Jarich - Jarich

I loved when Seth Myers went on his little "I've been calling them weird for years" rant (and he has). I was sad when after the first assassination attempt and the conventions the "weirdness" died out of the conversation. They ARE weird.

I am an autist who has been "weird" all my life (according to others and so myself), and who has proudly claimed "weird" as an okay state to be. I think how "weird" they are should be in the conversation.

Trump's folk are more than two standard deviations from the mean. For example, most of Trump's picks are billionaires. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, no one thinks "the average person" is a billionaire.

I know we expect politicians and public servants in highly placed elected positions to be more wealthy than the people we know. Many of us know someone who is a public servant, some of us might know some local and localish politicians socially, and others might know people whose personal assets exceed $30M, but that's not the same with billionaires. 95+% of us can never expect to meet a billionaire outside of a concert or special event.

According to Wikipedia, the 2024 Forbes list, there are 2,781 billionaires in the world. A small town is generally defined as a population center with less than 10,000 people. You would need almost 4 times the total world population of billionaires to fill one small town, they aren't real common. The current world population is 8,194,270,656 as of Wednesday, December 18, 2024 according to the most recent United Nations estimates via Worldometer.

A cabinet with 8 billionaires is not normal, it's "weird". A political party who has openly discussed how they're going to exploit being in government to make themselves more money, is "weird" (in a really bad way).

So excellent choice of political word of the year.

1 word

I gotta know, "WHAT’S YOUR POLITICAL WORD OF THE YEAR?" WEIRD This word entered the headlines in July and became a “brat”-like summer phenomenon. #politics #news #culture #social

There really isn't that tight a correlation between egg size and adult size. I mean we're not expecting something big, but some of the biggest of these came out of mid to small eggs. It's so cool!

Bugs & Bunnies

Did you see that Magic: the Gathering now has a game state in which you need to prove that there are an infinite number of twin primes to win? I can explain it more if you are interested.

(With reference to this post here.)

By all means, please tell us about the Magic: the Gathering combo which requires proving the twin prime conjecture in order to win.

this is genius!!!!

performer: @abby_seim 

video source:  @josey__terry

So I had a hysterectomy today (hooray!) and I brought along my stuffed orca, Shamu, as a comfort object. And everyone i interacted with during my pre-op was like "Oh! Who's this?" so I was telling them all about him, how he's been with me since I was 9 and gone on every single vacation and road trip, and they were telling me about their own stuffed buddies (one lady said she still has hers after 40 years!) and all of this while I was signing consent forms and providing a list of the things I'd brought with me, you know, small talk.

So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"

But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:

And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)

Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.

And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize

They gave my fucking orca a hysterectomy

"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."

"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."

One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.

I really do think he’s gonna declare martial law on Easter. Things are ramping up.

As someone who primarily sees slugs and snails as nuisances (in some parts of my garden) or parts of a healthy ecosystem (in the rest of my garden) and most importantly not as pets or study objects... I'm not sure I'd have noticed this mutation, but I'm so glad that other people pay attention.

Oh my god this person found a leopard slug with its eyestalks fused together??? One super long stalk but it still has two eyes on the end. That's the cutest thing in the entire world. And then it had a ton of babies but JUST ONE baby inherited the mutation!!

❤️❤️❤️

“I don’t know. Whenever we try to do stuff, me and Zoey, half the time she starts crying and freaking out, and she says it’s not my fault and she says she likes me, but…” Saintjohn Hadouken sighed through pinched lips, hard enough to make his cheeks puff, and shook his head, “...feels like I’m hurting her.”

Johnny Newsroom looked off into the distance and took a pensive pull of his vape. “She said she likes you?”

“Yeah. I just don’t know what’s going on.”

Johnny turned his head to look him in the eye. “Have you ever dated a trans gal before?”

Saintjohn shook his head. “I’m fuckin figuring out some shit about myself, bro.”

“It’s… she’s… let’s put it this way. Imagine if your dick looked like a scary clown.”

Saintjohn flinched. “I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna use my brain powers for evil.”

Johnny continued. “Imagine if every time you took off your pants, a fucked-up evil clown was staring back at you. Imagine trying to get close to someone while you’re like that. Imagine trying to have a sex life. Imagine just trying to love when you’ve got an evil clown under your pants.”

Saintjohn’s frown seemed to stretch beyond the limits of his face. “Can I stop imagining it now?”

Johnny took another pull from his vape. “I don’t think Zoey gets to stop. Everyone’s got a different relationship to their own body, I don’t know Zoey personally, but...” he trailed off, letting Saintjohn fill in the blanks for himself.

Saintjohn leaned against the side of the motorhome and sighed again. “So what am I supposed to do?”

“Do you love her?” Johnny asked.

A pause.

“She makes me happy. When she laughs at my dumbass jokes, I feel like I just cured cancer.”

Saintjohn smiled as soon as he started talking about her. Johnny knew that smile, he felt its residual warmth, the second-hand joy. He wanted the two of them to be happy. He wanted one good thing to happen in the middle of this disaster. The Midwest Autonomous Zone could burn to the ground all over again. As long as he helped two people fall in love, he would have no regrets.

“And, y’know, I wanna get all up in there,” Saintjohn said.

“Okay. Well. To answer your question. Be patient. Let her do things at her pace. Let her figure herself out. Give her space when she needs it, even if you never want to be away from her. If you mess up - and you probably will, we’re only human - swallow your pride, apologize, and try not to do it again. Trust that it will all work out.”

“That sounds really hard.”

Johnny gave him a wry smile. “That’s love.”

[later]

“I’m sorry,” Zoey sniffed, pulling away from Saintjohn, “I just can’t right now. I don’t know if I’ll ever…”

She buried her head in her hands. Her body shuddered with heavy breaths as she began to cry. Saintjohn looked at her. He considered putting a hand on her shoulder, then lowered his arm and simply sat next to her.

“It’s okay,” Saintjohn said, “I understand. You gotta deal with the evil clown.”

Zoey lifted her head. She was too surprised and confused to keep crying. “What?”