I'm reading The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It's my first Sanderson and I'm a little over 300 pages in. It's been on my TBR for a few months and finally decided to take it on.

I got a French press and used it for awhile. I'm extremely lazy though and got tired of having to clean the coffee grounds out of the screen. That's something I didn't consider before buying it. I switched to a chemex that I like much better. Yeah, there are disposable filters but it works better for me. If I were starting over, I'd probably just get some kind of pour over thing that fits over my mug. That would take up less space than the chemex.

Aye

My example with the mask was to highlight the inconsistency that folks on the right exhibit. They claimed that wearing masks was a violation of their freedoms, but also seem to be in favor of policies that limit people's freedoms. They claimed that the masks made it so they couldn't breathe. But then there were plenty of insurrectionists on Jan. 6 wearing masks. They believe some unsubstantiated misinformation on Facebook about how the vaccines will implant trackers into them, but disbelieve the scientists who tell them they're safe. They pick and choose their arguments and what they'll believe without critical thought.

Of course I don't think people who refuse to wear masks are Nazis. That's silly. I just think they're selfish. And of course I don't think all Republicans are Nazis. And like I said before, I wouldn't want to be in place where there couldn't be honest debate about different politics. But I'm not convinced they have any actual legitimate principles anymore. Nazi ideology, book bans, and violent rhetoric against lgbtq are not topics I'm willing to have an honest discussion about because there's nothing to discuss. Those things don't belong in a society. Now if they want to discuss the merits of legitimate conservative policies, those kinds of debates should absolutely be allowed. But I haven't seen much lately showing that they even has those principles anymore sadly.

I don't use Nazi lightly. I only use it because self proclaimed Nazis support the extremist right ideologies. They're full of hate, and they're anti-education, and want to make it so that the queer community goes back in the closet. This isn't about some knee jerk reaction to people I disagree with. If the people on the right actually practiced the principles they so loudly preach like liberty and freedom for all, then yes, I'd be open to having legitimate discussions and debate with them. But they don't. They foamed at the mouth when asked to do the bare minimum and wear a mask to help protect their more vulnerable countrymen during a pandemic. But they can wave their Nazi flags at protests while wearing masks. But but but I thought they couldn't breathe with them on. 😭 They only pretend to stand for freedom and family values and caring about children. They target gays, minorities, trans people, and obstruct any efforts to provide services that would actually help children and families. One example is all the Republican state legislatures wanting to end free and reduced school lunches. I'm sick and tired of decent people kowtowing to these extremists and I'm done.

Defederate them. Tolerance has limits and we have the right and, in my opinion, obligation to not tolerate the intolerant. In the words of the crustpunk bartender, "you have to nip it in the bud immediately."

Here's the story taken from a series of tweets.

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

I'm not the person you replied to and this isn't well thought out. Just trying to think this through myself.

How would something like an electric company offer competitive cost or quality? There'd have to be at least two options serving an area in order for there to be some kind of competition. So do each of those companies build their own infrastructure, power stations, power lines, etc? So a neighborhood would have two sets of power lines? That seems wasteful and would get pretty ugly as more competitors came in. So maybe instead the government builds the infrastructure and the competing companies lease the usage of the infrastructure. But then what are the companies going to offer as a competitive advantage? I don't know. They need to make some kind of profit in order to justify their existence. And they have to pay for the usage of the infrastructure. And they don't want to lose money. And let's assume the government doesn't pick favorites and charges each of them the same. So we end up paying them more than what it costs them to lease the infrastructure. So why can't we just cut them out, i.e. cut out the middle man, and pay the government directly. I guess this all just assumes that there's nothing extra an electric company can offer on top of the electricity being supplied.

I feel that. I'm finding myself gravitate back to going directly to individual blogs. Just in the past couple of weeks, I've been introduced to new blogs on these smaller, more slower-paced niche communities. So it feels reminiscent of how I used to use the Internet 10-15 years ago before Reddit and monetization of everything. I had a handful of places I'd rotate through. It was just enough that there was usually something new everyday, but not an infinite sea of content. And I'm finding now that I'm actually reading the links being posted instead of just reading the comments. It kind of makes me think of how people used to watch TV. A show would release one episode a week and you had to wait for next week's show. And there was a limited number of shows. Now with all the content on all the streaming platforms plus YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. there's an endless amount of content to consume and no built-in breaks so you can literally binge non-stop.

With Reddit or other fill-in-the-blank service where your attention is the end goal to sell ads, the incentive is to get you to never pause, never take a break, never leave. It was exhausting. Here, it feels more relaxed.

• LOTR trilogy
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• A Midnight in Paris
• The Matrix
• Howl's Moving Castle

Anything you can do, I can do slower. I can do anything slower than you.

I wonder how the author would compare their scheduled boredom breaks with something like meditation sessions. There's been a lot of study showing the benefits of meditating.

Book recommendations are good. I really liked the SuggestMeABook subreddit. It'd be nice to have that here.

I think what those other places are missing are some kind of book club. If there's enough critical mass here, it'd be interesting if there could be small groups read a book together and discuss here.