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  • You Choose to Exist Here: Reliving Deep Space Nine

    We’ve just watched the pilot episode, titled “Emissary,” and there was something different about it this time, something that sank deep into me, and oddly it’s something I’d almost entirely forgotten about from past viewings.

  • This Fucking Guy: How Our Shitty Electoral System Let a Monster Run Maine

    Paul LePage does not represent the Maine I know. His governorship is not a true reflection of the politics, nor even the simplest notions of decency, of Mainers as a whole. And yet somehow he has been elected the state’s leader, twice. How could this be?

  • You Don’t Seem Autistic to Me: Asperger’s and the Fear of Not Being Believed

    [Updated below] Do you remember when you were a kid, and being sick meant the tantalizing possibility of staying home from school for a day? I was usually pretty pleased to be just sick enough to avoid the misery of middle and high school, as long as the illness in question wasn’t something agonizing. (I…

  • I’m Now On Patreon (And I Feel a Little Weird About It)

    I am now experimenting with Patreon, the crowdfunding service, in order to see if I can ease some of my financial stress by creating meaningful units of consumable Content™. I feel a little weird about it, and I’m a little uneasy about the idea that there might be people who want to give their money…

  • Madame Defarge’s Memes

    At Wired, Issie Lapowsky summarizes some research that tells us something that is not surprising, that more or less no one is ever persuaded to change their mind about a political position because of a post they saw on Facebook. I suppose people do actually think that their social media posts are badly-needed ammunition in…

  • Asperger’s, Corrective Lenses, and the True Self

    What does it mean to “be yourself”? I think it means to behave as you would if you were more or less unconcerned with how others perceived your behavior, and I assume it’s implied that this being-yourself behavior is largely within the bounds of the law and socially acceptable norms. My recent diagnosis of Asperger’s…

  • The Plausibility Threshold

    I’m not at all opposed to the idea of allowing third party candidates into the general election presidential debates. In most cases, of course, there’s little reason to, as even the exposure and legitimization it would give to said third party candidates would almost never result in one of them becoming seriously competitive for the…

  • A More Forgiving Lens

    I have never felt like I belonged in this species. I resembled a human, and I could force myself to awkwardly ape the basic mannerisms of people, but I would always suspect that there was something alien about me, and that everyone else suspected (or knew) the same thing. A lot of this alienation is…

  • The DNC Doesn’t Owe You Anything

    I just want to expand upon a point I made snarkily on Twitter that’s gotten some attention and heat. I said: BREAKING: Secret emails reveal that many in DNC did not like non-Democrat, anti-DNC candidate Sanders, preferred actual Democrat. WikiLeaks (which probably needs a whole other post to complain about) released private email correspondences from…

  • I Watched the Mighty Skyline Fall

    Cleaning up the kitchen after dinner this evening, my wife Jessica had put on some Billy Joel to listen to, and asked what album of his I preferred to hear. Songs in the Attic, I replied, his 1981 live album intended as a way to introduce his older songs to an audience who has just…

  • Uniquely Okay to Mistreat

    “Bullying” is such a weak word, isn’t it? The word itself (not the act) always evokes silly images for me, either of cartoon schoolyard lunkheads or anthropomorphized bovines. The word “bully” doesn’t really do justice to what it can mean to the victim of bullying, particularly if the victim is a child, and experiences it day in…

  • Jill Stein’s Shameful Pander on Vaccines and Homeopathy

    About a month ago on a Reddit AMA, Dr. Jill Stein, the presumptive Green Party nominee for president, was asked a simple question about her official stance on vaccines and homeopathy. Stein is, of course, a physician, so the answer, one would think, would be simple. For example, “Vaccines are safe and save lives, and…

  • The Facile Conflation

    Ariella Barker was a Sanders supporter who tried and failed to get the Sanders campaign to take seriously her concerns about what she called the campaign’s “disability outreach failures,” and problems she saw with Sanders’ policies around disabled issues. In the process, she saw Sanders a little more clearly, and now supports Clinton. She writes: His speeches never change…

  • Apogee Apology

    So I’ve moved the blog again. I have a blog at the Patheos network, iMortal, which I have not written in for weeks. I’m not entirely sure why, but I wanted to get some distance from a site where I am set up for disappointment. I never earn sufficient pageviews to come close to qualifying for…

  • Romney’s New Game, House Rules

    Mitt Romney is not an idiot. He knows that he can’t possibly win a presidential election as an independent candidate. And that’s even assuming he could get onto the ballot in enough states in time, which he can’t, having already missed Texas’s deadline. No Republican/conservative candidacy can win without Texas. But I still give credence…