88 Comments

This is the stuff. This is the drug. Laughing at the pain together. Not being alone. Much needed and appreciated.

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I was able for a while to escape my misanthropic roots and see the beauty of life for a bit, through some new optimistic lenses.

Fuck every single part of that optimistic mindset.

Humanity is a fucking joke.

80 million people elected a fucktard that has a hard time opening a door on a garbage truck, and his intrepid buddy, (also a raging fucktard) who has a hard time ordering donuts from a donut shop.

I WISH this was simply a Seinfeld episode, but is sure as fuck isn’t.

I started drinking at 8am this morning, and I’m about to go get more booze since I ran out.

You can’t even scientifically/rationally quantify a situation like this, so in the absence of sanity and reason, I humbly invite you to join the misanthrope movement!

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Ah! Now that’s the kind of mindless post election sneeding, that has made Trump’s victory even sweeter. Lovely!

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This makes me feel better than the heroin. Keep injecting me. America is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats (riffing on a quote by Voltaire).

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Understood! The pendulum swings ... It's their turn .... I doubt I'll be around to re-see ours. .. . I 'm glad I came in when I did!! It was the best of times for some of us .. To those yet to be .. The pendulum swings

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My thoughts exactly. So glad I’m old.

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Nov 8Liked by Shalom Auslander

Have you been spying on me. some kind of Spockian mind meld? How else could you know exactly what I'm thinking.

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Lots of interesting things were going on in the days between the Christianization and subsequent fall of Rome and the Renaissance. The wider population was largely in the dark, but no matter, the groundwork for great things was being laid.

Our communications are similarly Balkanized these days. Since communications are maybe 100 times faster we can expect our modern dark age to last just about 10 years. This is based on the scrupulous math 1000y/100 = 10y.

It takes a lot of work to sort out what information is trustworthy. It always has. Fools will believe what they want to. They will only learn if they make the mistake themselves and recognize that they are responsible. These two factors are unlikely to be realized together because fools have limited reasoning power.

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Fools will believe what they want to. This strikes me as an apt metaphor:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LINsEVvXL0c&t=28s&ab_channel=solubleshark

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author

Apt - but for all of humanity, not just one herd or the other. After all, I can't help wondering if we sheep watching sheep should feel superior to the sheep we sheep are watching.

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Baa-aaa-aaa....

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That was amazing.

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Nov 8Liked by Shalom Auslander

madlib it.

first animal & street name

adjective

colour

emotion

noun

gerund

object

space for lascivious behaviour

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Hilarious!

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Chihuahua Midmoor

shiny

gold

torment

landfill

smoking

dumpster

peepshow

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author

I like these, all but the last one.

I went with "temple."

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Oh, btw .... As I scanned the headlines - can't bear to read the articles - in my NY Times and WaPo push notifications (I've now canceled NYT and WaPo may soon become metaphorical canary-cage liner), I saw that many Jewish Americans are emigrating to Israel. Is that an alternative to Canada? I would think not - proverbial out of the frying pan and into the fire.

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author
Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Thanks, but I can just go into my accounts and stop their daily - sometimes, hourly - alerts. I'm trying not to go full ostrich; I feel compelled to pay at least some attention to what 'our' elected 'representatives' are doing for/to us people. What I cannot and will not do is read all the scribes or listen to the talking heads who, once again, demonstrated that they don't know one damn thing. Nobody knows anything!

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author

True. But it's worth noting that the ostrich is one of the oldest, most successful animals on Earth. Maybe they know something we don't.

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Agreed. I am old, living what will almost certainly be the last decade (???) of my time as a sentient human. I'm not inclined to "rage, rage against the dying of the light." But I had hoped not to spend this time raging against the incipient slaughter of what I thought our nation was. As Langston Hughes put it:

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

....

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be

https://poets.org/poem/let-america-be-america-again

I truly thought we were better than this. Silly me.

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I'm too damned short to be an ostrich, alas.

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author

Same here - but that just puts our heads closer to that sweet, sweet, sand.

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Works for me. I haven't owned a TV or read a news paper in 8 years. Did I miss anything? Anything I could have done something about?

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Not likely. I kinda like that ostrich idea though, especially if that guy down the street doesn't take down his 2024 flags. It's over, Bucko!

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I was especially surprised to learn that America consists of seven states, not the fifty whose names and capitols I had to learn in school.

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We do, but every 4 years, only 7 of them matter

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And we take that for granted? And we wonder why people don't was to vote? Why bother? So many citizens of this country are dismissed for so many reasons. Low profile populations. That's why people in rural states and the non-swing states are so angry and voted for Trump. He at least pays lip-service to how much those voters matter.

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Canada might elect its own version of Trump next year, minus the corruption and criminal convictions. I'm willing to bet on it. My own preference is "none of the above".

Last winter I set up filters for most of my daily news newsletters, moving them out of my inbox upon arrival. Now I should unsubscribe from them all, since I only check that folder about once a month and the only relevant emails by that point are NYT Cooking.

Also, on Instagram I muted (didn't unfollow) the posts (not stories) of most of the accounts I started following after October 7, 2023. Then I started following more accounts. Maybe this is why I didn't know about the events in Amsterdam until a colleague mentioned it this morning.

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Meanwhile Canada will build its own wall, to keep the Americans out.

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I saw that headline too - bad bad omen when antisemitism is on the rise.

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If prescription is filled before inevitable death, I’m willing to pay top dollar, back alley prices for a cut. Text me: 1-800-OHMYGOD

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author

I'll trade you two Oxy for a Molly.

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Throw in a spliff and you have a deal.

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You always bring the funny shit, Shalom, and I appreciate it.

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nicely done, Shalom

we could all use a bit of humor right now

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Just keep listening. This well won't run dry any time soon.

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and keep reading, Rob.

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I definitely will.

I was just introduced to Shalom last week and went already through a few interviews of him and finished two books.

I think there are three more books and then I can will go through his blogs/posts here to find more ointment for my slightly tortured soul. ;)

Have a good one Darren!

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well said. i understand even though i am not exactly compassionate towards almost any male of our species at the moment. i shall again be a tad more compassionate perhaps in the future, perhaps not. it is all a toss-up.

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author

I understand, Victoria, trust me - but what a wonderful world it would be if the non-wonderfulness of the world were the fault of one gender, one race, one party, one religion.

That would be fucking awesome, and I dare say Prozac alone would be enough to get me through.

Alas.

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Nov 8·edited Nov 8

Fuck all compassion, it is reserved for those who aren’t vindictive, ignorant goldfish.

Compassion is reserved for those who don’t willingly, nay GLEEFULLY kick over millions of people’s existential sand castles in the pursuit of…. What exactly?

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Yikes! Painting with too broad a brush?

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I think we could all use this.

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Don't worry. All those people who are so certain they would have been leading the charge for Abolition,______, the French Resistance,_______,the Stonewall Riots,_________, Apartheid________, will surely step up and lead the largest opposition force the world has ever seen. We will be saved by their brave and selfless acts of on-line virtue signaling and we will know them by their ability to monetize the moment.

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author

Viva l'Signal.

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I feel seen

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founding

Doc, multiple callers asking for the same thing.

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