Just about no matter where I go on the Interwebs (a few bloggers aside), I have from time to time been chastised by poorly-read folks for my vocabulary. Hey, lazy-asses! I work HARD to dumb it down for you!
Thatisall.
Say What, Paul?
II Timothy 3:1-9:
3:1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: (2) For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, (3) unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, (4) traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, (5) having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away! (6) For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, (7) always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. (8) Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith; (9) but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
This really seems like a case of “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose,” because when I consider what is known about people throughout history, this seems pretty. .. normal. *sigh*
Door Mat
Law enFARCEment shows up at door? “No pizza? Go away.” *heh*
Alternate:
English. Learn Some.
Building an AR-15 Under 5 Pounds
Nice article, and reads like a nice build. I do lack a bit of confidence in their math, though, given that the build they were comparing to was 5lb5oz and ~$3,500 while the 4lb13oz build was “slightly more than $1,800, nearly half the price of the carbine in the article that spawned this exercise.”
“[N]early half the price”? No, slightly MORE than half the price. “Nearly” implies “almost” or “not quite,” and $1,800 is more than half of $3,500.
Numbers. Language. Not strong suits for this writer.
Understanding “Gender”
To properly understand the many different fantasy “genders” that have come about in recent years, a trip down etymology lane might be helpful:
“gender (n.)
c. 1300, “kind, sort, class, a class or kind of persons or things sharing certain traits,” from Old French gendre, genre “kind, species; character; gender” (12c., Modern French genre), from stem of Latin genus (genitive generis) “race, stock, family; kind, rank, order; species,” also “(male or female) sex,” from PIE root *gene- “give birth, beget,” with derivatives referring to procreation and familial and tribal groups. ”
When speaking of _mankind_**, then, one can speak now of three specific “genders”:
male
female
batsh*t crazy.
The last class is the catch-all for all the delusional folks who are in denial of reality and claim to be some weird fantasy “gender.”
___________________________
**”mankind” here is a poke in the eye to snowflake “batsh*t crazies”
The Essential Key to a Long, Healthy Life
Choose your grandparents wisely. *heh*
I am very fortunate to have only one prescription med. (At my age, that’s more than a bit atypical, I know; I’m very, very fortunate.) The thing is, my Wonder Woman is prescribed the same med, same dosage, as a part of her _wide array_ of prescription meds.
She gets all hers from a local pharmacy using her employer-provided health insurance prescription drug benefit. I make a trip ~15 miles out of town once a year to pick up a year’s supply (Yeh, I brow-beat my doctor into writing it for 360 tabs, which–given my roughly 80% compliance–means I have about eight months’ backup supply, after all these years on the same med) at a discount pharmacy, using no insurance.
My cost is 1/6 her cost, after her co-pay.
(The point isn’t where she likes to buy her prescription meds. It’s still pretty cheap, so I don’t really care where she buys her meds. Wherever she’s comfortable doing so is just fine by me. It’s her decision, after all, anyway.)
As I said up front, I consider myself VERY fortunate to only “require” one prescription med for a condition I could take care of myself, and used to, with about 20 minutes of slow, controlled breathing twice a day, but I told my doctor that was just boring and requested a chemical solution.
I took GREAT care selecting my grandparents. . .
All I really have to deal with concerning health issues are creeping arthritis and this damnable tinitus. Oh, well, for the one I can lie to myself and say that pain is just weakness leaving the body. It doesn’t work, but it makes me laugh at myself. For the other, well, I just call my tinitus “the voices in my head” (Oh! those dulcet, belltoned ‘voices’! #gagamaggot), and blame it for my various insanities.
*heh*
Inigo Montoya Has a Better Vocabulary
As I was scanning an article that was arguing that Me$$y$oft’s unscrupulous Win10 “upgrade” shennanigans led to (actually the shennanigans contributed to, but why let clear distinctions get in the way of “journalism” *gagamaggot*) the WannaCry Ransomeware debacle, I read,
“violates the trust people hold in the sanctity of Windows Update”
Really? Windows update is a sacrament of some religion or some such? Prior to our post-literate society, “sanctity” was the quality of being sacred or holy. Now, I guess it means whatever the hell (and you can take it I’m speaking theologically here) some subliterate moron wants it to mean.
There’s a Term for This
. . .but I can’t find it where I thought I filed it.
Needed a refill on coffee. Turned to pick up my coffee mug from the coaster on the end table (where it belongs *heh*), and. . . nope. Went hunting for where I had put it down.
Oh.
Went back. There it was. Four inches from where it belonged.
Racing Thoughts/Anxiety
A FarceBook acquaintance (longer acquaintance online–mostly blogging) suggested a method for dealing with “looping racing thoughts,” etc. Here’s a (still long for a FarceBook post) snippet:
If you have looping racing thoughts, or an escalating anxiety or depression cycle… or even if you have problems with attention regulation because of ADHD or emotional stress… try this…
Carry a pair of polyhedral dice in your pocket… it’s better if they’re two different types, both large… say a D12 and a d20. It has to be physical dice… You need to get out of your head and connect to the world.Any time you have a thought loop you need to disrupt, shake the dice and read them… on your hand, on a table, doesn’t matter.
Then multiply them.
Then divide the result by the total number of sides.
Then take that number and add it to the letters of your name, in a simple substitution, where A is 1, B is 2 etc…
Then alternately multiply, divide, add, and subtract the numbers.
Then start squaring them, or raising them to the exponent of each other.
At some point in this process your loop will disrupt. . . and you can insert your control thought that says something like:
“these emotions are not in control of me, they are simply an excess or deficit of emotional energy caused by too much of some neurotransmitters and not enough of some other neurotransmitters, and they are lying to me [about reality]. . . “
Very good technique(s). I have used visualizing musical scores, performing them or directing them, while either listening to a recorded performance or simply listening to them in my head. Taking [semi-quasi] “random” dictionary words or sentences from a book and using them to compose a fugue or another form via letter-number substitutions for both tones and rhythms, etc. Actually singing or playing one of these (or even just one line while “hearing” the rest in my head) has proved useful to me.
It’s more complex than that, but that’s the basic framework. Playing math games with minor (or maybe even not so minor would be more interesting?) linguistic twists seems likely to work as well.
Aside: From the FarceBook post,
“Recite a dice roll number of words or lines of a poem or song from memory. . . ”
*heh* very close to one of my methods for devising pass phrases (though I also choose one of several techniques to encode the phrases, usually from Renaissance at songs, though only in Italian, French or _maybe_ English).
Danger! Danger!
Back when I was a lad, I used to have some seriously dangerous thoughts. For example, driving “into town,” as I thought of it, in my ’53 Chevy, there was a place in the road where the road curved to the left and ascended a wee bit. To the right, just over the curb and a wee bit of verge was an arroyo. Every now and then I wondered what it would be like to just keep going straight and launch myself off the roadway. Oh, these weren’t serious thoughts, and I was in no way (consciously) suicidal, but every now and then. . .
This morning, I had another such “dangerous thought” as I reached into the fridge to get the cream for our coffees. I almost picked up the buttermilk thinking, “I wonder what buttermilk in coffee would taste like?”
DANGER! DANGER!
*heh*