kids.

The Goonies was a good representation of how things were growing up for us Gen Xers. No helicopter parenting; instead we just ran around cave systems without supervision.

There’s no time right now to care about the sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden. We’ll get back to it in October.

I just tune out now when it’s reported what Trump just said. That’s because we have years now of him saying crazy stuff and also at least half the time the media is misrepresenting what he said. It’s pointless.

Libertarians are a bunch of psychopaths who think it’s possible for people to organize and work together without a big entity with lots of guns constantly threatening people with violence and imprisonment.

For some reason I have a lot of trouble with actors with three names. I just referred to “Patrick Neil Harrison,” and no matter how many movies he’s been in, I refer to that one guy as “that kid from 3rd Rock From the Sun” since I can never remember his name.

Zoom has been quite a blessing. Despite all this, our church can still meet together.
There are so many blessings like that of the modern age that it’s hard to keep track of them to be thankful.

The left needs to find a way to look less gleeful about the coronavirus thinking it’s an issue to use against Trump. The way things are going, Trump could completely screw things up and get re-elected because at least he’s not cheering on people dying.

There was no reason to jump on the “U.S. is number one in Coronavirus cases!” unless you’re so partisan it ruined your critical facilities.
It’s just another example of people thinking they have a great attack on Trump and then getting so over enthusiastic that they end up looking way worse than Trump.

Even if we’re yelling at each other about politics, we’re still all in this together. That’s being an American.

I love how all events confirm all my priors.

Trump could stab a man to death during a press conference, but if he then called a reporter a “doo-doo head,” that would be the lead story coming out of it.

No money in that relief bill should go to funding the arts unless it’s to ensure the next season of Baby Yoda isn’t delayed.

The way the news media is completely credulous about even the claims from brutal authoritarians in China because that currently goes with their partisan leanings is why I’m not looking forward to another Democrat as president.
The thing is, I don’t believe this grotesque media bias actually influences anyone. I doubt anyone is left trusting these people who don’t already drink the same Kool-Aid.

VidAngel has Tiger King. Maybe I can finally find out what everyone is talking about (my wife and I are very offended by Tigers so we were waiting for VidAngel so we could remove any images or references to them).

I dunno. I think for a free country dealing with a black swan like this, I don’t think we’ve done that terrible.

If the Trump press conference didn’t give people some new thing to yell at every day, they’d just be screaming at their cats.

“My grandma is trapped in a burning car and Trump is doing NOTHING!”
*Trump rushes to the burning car and pulls out grandma*
“Well, of course Trump saved her. She’s a RACIST!”

Journalists are convincing me that Trump doesn’t insult them enough.

I love my Baby Yoda tshirt, but it has some negatives. Random people will try to talk to me about it when I’m out and about (not a problem now), and my 1yo ignores me and instead tries to talk to the Baby Yoda on my shirt.

The only mask I have is a werewolf mask but I guess it’s better than nothing.

“Go to bed, sweetie. Mommy and Daddy are watching a show.”
“What are you watching?”
“A documentary about… tigers. Because we like to be educated.”

I’m glad this crisis is giving people more opportunity to mindlessly dunk on Trump over absolutely everything. That’s as helpful as that always is.

It’s become impossible to sort when Trump is being a buffoon from when journalists are being buffoons.

“I wish absolutely everything in the news wasn’t about Trump.”
*everything in the news becomes about the coronavirus*
“Oh no!”
*everything in the new becomes about Trump’s reaction to the coronavirus*
“Oh no no!”

I’m way ahead of all you suckers. I washed my hands over a year ago.

So how much worse does it have to get before everyone drops the stupid partisan politics? Because I’m actually kind of looking forward to that.

Ain’t nothing free. The question is always how do you have enough of supply and control costs, a question free markets are 1000x better at answering than the next best solution.
In my dream world, there would be a party answering the slouch towards socialism in health care saying, “We don’t want to be like the other countries. We want to be better” and putting forward a way to let markets work in health care, but alas.

I can’t do social-distancing. Everyone loves me.

D’oh. Had a Bee article pulled today because it was too similar to one from The Onion a few years ago. Got reamed by the chief. Threatened to take away my satire gun and badge.
I try to limit all my joke theft to The Simpsons.

Hey, baby, you up for some social-closening?

I’m just tired of this childish nonsense where you think you can say “Everyone should have this!” and then everyone magically gets it. The challenge is supply and cost, which is the challenge free markets excel at.
Having a free market in health care is a human right, but it’s long been infringed.

Free markets are a human right.

I know from the warnings about vaping that nicotine is addictive, but they never explain what’s bad about being addicted to nicotine other than you constantly needing to vape and thus look like a cheese bag.

The goal now is to be able to look back and say we all overreacted.

With everyone so gloomy, I feel like I need to come up with some hopeful satire, but that’s a hard code to crack. Detached and cynical is so much easier.

If you need tips on what to do other than watch sports, just talk to the nearest dork.

As someone who has worked from home for years, my main tip is to make sure your office door can be locked from the outside. Inevitably, you will go insane and you want to give your family some way to protect themselves.
Oh, and shower and dress before your work day or you’ll feel like a bum.

People have been so jumping a gun to blame Trump for a super plague he’s probably going to get a popularity boost if it’s anything under the worst predictions.
“Hey, he didn’t do as bad as they said.”

I wonder if you can get people to hoard something just by buying a lot of some random thing so people are like, “I better get some before they run out!” Like if you bought up 2/3rds of the WhiteOut.

“Daddy, can I have a hug?”
“No, I’m social distancing.”
‘What’s that mean?”
“Learn it from context. The context of me not hugging you.”
This is my opportunity to be that cold, aloof father like I’ve always seen on TV.

Is it ironic or apropos that this pandemic has finally given us time to finish playing Pandemic Season 1?

I’m not a very good liar. My main tip is to not say, “Yeah, that’s the ticket!” after making something up, but it’s nearly impossible.

The people using a temporary shortage during a pandemic to try and excuse the constant shortages in socialism are as morally despicable as racists. It is a choice to be that dumb and ignore the benefits of free markets and the hideousness of controlled economies.

This idea that all it takes to give everyone everything they need is to just pass a law saying people get that thing is like believing in Santa Claus. Unfortunately, we have a large segment of the population who are hurt and angry we won’t all just trust in Santa.

I don’t know who decided raising prices was a worse thing than scarcity, but I would hit that person with a stick if I could (a stick of at least six feet in length to maintain proper social distance).

Every day, 500 billion people die from student debt. With the amount of money Jeff Bezos spends on one yacht, we could get rid of all debt and each have a rocket jet pack.
If we confiscate all the wealth of billionaires, we can spend all day making terrible art as none of us will need to work again except for one guy we’ll have to enslave and make a janitor so things don’t get dirty. His name is Steve and we’ll all be programmed to hate him.
This is perfect socialism.

I’ve never disliked a politician’s politics so much I wished physical harm on him or her. I guess I’m just not as caring and passionate as other people.

If coronavirus is everywhere, why can’t we see it? That’s because the government tells us it’s “invisible” and will “kill us.” This sounds a lot like the last made up thing the government tried to scare us about, electricity.

My wife doesn’t like how I growl “Get over here!” every time I grab the baby… even though it’s a pitch perfect imitation of Scorpion. Some people like to be unhappy.

I think I’d be a great ruler. And I’d have only one rule: Do everything I say or get thrown down a well.
The main concern I hear with this is “Do we have enough wells?”
We’d build more wells. The entire landscape would be dotted with wells.
The other question I get is “What happens to people after they’re thrown down a well?”
I don’t know. I’m not some sort of well expert. I just know that they’re holes in the ground that, if you throw people down them, immediately after they no longer annoy me.

Biden says he’s going to pick a woman as VP? Can anyone even define what a woman is anymore?

It’s a woman’s right to control her own wallet. And if she finds abortion horrific and wants no part of it, she shouldn’t have to pay for it.

Bernie loves authoritarian dictators. It’s good to keep in mind that he’s just as likely to kill or imprison you as give you health care.

This is all really scary. I just want you all to know I love you… even the losers and the haters.
Know what? Especially the losers and the haters. Just all please lose and hate from some place safe.

I’m getting a little sick of people who think all this coronavirus chaos is a great opportunity to dunk on Trump. Why do you pretend to be so bothered by Trump’s awfulness if you’re even worse? You should find how much he achieved despite being terrible a personal inspiration.

Has Frozen had a bit of backlash? I feel like everyone has a recent era Disney movie they think is better. For instance, I think Moana is way better.
I’d define recent era Disney movies as any where Alan Tudyk voices a character plus Tangled.

I feel bad for how excited I am to not be going anywhere for the near future. I do my best to not feed my introversion, but no helping it now.

The all-time record for social distancing is Michael Collins.

I have to say, I had never heard anyone call it the “China Chinese Virus from China” before Trump.

Is there anyway Disney could get the new episodes of The Mandalorian out sooner? Society could really use some more Baby Yoda right now.

Got supervillains trying to make bioweapons deep in underground lairs when all you gotta do is eat some bats.

I forgot the Democratic primary is still going on. Could you imagine risking your life to vote for Joe Biden?

Food is even more of a necessity than health care, but it’s just something we never have to think about — at least on the supply side. It’s nice now to at least for a while recognize all the people who keep our supermarket shelves stocked.

I think we all may be starting to realize that our relationship with the Chinese government is poisonous in a number of different ways.

It’s racist to call the Wuhan Virus the Chinese Virus.

How about we call it the “Evil, Corrupt Chinese Government Virus”? Is that clear and not racist enough?

ME: “If you want to get the new Animal Crossing, it will be $60 plus maybe another $5 tax.”
9yo: “How about I pay the $60 and you pay the tax… or you pay the $60 and I pay the tax.”

100 years from now.
“In 2020, millions were killed by a coronavirus, but we’re glad they’re dead because they called it something that could be racist.”

What’s worse? Being a racist or being a mouthpiece for the evil, oppressive Chinese government? I feel like one of these doesn’t get enough outrage.

I dunno. Might be best to deal with the crisis and worry about blame afterwards.

Capitalism is free markets. When you hate capitalism, you hate freedom. And that makes you a bad person. Like you know how much you claim to hate racists? You’re just as morally awful and your views are just as destructive.
There is no economic system that will make you happy when you’ve chosen to be ungrateful and miserable no matter what privileges you’ve been given.
I’m baffled people are using a pandemic to rant against capitalism. What is the economic system that would do well in that?
I know free markets are the ones that will adjust quickest to rapidly changing circumstances as everyday it’s reacting to billions of pieces of data.
Any other economic system involves some corrupt bureaucrat reacting to a few dozen pieces of data, if that many. The next best system is many orders of magnitude inferior.
But it does have something people love: control over others.

I guess it’s easy to judge if you’ve never eaten bats. Maybe as soon as you bite into one, you’re like, “Wow. This is worth five pandemics.”

It would be morally wrong to force anyone pay back those student loans other than:
A. The students who took out those loans
B. The colleges who caused them to go into so much debt

As part of our isolation, we found our TV remote that had been missing for months. It was inside the couch.
“Months ago, did you put the remote into a hole in the couch?”
*my 4yo looks at me and smiles*
“No.”
*goes back to pretending to read a book*

Our youngest son’s middle name is Winchester, which means for nicknames we call him “Win,” “Win-Win,” “G.K. Winchesterton,” and “Winnie the Flem.”

I watched Uncut Gems. Didn’t live up to the hype for me. And I ended up in the doghouse for subjecting SarahK to it.
Main thought at the end: Is anyone going to pay back Judd Hirsch?

Any legitimate criticism of Trump is always buried under a mound of garbage criticism. To defeat Trump would take a modicum of restraint, but partisanship ruins people’s minds too much for that.

Heard what sounded like rain, but instead of standing up to walk one foot over and look out the window, I glanced at my Apple Watch.
“Yep. It’s raining.”
Don’t worry. Eventually my watch will tell me to stand up.

One important thing after all this is to make sure we don’t go back to the status quo with China. They’ve been too poisonous to us in too many different ways.

The people who think this crisis is a great opportunity to attack Trump just keep proving they care even less about their fellow Americans than him.
You go to war with a virus with the president you have, not some fictional super-competent one that exists only in your head.

Most of the time I’m happy that Congress is a bunch of idiots caught in gridlock and doing nothing, but this is one of those times I wish they were marginally competent.

We need student debt forgiveness in the bill or no deal. If we can’t have very specifically targeted relief for the privileged idiots out spreading coronavirus at the beach, then we might as well all die.

My 4yo daughter loves Star Wars right now and I plan to water and cultivate that. Currently her favorite character are Rey and Ahsoka Tano, but hopefully I can eventually push her toward the original trilogy.
It goes without saying she also loves Baby Yoda, as does anyone with a soul.

A functional media would be scouring those bills for anything that doesn’t actually have to with the coronavirus crisis and shaming whoever put them in there.

We got to get off this absolutely idiotic aversion to prices being raised. That’s so much better than shortages despite all the cries of “PriCe GoUgInG!”

People keep insinuating that the entire economy grinding to a halt will only hurt people with big stock portfolios, but I don’t think they’ll be the most affected.

Compromise: Everyone goes back to business as normal… but while wearing hazmat suits.

The problem right now for a crisis is we have a bad president and a media very invested in making sure he fails.

When stocks keep having these huge jumps and drops right after the other, it just makes stock traders seem like a bunch of idiots.