Be sure to check out the Roses & Thorns section and hit up the comments with your own!
Without further ado, here are some thoughts based on headlines I’m seeing, the classes I’m taking, the YouTube holes I’m falling down, and the adventures of/with my 3-yr-old son.
Valentine’s Day
I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. I don’t buy gifts, or cards, or chocolates, or do anything else out of the ordinary on Valentine’s Day. I have never done.
When my wife and I first started dating, I told her flat out and very straightforwardly that I do not, and will not, do anything special for her on Valentine’s Day. She told me she understood and that that was fine. However, come the first Valentine’s Day we were together, she was at work watching all of her coworkers get flowers and sappy shit sent to them by their boyfriends and husbands. Understandably she got upset because despite having someone whom she was seeing she got nothing. I had to reiterate that I don’t do Valentine’s Day. She explained her feelings and why she was upset (despite having been warned) and I told her my stance on it. Come the next year she apparently expected me to try to make up for the first year. I did not. I don’t do Valentine’s Day. Year two was much, much worse than year one in terms of her disappointment and hurt feelings.
I had to [attempt to patiently] explain that if I’m not doing enough on every day throughout the year, or on your birthday, to make you feel loved and special, then I am failing. Throwing it all into one commercially oppressive day does not make up for the rest of it. Nor should it.
We have never seen completely eye-to-eye on this matter, and we’ve managed to be together for 16 or 17 years now (our 10th anniversary of marriage is this year). What we did do was compromise. I agreed one year that I would take her out to dinner wherever she wanted to go, and in return she would have to see whatever movie I picked (we have very, very different tastes in movies/tv-shows). Ever since that year we have made it a tradition to have dinner and watch Live Free or Die Hard (or A Good Day to Die Hard).
On YouTube Distractions
When I log into my Gmail account, I have to authenticate through the YouTube app on my phone. Every time I do this, I end up losing about ten minutes (sometimes more) of focus and concentration because after I authenticate I am presented with a list of videos “For You.” Inevitably the previews pull me in and I get distracted. Most of the time this happens with those damned video compilations of hacks for various everyday items. But on Tuesday morning I was presented with this nugget:
Now, as an Army veteran I immediately identified with the calling of cadence and reverted to some sort of primitive state while watching the marching. Then the music mash-up by The Kiffness kicked in and I was absolutely floored. I will admit, it swelled my chest and brought tears to my eyes. (I cannot properly explain why I found it so beautiful and affecting).
I made the mistake of watching the above video while my son was in the room. That meant I had to watch it a couple of times so he could see it. Then we fell down the deep hole that is The Kiffness on YouTube. Some of the video collabs are just brilliance.
In keeping with something I wrote a couple weeks ago I’ll reiterate: music has a profound effect on me. I honestly believe that it affects everyone in ways that we, as human beings, don’t fully understand. That said, here is a new song to add to my “I’m feeling shitty about everything and I need to pull myself out of it” playlist:
And this is one that had my son singing along and requesting multiple times:
Lord I thank you for sunshine, I thank you for rain. I thank for joy, thank you for pain. It’s a beautiful day.
Tax is Theft
When I was in college I dated a girl who had friends who didn’t pay taxes. They were opposed to it on principle. At the time I was a drunken asshole Leftist so I was appalled that anyone would think it’s okay not to pay their taxes. IT’S IN THE CONSTITUTION DON’ YOU REALIZE?!
I have since come around. In a big way. Just because the powers-that-be were able to swindle the States into enacting the 16th Amendment doesn’t mean the federal government isn’t stealing from you.
I cam across the below video and thought I’d share. I think it makes great points. I support the “Fair Tax” (at least as a gap bridging measure to repealing the 16th and starving the Feds).
You Will Own Nothing, and You Will Be Happy
On Sunday morning I saw this short article synopsis in my email inbox.
This clip comes courtesy of Morning Brew, a headline aggregation daily newsletter for which I signed up many years ago. All things considered, Morning Brew (along with a newsletter titled 1440) is not a terrible newsletter. Most of the article synopses are just the wrong side of Lefty, but I don’t fault the newsletter(s) primarily because they aggregate mainstream media.
Back to the article in question. The headline above caught my attention because it had immediate association to the WEF’s claim that ‘You will own nothing and you will be happy.’ I tried to suspend my gorge rising long enough to read the synopsis, hoping that it wouldn’t be a cringe as I initially feared.
I was very wrong. Not only is the synopsis from Morning Brew borderline cringe, the full article from The Guardian is practically chanting for the WEF predictions to be made reality. From the article:
People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money”, according to new scientific research that could challenge the widely held perception that “money buys happiness”.
Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous and local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries.
“Surprisingly, many populations with very low monetary incomes report very high average levels of life satisfaction, with scores similar to those in wealthy countries,” said Eric Galbraith, the lead author of the study which was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives while addressing the sustainability crisis.”
First, and foremost, every meme I see, every pearl of wisdom, everything tells us that money doesn’t buy happiness. This is literally the first thing I’ve ever read that makes the claim that money buys happiness. Toss that absurd non-claim out the window because we know it’s not true. Right off the bat Rupert Neate at The Guardian is building straw men from nonsense.
The next big red flag is the off-hand use of the quote from the lead author of the study, Eric Galbraith, in which he says “addressing the sustainability crisis.” Notice how Mr. Neate throws a link on “money buys happiness” (which takes you to another of Mr. Neate’s own articles, this one about a dubious study claiming people in the US & UK want to be stupid rich) as support for his claim but fails to link anywhere to explain or support any claim about a sustainability crisis. The ‘crisis’ is just a given.
Spoiler alert: there is no sustainability crisis. It’s fabricated by climate alarmist morons as justification for why they need more power over your life.
Mr. Neate continues:
Galbraith, a researcher at ICTA-UAB and McGill University in Montreal, said four of the small communities reported average happiness scores of more than 8, which is higher than that found in Finland, the highest-rated country in OECD research, with an average of 7.9.
Those four communities are the Kolla Atacameña in Argentina (8.0); the Pãi Tavyterã/Guarani in Paraguay (8.2); the Riberinhos in Brazil (8.4) and farmers in the Western Highlands of Guatemala (8.6). In the Western Highlands, 30 out of 70 people interviewed gave a 10/10 response when asked about their life satisfaction.
The mean average per capita assets held in the Western Highlands community is $560 (£450). That compares with a mean average per capita in Great Britain of £305,000, according to the ONS. The UK statistics body points out that the mean is much higher than the median average (£125,000) because of “the uneven distribution of wealth across the population”.
He makes a point of highlighting the outstanding scores recorded by residents of poor areas, and then makes a point of highlighting the difference in mean income between those residents and the UK. Notice how he can’t be content to give us the mean average per capita of the UK (which, as the higher number, would have helped to make his point) but is so Lefty that he has to point out, to his argument’s own detriment, that the real average income was roughly a third of what was initially given.
Mr. Neate ends the article:
The ICTA-UAB report says its findings are “good news for sustainability and human happiness, as they provide strong evidence that resource-intensive economic growth is not required to achieve high levels of subjective wellbeing”.
“The strong correlation frequently observed between income and life satisfaction is not universal and proves that wealth – as generated by industrialised economies – is not fundamentally required for humans to lead happy lives,” said Victoria Reyes-Garcia, a researcher at ICTA-UAB and senior author of the study.
He returns to the claim (still unsupported) that there is a sustainability crisis. The authors of the study, here quoted, further put forward the conclusion that wealth (moving from income to wealth, two different things) isn’t required for happiness.
What’s missing from the article (and probably from the study, but there’s no link to it so I can’t read it for myself) is any discussion of why those people in poorer areas are content. There’s no discussion of traditional societies and their values and how those differ from what’s commonly promulgated in western societies. There’s no discussion about the anxiety which is imposed by demanding that women work and men are thought of as disposable or unnecessary. There’s no discussion of the anxiety which is increased by outrages levels of divorce which is accepted. Or extramarital sex. Or abortions.
Nope. The only factor in their decision or ability to be happy was median average income.
You don’t need a high income to be happy. That much is true. But you also ought not to be dirt fucking poor. And you most definitely ought not to stand for or accept any part of the Great Reset and the WEF plan to take over the world.
The full article is from The Guardian and can be read here.
Roses & Thorns
To close out the free series this week I’m going to attempt to find three good things (roses) and three bad things (thorns) from the past week. The intent is to both learn to see the good and reward ourselves for the successes as well as learn to objectively see and correct things that need to be corrected.
Roses
I was prepared for my monthly meeting with the trustees at my VFW. I had everything together, prepared, and pre-audited so that their review took only 45 minutes (and that long because they’re old and easily distracted…and can’t see for shit). It felt good to be caught up, prepared, and have everything go well. Which, I suppose, ought to key me into the fact that it’s better to be prepared. 🤦♂️
I bought a new battery for my laptop. It was relatively inexpensive (only $45) and way easier to install than I had feared. Getting it done made me super happy because for quite a while now I haven’t been able to use my laptop at all without being connected to power.
I was fortunate enough to hit the slopes and go snowboarding on Sunday. The weather was beautiful and the snow on the runs was pretty good.
Thorns
We’ve been taking my son to [indoor] ski lessons the last couple weeks. He is terrified of it. I don’t know how to explain to him that he’s doing great, and even though he’s nervous or scared he won’t get hurt because the coach (Coach Max) will be right there next to him the whole time to make sure he’s okay.
My three-and-a-half-year-old son has learned how to swear. (Longer story with some personal details behind the paywall.)
Kansas City Chiefs.
As you can tell, Roses & Thorns is unique to you and can run the gamut from small wins (or losses) to big things (in or out of our control).
Share your Roses & Thorns in the comments below.
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