“Woman” is becoming a four-letter word

The New Neo Posted on by

How do you write an article about tampons and for the most part avoid using the word “women” when talking about menstruation?

Like this:

People who menstruate are saying it’s hard to find tampons on store shelves across the U.S. right now, as supply chain upsets reach the feminine care aisle.

“I just went to 5 different Walgreens [and] the shelves are CLEARED,” said one Twitter user this past week, while people on Reddit have posted about empty shelves going back months.

The shortage stems from a combination of factory staffing challenges, transportation bottlenecks, and the rising costs of key raw materials used to make the products, tampon makers say.

The word “women” only occurs later in the article, and in a more general way:

It’s another supply chain problem where women are bearing the brunt of the cost…

She’s met women who don’t have the resources to make multiple trips to the store…

Why is it so difficult for the woke to say “women who menstruate”?

Although every person who menstruates is indeed a biological woman, there is a small group of people that NPR doesn’t wish to offend here: the subset of biological women who believe that they are actually men and who wish to be regarded as people who were always men right from birth, who also have not had any surgery to remove their uteri and therefore still have periods, and to whom pointing out that they were born as women by using the phrase “menstruating women” would be to insult and offend them mightily by somehow hinting that they remain women. This group by no means includes all trans women (people born as men who transition to a female identity), and yet NPR and other groups turn themselves into linguistic pretzels – and sound ridiculous – in a story such as this.

Matt Walsh’s film “What Is a Woman?” points out how difficult – nay impossible – it is these days for professionals in the trans-affirming field to even define the word “woman,” except as “it’s whatever a person thinks it is.”

I cannot help but think of this. It was made in 1979, and is even more brilliant today than it was then:

Go on Joe, nationalize the oil companies

The New Neo Posted on by

We know you want to:

President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.

Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices. Biden has recently faced criticism for a lack of executive action aimed at curbing inflation.

“There is no question that Vladimir Putin is principally responsible for the intense financial pain the American people and their families are bearing,” Biden wrote. “But amid a war that has raised gasoline prices more than $1.70 per gallon, historically high refinery profit margins are worsening that pain.”

No question about it; all our economic woes are due to a combination of Putin Putin Putin and price-gouging oil companies. I don’t even think Biden believes this; then again, it’s hard to know what’s going on in his somewhat-cognitively-challenged mind.

More here:

Why would business people want to increase production in such an uncertain environment where the government has declared them the enemy?

Biden talks about being in a “war” and the war affecting things. He’s right — except the war is the one he declared on the energy industry. He’s blaming the victims of his war. The purpose of this is to play to his leftist base who believe this lie that it’s because of gouging oil companies. They don’t ask why these oil companies weren’t gouging us all under Trump? But that’s what this letter is about — to say, “See? I threatened them with a strongly worded letter.”

How many people are fooled by this, or approve of it? I don’t think anyone who isn’t already in the Democrats’ camp, and perhaps not even all of them.

Southern Texas district votes for a conservative in special election

The New Neo Posted on by

Mayra Flores has won in a special election in the 34th congressional district of Texas:

Flores, who had 51% of the vote to Democratic candidate Dan Sanchez’ 43% when The Associated Press called the race, will become the first Mexican-born congresswoman to serve in the House. Her family moved to the United States when she was 6 years old.

Flores will finish out the remainder of Vela’s term, which expires in January, and Republicans were eager to win the seat and gain new ground in the Lone Star state to represent the district that spans east of San Antonio with parts along the coast to Brownsville. As currently drawn, the 34th Congressional District will essentially be dissolved later this year after a newly redrawn map favoring current 15th Congressional District Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, the Democratic nominee for November’s general election to represent the 34th District, was constructed.

So this will only last till November, and then the playing field will be changed and the Democrat will be more favored – unless he’s not. It may not be enough to carry him over the finish in this district, even then. The district is very heavily Hispanic. In addition, Flores will be “the first Republican to represent the Rio Grande Valley area since Reconstruction.” That’s a long long time.

For decades I’ve been reading that Americans of Hispanic origin often are culturally conservative, and that some day that will be reflected in their voting. Perhaps that day is starting to come, and Flores’ victory yesterday is not the only sign of it. There was evidence in the 2020 election that the southern area of Texas has been getting more and more favorable to the GOP, and polls have indicated the same thing.

It would be tremendously ironic if the Democrats’ decades-long recipe for permanent election dominance – to allow a great deal of immigration from the Southern hemisphere including and especially illegal immigration, in hopes of attaining that permanent majority because of course those people and their descendants will continue to vote Democratic in perpetuity – turns out to have been a huge miscalculation.

Those locks on classroom doors

The New Neo Posted on by

In discussions of what happened during the Uvalde school shooting, the issue of doors and locks has come up several times. In my research on previous school shootings, I noticed that in a lot of those cases the classroom doors had no locks, and the teachers and students were reduced to piling up tables and chairs in front of the doors and trying to hide. As we know, however, the classrooms at Robb Elementary had locks.

I found this informative article that explains quite a bit about the history and types of classroom locks, and even sheds some light on the mechanism by which I think the classroom doors may have locked in Uvalde:

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012 [where the classrooms did not have locks], the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission recommended in its final report that all classrooms have doors that can be locked from the inside.

“The Commission cannot emphasize enough the importance of this recommendation,” its report stated. “The testimony and other evidence presented to the Commission reveals that there has never been an event in which an active shooter breached a locked classroom door.”

Later, however, in the 2018 Parkland shooting – as I discovered from my reading – the shooter shot his victims through the windows of locked classroom doors.

More about the lock recommendations after Sandy Hook:

“You have to balance security, safety and accessibility along with convenience,” said Lori Greene, Codes and Resources Manager for Allegion…For example, some schools have a policy allowing teachers to leave their doors pre-locked and then use a magnet to prevent the door from closing all the way. This allows for easy re-entry while also being quickly bypassed in the event of an emergency.

It’s also unfortunately against the fire safety code (if the classroom doors are fire-rated). And in at least one school shooting, the assailant removed the magnet and closed the locked door, preventing school staff from entering the classroom.

In that shooting the gun jammed after one person was killed, allowing other students to jump the shooter, who was their classmate. So it was nothing like the situation in Uvalde; the shooter was stopped quickly and no police were involved.

More about locks:

Devising the perfect classroom lock has been, as Cook said, “a balancing act.” Teachers needed to be able to lock their classroom doors: (1) quickly and easily; (2) without inviting student tampering; and (preferably) (3) without needing a key or other tool present.

When schools first started implementing classroom door locks [some had them considerably before the Sandy Hook shooting and recommendations], Cook explains, they used so-called “office function locks,” which locked from inside the room with the push of a button. As any parent could guess, this setup led to mischievous students locking their teachers out of the room. So what is known as the traditional classroom lock was developed, which can only be locked with a key. It also can only be locked from outside the classroom.

However, after the Columbine school shooting in 1999, it became clear that requiring teachers to open a classroom door in order to lock it was no longer a safe option.

Finally, a solution: the classroom security function lock was developed. With this lock, a key on either side of the door could lock the outside lever while the inside lever remains unlocked. This lock allows free exit from the room at any time while also keeping locking power in the hands of authorized personnel. While still requiring a key, this lock successfully met the first two criteria.

I had been puzzled by what one student who survived Uvalde said in an interview, which was that the teacher couldn’t find the key to lock the door in time. This makes me think that this arrangement, the classroom security function lock with an inner key, was in place in Robb Elementary classrooms.

As usual I have questions. At what point did Robb Elementary implement its key policy, and what type of locks were in use, and did this affect the problem police had finding the correct key and getting into the classrooms? It certainly may have affected the problem the teacher had in locking the door, if that girl’s description is accurate. If so, this points out how difficult it is to design a fail-safe system.

If the room had been locked in time, I doubt the perp could have gotten in; at least he would almost certainly have had great difficulty in doing so. Would he nevertheless have been able to shoot through the doors (or windows in doors if they had them in Uvalde, as in Parkland?). But at least he would have been more accessible to police if he’d been forced to stay in the hallway to shoot, because he couldn’t open the classroom doors. The terrible irony at Robb Elementary is that the locks that were meant to protect the children ended up protecting the shooter in those two classrooms.

I haven’t read anything that addresses the question of whether the second classroom’s outer door was locked in time by the teacher there. I’ve concluded the second classroom probably was locked in time, but I don’t know for sure. I have read from several sources – including an interview with the male teacher who was wounded but survived – that the way the perp entered that second classroom was through an inner door that connected the two classrooms. I would guess that that inner door was not locked and that perhaps it wasn’t even lockable. I have read that it was a door to a bathroom for the two classes, and I think you wouldn’t ordinarily want small children to be able to lock themselves in the bathroom.

Who would ever have envisioned this horror-show scenario in real life, whereby only one unlocked door could make two classrooms vulnerable? Granted, I don’t know whether that’s the way it happened, but that’s the only thing that accounts for all the facts I’ve heard so far. Of course, there’s a lot we still don’t know, so my opinion could change.

The uses of the January 6th Congressional hearing: setting the scene for the criminal indictment of Trump?

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s talk about January 6th, say Democrats and a few NeverTrumpers. Let’s talk about it again and again and again.

Perhaps the House will decide to impeach Trump for the third time; they seem rather addicted to it. And now that Trump’s out of office, they’re aching to criminally indict him, too. I think part of this new January 6th thrust is a desire to lay the groundwork for a possible indictment, which isn’t allowed while a person is president but can occur afterwards, although it never has in this country.

The above link about indicting Trump isn’t an isolated article, either – it’s quite a popular topic in the MSM. For example, here’s NBC – and note the emphasis on Cheney, who as a Republican who hates Trump with a white-hot passion is especially useful for the purpose:

Liz Cheney’s powerful remarks at Thursday night’s Jan. 6 congressional hearing on the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — which sounded a lot like a lawyer’s opening statement at a criminal trial — have renewed a debate in legal circles about whether the Justice Department could, and should, prosecute Donald Trump.

With a growing body of evidence that Cheney and others say points to criminal acts involving Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, Attorney General Merrick Garland may ultimately be faced with an excruciatingly difficult decision about whether prosecuting a former president is in the national interest.

“Excruciatingly difficult”? The “difficulty” for Garland, excruciating or not, lies in concern about whether it could succeed without sparking a backlash of extremely worrisome proportions.

It’s not just Trump they’re thinking about indicting, either:

[Garland’s] deputy, Lisa Monaco, has confirmed that prosecutors were looking into the legal ramifications for those who took part in schemes to push slates of fake Electoral College members declaring Trump the winner of states Joe Biden won.

More ruminations:

Filing criminal charges against Trump in connection with his efforts to overturn the election “will very likely spark civil unrest, and maybe even civil war,” said Barbara McQuade, an NBC legal analyst and a former U.S. attorney.

But, she said, “I think not charging is even worse, because not charging means you failed to hold someone criminally accountable who tried to subvert our democracy.”

Ah yes, Ms. McQuade – like, perhaps, the many many folks who cooked up Russiagate? I’m sure you’d be in favor of holding them criminally accountable, in your zealous and evenhanded quest to uphold American democracy.

Many legal experts said it would not be necessary to link Trump to the mobs who stormed the Capitol in order to charge him. They said there was ample evidence that he participated in a corrupt scheme to overturn the election.

“I can imagine an indictment that includes all seven schemes,” McQuade said. “But if the DOJ can prove any one of them, that would be enough.”

In other words, said Rosenberg, “Did he conspire with at least one other person to obstruct Congress and to thwart the counting of the electoral votes?”

As has happened before at the hands of Democrats (see also this), and is certainly not a criminal undertaking. But as that great defender of democracy Beria said, show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.

I wonder whether the Democrats and the DOJ will really indict Trump, or whether they’re too frightened of the consequences were they to do it.

No former president has ever been indicted. And a presidential administration of one party charging a president of another party — no matter how much prosecutors insist the decision was made on the facts and the law — would create an uncomfortable precedent.

“Uncomfortable” – you know, like tight shoes. Nothing to get all that upset about. And it’s not that it would be wrong to do, oh no – it’s that it sets a bad precedent because if Republicans ever get back in power they might even do it to the Democrats in retaliation.

“I don’t think we want to be the kind of country where this happens often,” McQuade said.

Certainly not often – just to powerful Republicans we hate.

Biden would have the legal authority to make the final decision about whether to prosecute, but experts are divided on whether he should get involved.

“That’s a fascinating question,” Eliason said. “It feels to me that the president would have to weigh in. We are talking about this monumental decision. Biden was elected, not Garland. At some point this becomes a policy question, not strictly a legal one.”

McQuade disagreed: “It would be a terrible idea. I think you cannot loop in the president. You can give him a heads up, but I don’t think you consult him. That undermines this idea of an independent Justice Department.”

Comedy gold! It would undermine the idea that the DOJ is independent – because until now, we all had that idea, didn’t we?

The article has humorous aspects, but there really is nothing funny about it. This is what we’ve come to.

The definition of “urban”

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently came across a statistic indicating that “In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas.”

That rather astounded me. But what I didn’t know (and what a commenter – sorry, I forget who it was) pointed out was that the statistic is based on a definition of “urban” that counts any town with a population over 2,500.

Here’s how the census bureau explains it:

The Bureau of the Census defines urban as comprising all territory, population, and housing units located in urbanized areas and in places of 2,500 or more inhabitants outside of UAs. The term urban refers to both kinds of geographic entities…

A UA [urbanized area] is a continuously built-up area with a population of 50,000 or more. It comprises one or more places—central place(s)—and the adjacent densely settled surrounding area—urban fringe—consisting of other places and nonplace territory…

Outside of UAs, an urban place is any incorporated place or census designated place (CDP) with at least 2,500 inhabitants. A CDP is a densely settled population center that has a name and community identity, and is not part of any incorporated place.

Is it goes on with further definitions and explanations, as well as the history of the census department’s struggle to define terms that refer to what is commonly known as “rural” and “urban.” Let’s just say it’s complicated. I understand that statisticians have to define things, but for most us, it’s confusing and can be misleading to think that a town of 2,500 is urban.

How many people are aware of these definitions? I certainly wasn’t. And how do they affect our perception of statistics and their meaning? When we read that America is so overwhelmingly urban, it conjures up one sort of country. If the cutoff for “urban” was at a higher number, it would change the statistics and bring to mind a different sort of country.

The death of Patrick Lyoya: does this story sound familiar?

The New Neo Posted on by

A white police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan has been charged with second-degree murder for shooting Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old black man he had stopped for a traffic violation. The father of the dead man says, “We strongly believed there was no justice in America, until today,” he said. Attorney Ben Crump, ubiquitous spokesman in these cases, remarks that he’s “encouraged” by the police officer’s arrest:

“While the road to justice for Patrick and his family has just begun, this decision is a crucial step in the right direction,” Crump said. “Officer Schurr must be held accountable for his decision to pursue an unarmed Patrick, ultimately shooting him in the back of the head and killing him – for nothing more than a traffic stop.”

Ben Crump is a continual liar and race-mongering rabble rouser. In case after case, he gets in early and speaks often, quoted in the MSM as though he’s stating the facts of the case truthfully. In this case he’s setting the scene for the American people, and he knows that the sooner and more unequivocally he speaks the better, and that the media will help him out in setting out a narrative that will be hard to correct in the future and will hopefully taint the jury pool.

So here we have the usual “unarmed” black man, cruelly murdered in cold blood for “nothing more than a traffic stop.” Isn’t that a story that should make your blood boil?

Except that in the hearing a different story was told, and this one appears to be backed up by video evidence:

Schurr’s attorneys said in a motion for bond the officer saw the Nissan Lyoya was driving “moving suspiciously slowly and thought it matched the description of a recently reported stolen vehicle.” He “ran” the car’s plate and realized it didn’t match the car, which led him to believe the car might be stolen.

That’s already not just a traffic stop, it’s a special kind of traffic stop – for possible stolen car as well as possible driving while impaired.

Next:

Michigan State Police Det. Sgt. Aaron Tubergen, whose agency investigated the shooting, said in a court document supporting the arrest warrant Lyoya tried to get away from Schurr after the officer asked for his license and traveled about 30 feet from the car before being tackled to the ground.

Oh, so Lyoya fled? More [emphasis mine]:

There was a physical altercation, with Schurr demanding Lyoya, “stop fighting, stop resisting,” according to a transcript of Tubergen’s testimony Thursday morning to the judge who signed off on the second-degree murder charge and the warrant.

Tubergen said Schurr deployed his Taser twice [although it didn’t contact Lyoya]. After Lyoya gained control of the Taser, Schurr made “many commands” for him to drop the device and a physical altercation followed with both men on the ground.

The officer was on top of Lyoya’s back — the Black man prone on the ground — when Schurr “lost complete control of the Taser.” Lyoya had “complete control of the Taser” at that point.

Oh, so Lyoya got the taser, which means he could use it to tase Schurr and disable him, and then grab his weapon and shoot him or someone else? That seems to me to put Schurr in valid fear for his life. And that’s when Schurr shot him in the back of the head:

“It appears that Patrick was then on his hands and knees. Again, Officer Schurr was on his back,” the detective sergeant said, according to the transcript. “Officer Schurr pulled his duty firearm from its holster and then fired one round into the back of Patrick’s head, causing his body to go limp.”

Tubergen told the Kent County judge he interviewed law enforcement, reviewed body camera footage, dash camera video, residential security video from the neighborhood and a cellphone video recorded by a witness.

More facts may come out – probably will come out – that could modify this account. They might exonerate Schurr further, or they might point more to his guilt. But there is little question that Schurr did not suddenly and for no reason kill Lyoya in a routine traffic stop.

Also:

Lyoya had three outstanding warrants at the time he fled Schurr, and an autopsy revealed his blood-alcohol concentration was more than three times the legal limit.

Warrants for what? Here’s a bit more about that:

According to an account in MLive, Lyoya had a revoked license and outstanding warrant for his arrest when he was pulled over. He also had an arrest warrant issued April 1 for a domestic violence charge at the time of the traffic stop.

More:

Lyoya’s death prompted calls by some for Grand Rapids police to curtail police stops for routine violations, following the lead of Lansing police who no longer pull motorists over for minor violations such as a cracked taillight or ornament hanging from a mirror.

Which has zero to do with this case or this traffic stop, which was not for a mirror ornament.

Much more at the link, such as:

A 2020 national study of more than 100 million traffic stops found that Black drivers were 20 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers relative to their share of the residential population. Black drivers also were 1.5 times more likely to be searched than white drivers, though they were less likely to be carrying drugs or guns.

Is it possible, just possible, that black drivers might be committing more traffic violations? Is it possible they are searched because – like Lyoya and so many others in these incidents – a check shows they have outstanding warrants or have no license? And those guns the white people are carrying in greater numbers – are they legal? Just curious.

Second-degree murder carries a possible life sentence in Michigan. And the activist community has already said that Schurr must be convicted and put away for life.

[NOTE: Lyoya does not appear to have been a citizen, although that’s not very clear. His family came here from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2014, when he would have been about 18 years old.]

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Here’s Alan Dershowitz on the January 6th propaganda theater and the ACLU – not that anyone on the left cares anymore what Dershowitz says:

During a recent appearance on the Just the News, Not Noise television show, the professor emeritus of Harvard law school and longtime First Amendment defender made clear that his support of the ACLU has come to an end.

On Thursday, Dershowitz told co-hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head that nothing former President Donald Trump said on January 6 rose to the level of incitement of a mob – a charge for which Trump was impeached for the second time.

The only people, Dershowitz said, who would argue that Trump’s language on January 6, 2021 could be exclusionary under the First Amendment are “what used to be called the ACLU.”

The ACLU’s name has become Orwellian.

(2) Two differing opinions on the compromise gun law in the Senate. John Hinderaker thinks it’s pretty good for the most part. It does contain something of which I think a lot of people here will approve:

For buyers under 21 years of age, [the bill] requires an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement.

As I understand it, the NICS system currently does not have access to juvenile justice records. Thus an 18 or 19 year old will show up as having no record, and therefore no impediment to buying guns. And yet, juveniles commit a high percentage of violent crimes. This strikes me as a good step in the direction of not coddling juveniles to the extent we have in the past.

However, here’s a writer at RedState who thinks it’s a bad bill. I’m perhaps in the middle between the two opinions, because I recognize that red flag laws (also contained in the bill) can be abused by false accusations, as can closing the “boyfriend loophole.”

(3) Here’s more from Caroline Glick about the similarities between Israel and the US at this point in terms of the ends-justify-the-means politics of the left, and their efforts to destroy both Netanyahu and Trump through lawfare. It’s really quite extraordinary and very depressing, but worth reading.

(4) A glimpse of the past:

A royal warship that sank off the east coast of Britain more than 300 years ago while carrying a future king was unveiled by researchers on Friday who kept the discovery secret for 15 years to protect the wreck from damage.

I’m rather amazed they managed to keep the secret all that time. The king was the future King James II of England.

“Because the ship sank so quickly, nobody would have rescued anything,” Jowitt said, describing it as “a fantastic time capsule”.

Other artefacts include navigational equipment, personal possessions, clothes and wine bottles – some with their contents intact.

(5) Here’s a sloppy article that’s all too typical of much of what I read these days from some people on the right. I’m surprised it was published in The Federalist, a site that’s usually good. The author, a young woman named Kylee Zempel, is trying to make a point about the left’s use of tragedies such as Uvalde to ram through more and more gun control.

That’s not the part of the article with which I have a problem. My disagreement is with her false equivalence between the situation faced by the police at Uvalde and a recent shooting attempt at a Alabama school where, very very fortunately, all the outer doors were locked and the perp couldn’t enter the school, and police therefore were able to engage him outside the school and kill him, with none of them or any child or teacher being injured. I submit that, if the cops in Uvalde had been fortunate enough to encounter that particular situation – a perp unable to get in because of locked doors – we’d hardly be hearing about the town because the same result would have occurred as in Alabama.

It’s not that one set of police officers was so brave and the other so cowardly (I’ve written a lot already on why I think the latter designation for the Uvalde officers is way premature so I won’t go into that all over again here). It’s that the situations were very very different in terms of the set of circumstances the officers faced. The Uvalde outer doors did have locks that should have worked automatically – but tragically, one of them didn’t work that day. We don’t know why, but we know that this was the problem that launched the entire tragedy, and it wasn’t about the Uvalde officers either.

As I’ve said before, the Uvalde operation seems to have been disorganized and chaotic, with poor communication. The problem the officers had with keys is puzzling and strange, and may or may not have been the fault of the police; I don’t know yet. And I have said many times I will condemn them and fault them if I learn enough to know. It’s not premature to say they were disorganized and communication was poor. But it’s premature to call them cowards, as that article does (she also calls their failures “criminal”) and as so many do.

And I’m surprised that so many people on the right who have read what is written in the MSM so far about Uvalde seem to be looking at the MSM uncritically this time – even though we know how much they get wrong and how much they distort – without thinking of all the things that so far have been left unsaid and unasked, things we need to know before making more judgments.

Toupees and arrogance

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a pet peeve of mine.

I’ve often heard people say that they can always tell when a person is wearing a toupee. But I think that’s a stupid thing to say. Sometimes you can tell, with a badly-made toupee. But how would you know if you’re detecting all toupees if you’re by definition not spotting the really good ones? You wouldn’t know you had missed any, unless you had an official registry of all the toupee-wearers in the world and were checking your guesses against it.

The same thing is true of cosmetic surgery. “I can always tell” is by definition a stupid or at least an unprovable statement, as well as an arrogant one, without having a similar directory.

I’m not sure I care whether people wear hairpieces or have cosmetic surgery, either. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity. But wanting to look good, or at least better, is one of those normal human qualities that means that most of us strive to prepare a face to meet the faces that we meet. The problem is when it goes too far, but what’s too far? We all have different definitions, but I think I know it when I see it.

However, I doubt that anyone wearing a hairpiece or having facial or body surgery goes into it with the desire to look worse than he or she already does, or to look foolish and obvious. With surgery, once it’s done it can’t be undone – except with more surgery, and then more. That’s one of the ways some people end up looking grotesque.

Why am I writing about this today? I dunno, except that I need a distraction from all the heaviness of the news. Lately I’ve been feeling as though the mountain of lies that people believe is just too enormous a structure to dismantle. I don’t like feeling that way, but the last six or so years seems to have consisted of lie after malevolent lie getting all the way around the world before the truth has a chance to put its boots on.