In middle school, Ms. Schoen told us if we masturbated, our liver would explode. She didn’t tell us this directly, but rather through a story, where the liver explosion happened “to a man she knew.”

Other lessons in Health/Phys. Ed were instructed similarly. Classroom classics like Supersize Me were shown with attached worksheets. Video lessons were good bets for teachers. Grotesque imagery drew delighted squeals from the students; kids who smoked a single cigarette would immediately go through a series of corny misfortunes, and by the film’s end become an irredeemable meth head. They were funny ^{.^}

Every Thursday, 3rd period, Health teachers around America employed the age-old storyteller technique to caution against danger.

“Show, don’t tell.”

Funny things are memorable, as these lessons were supposed to be. Maybe a lot of the videos actually worked on me. I always put my...

Putin gave an interview today.

Context

The “amendments of 2020” are set to be voted on by the Russian people in a referendum this July 1st. The amendments have a dozen clauses, ranging from defining “marriage” as that between a man and woman, and defining a floor for minimum wage. Any of these clauses could influence the referendum’s outcome; however, the most obvious reason for these amendments to be proposed in the first place, is the Clause which effectively allows Putin another twelve years in office.

In 2008, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin had already served two terms as President. Although he was by far the most popular politician in the country, he was constitutionally barred from serving more than two consecutive terms. Putin’s handpicked successor Dmitry Medvedev ran for president in his stead.

During the campaign, Medvedev publicly stated that, once elected, he will...

I saw this picture

At first glance, I thought this picture could be the best I’ve seen all year.

The message the picture portrays is pretty clear: ignorance is bliss.

Man’s wearing a MAGA hat while using his anti-pandemic face mask as an eye cover, poetically signifying blindness.

A friend then asked me: “What if the mask he’s wearing isn’t a face mask, but is supposed to be an eye-cover? Or what if the picture is staged?”

I thought about the intrinsic message of this picture, and possibly pictures in general, and decided it doesn’t matter.

For example, in this picture, there are two very likely interpretations, and neither changes the message of the picture (but would change the target of the message).

Let us name this picture: Ignorance Is Bliss

Interpretation 1:

“HA! He’s wearing a face mask meant to protect others and himself from the virus as a tool to blind his eyes...

This is an essay on marketing

You ever read those novels where there are eight characters in five different stories? Each story gets cut up into pieces and spliced into chapters, intersected with other stories? A pretty famous book written this way is Cloud Atlas.

Example: Story A is about a lawyer in court. Story B is about an astronaut orbiting Mercury. Story C is about a warlock in some tribe on a clearly different time period. Story A is covered in chapters 1, 3, 7, and 12; Story B is covered in chapters 2, 4, 8, and 10; Story C is covered in 5, 6, 9, and 11. All these stories are going somewhere and you have a gut feeling that they’re gonna intersect. Then BAM Chapter 13 hits and here comes the revelation: they’re all part of the same overarching story all along.

I’ve always thought those stories sucked.

Not that they aren’t interesting; but usually they could be told in a much...

While on this particular bus ride
I put into words a lifelong struggle
between eating spaghetti with meatballs
or linguine with meatsauce.

-excerpt from Collection of A Single Poem by R. Miao

An important duality exists on a plate of spaghetti with meatballs.

Before we continue, let us first clarify: in this brief thesis, we focus on the subject of spaghetti WITH meatballs (spaghetti wherein the meatballs are incorporated into the sauce and flavor profile as best as they could), rather than spaghetti AND meatballs (several meatballs placed on top of a plate of spaghetti).

The majority of this piece will be dealing with spaghetti with meatballs (hereinafter “spaghetti meatballs”), please skip near the end for linguine.

Okay.

An important duality exists on a plate of spaghetti meatballs: the strength of al dente pasta, and the soft, flavorful interior of the meatballs that is...

仲祖文 is a name. A Chinese name.

It is pronounced Zhong Zuwen.

Based on the characters it uses, Zhong Zuwen is a unisex name, semantically leaning male. Zhong (仲) is a mildly uncommon surname; 祖 could mean “ancestry”; 文 could mean “literature”, or “scholarship”, or anything in the classical studies. Taken together, the given name 祖文 could mean “learned ancestors.” Perhaps a constant reminder for whomever bears this name to continue the scholarly traditions of the family line.

人民日报 is a newspaper. Named “The People’s Daily”, it is the dominant government news outlet. It traces its roots to before the founding of the republic; the first iteration of its name was calligraphically written by Mao Zedong, who also suggested the name itself. Its editorials are akin to government statements from the highest level; its opinion pieces aren’t just officially sanctioned, they’re officially written...

As you might know, it’s popularly theorized that we currently exist in a simulation. Or rather, we could exist in a simulation, therefore it’s possible that we already do.

Below are some personal occurrences which I refer to as “glitches in my game”; my contribution to the modern-day ghost stories which suggest that we do, in fact, live in a simulation.

February 15

On January 2, 2019, I purchased the book “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and End of the World” by Haruki Murakami, via Amazon. This is my second Murakami book. At this point, I was only halfway through my first — his famous “Kafka On the Shore”. The hard-copy arrived a couple days later, and sat in my room for weeks without being opened.

Then, February came.

For several weeks up to that point, I have been going to a shogi meetup every Monday. I’d take a Caltrain for 40 minutes from my home to Mountain View’s San Antonio Station...

Formulating thoughts. Will update.

Volume button in movie theaters

Install volume control buttons on each movie theater seats. Run continuous checks on button presses. For example, if the majority of viewers are pressing the volume-up button, then the volume increases.

Congressional Assembly As a Service:

Consultants visit countries who are eager to form a democracy, and write their constitutions for them. Along with consultations on implementation.

The Future of History:

As the base human population grows, the number of historians will also grow according to ratio. As the human population grows at an accelerated speed over a short period of time, the number of historians will also grow at the same fast rate.

At one point, not enough recent history would have been created for the new historians to cover without extreme overlap of academia. Simply put, if the number of historians double in the next ten years, then...