Every school/mass shooting in the US brings about a flood of social media posts calling for gun control. And those, in turn, are followed by an entire deluge of responses which attempt to show that mass shootings are not caused by "people who shoot guns", but anything and everything else they hate. Here are some of my responses to the responses...
I think the way to deal with most societal problems is personal responsibility. If you just keep yelling "personal responsibility!" at people, you will never have to look for or understand the causes and solutions for problems that you've never had to face, and that makes the world a whole lot simpler to understand.
First, a disclaimer: I'm not a white guy trying to "explain racism" to the general public; I'm a white guy trying to explain racism to people like me, or at least people like I used to be: on-paper extremely anti-racist, but… missing some key facts. I know many people like that. I went to highschool with them. I was one of them. I still see them on Facebook. Some are in my family. (If you are not in one of these groups, this is not for you. Yeah, it's much too simplified and maybe a little inaccurate, but that's on purpose.)
Back in the early 90s my dad brought home some "WWJD" (What Would Jesus Do) pamphlets to put around the house. Even though I was still a Christian at the time, I thought it was a bit silly. It all seemed to be focused on things like whether someone said a swear word or showed a bra on TV, and I thought probably Jesus had better things to worry about. In the years after, I slowly lost my religion… and I still thought it was kinda silly and insincere: it seemed like Jesus and religion were only ever brought up to say sex was bad, justify hating gay people (I'm sorry, "hating the sin") or why abortion was always wrong. Not much else. So I just left it there in the past with everything else.
Talking about personal mental health issues is rarely a pleasant thing to do. Whether you talk about depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD, or any other non-visible condition, you'll inevitably run into comments telling you it's not unusual, and "everyboy feels that way from time to time". Bonus points if they give well-meaning but unhelpful advice. Extra bonus points if they give condescending unhelpful advice. "Have you tried not feeling that way?" At which point I guess I'm supposed to slap my forehead and wonder aloud why I had never thought of that.
I often recommend F-Droid to my Android-using friends. F-Droid is an alternative app store which contains only Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It's great because the apps are almost all not evil. Did you know that a flashlight app doesn't need access to your contacts, location, and pictures? Did you know that every app doesn't need to serve you ads?
You see it every year: when Pride month/day/parade comes around, some (presumably straight) people will ask loudly "Why is there no straight pride day?!"
Lately we've seem to hit critical mass on the transgender issue. As usual, the usual factions have aligned themselves with the usual sides, and not looked back. Unfortunately, even among people who, after a fashion, support transgender individuals, there are a number of problems. In the long and proud tradition of white straight cis men explaining things about persecuted minorities, I am here today to clear up a few things about those transgender folk we keep hearing so much about lately.
"Cultural appropriation" is a controversial topic[Citation needed]. It's one of those topics that cause many people to roll their eyes, and many others (on both sides) to lose their goddamned minds. But, there are (at least) two kinds of cultural appropriation: a silly one and a useful one.
A few weeks ago I spoke with a mom at a playground. She mentioned that our library does a toddler storytime on Mondays. So the next Monday, when I checked the library schedule and saw nothing about it, I was confused. A quick call confirmed that they weren't doing it this week, or all summer: school is out, so most of the events are geared towards older kids now.
Recently I had a revelation. My wife was doing a pharmacy internship for a month at a downtown hospital. Because it's downtown, parking is tight, so most of the hospital staff is required to park at a remote parking garage and take a 20 minute shuttle ride to the hospital proper (I assume surgeons and high-ranking doctors are exempt from riding with the commoners). However, my wife gets terrible motion sickness if she's not the one driving. Not "I feel yucky", but nausea so severe it induces a panic attack and reduces her to a puddle on the floor, shaking and shivering for hours.
I stumbled across the list Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail and thought "I've not written about atheism for a while! Why not?!"
I recently realized that I had been doing a science experiment! Ok, I haven't recorded any data, and there are no controls, but work with me here. The experiment is on people's expectations of gender essentialism. What's gender essentialism? Gender essentialism is the belief that certain behavioral traits are gender-specific: Men like sports, steak, beer, and fighting. Women like shopping, salads, wine, and gossip. Men are aggressive, women are passive. Etc.
I have a little story. Once upon a time, I quit my job so my wife could go to pharmacy school and I could be at home with my daughter. We'd live off our ample savings, but quitting my job meant losing our insurance, and we went without for several years. Then I began to get nervous, and found a cheap "disaster plan": it had a highish deductible, but everything after that was covered at 100%, so if I had a heart attack, go cancer, or got hit by a car, we wouldn't have to fork over every penny we had. The plan was about $130 a month for me and my daughter. (My wife was covered through school at about $100 a month.) We rarely went to the doctor/hospital, so it didn't matter too much.
My little family had a bit of a bummer of a March this year.
I've now published several Android apps on FDroid. I released them all as opensource apps under the GPLv3. That means other people can see my source code, modify it, and re-release it, or do most anything else.
Doda The Exploda is a silly pseudo-pun I came up with, which I then turned in to a simple "hidden objects" game for Android.
LaunchTime is an alternative home/homescreen/launcher for Android devices. Its main feature is a side menu used to organize your apps into common-sense and configurable categories. It also features widgets, text search for apps, a QuickBar, links/shortcuts, unread badges, icon packs, themes, recent apps list, and portrait and landscape support.
A simple educational practice game for kids and adults.
I wrote another mobile app. I wrote it for several reasons:
A simple (and somewhat inaccurate) VU-style audio meter.
In the same vein as my recent articles, I want to comment on a meme I've seen shared numerous times: 
It chastises those who think people with talent have talent.
The tortoise and the hare had a second race, and this time the hare slept 2 seconds less and won.
When I was 17 or 18, I drove my older brother's 1979 Sunbird home one time. That doesn't sound that cool, but he (personally) had crammed a 400 small block in there. It was the kind of car that put out 100 decibels of low-pitched BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB BLUB when you just idled down the street barely touching the gas. For teenage-me, it was awesome. I was also fascinated by loud motorcycles and fighter jets. Standard stereotypical teenage boy stuff, I guess.
"Columbus was a product of his times. Sure he did some terrible things like have thousands of native Americans killed, raped, mutilated, and enslaved, but slavery was the norm then! The Mayans and Aztecs did the same things! Why single Columbus out as a bad guy?"
Here is a shirt I bought for my daughter a few years ago. I picked it up at Goodwill. When I saw it, I said (silently to myself), "Hey, my daughter likes The Incredibles, and she wears clothing, so this is a win-win!" Now, my giant, almost-2-year-old son wears it. But it wasn’t until last week that my wife and I saw something strange about it.
Monopoly. It's a game. Well, it's a game in the same sense that E. coli is a probiotic. And neither is a good way to spend an evening. However, Monopoly is, at the beginning, both egalitarian and capitalistic: every player has the same random chance of hitting it big. It's hopeful, almost, even if it's so slow it makes you wish you had E. coli instead.
Excerpt From "The Trump that got Thunk"
Fun fact: "Weight Watchers" and "Chubby Chasers" are different organizations, and have very different meetings.
It's the biggest threat our nation has faced in decades.
You probably heard the news if you've been near any website lately: People are driving in the left lane, and it's terrible! They're not only driving in the left lane: they're driving slower than you want them to! <dramatic orchestra hit: bum bum BUUUUM!>
It's been slowly dawning on me that I have no idea why I read news articles. I'm not going to do anything with the information I receive. I mean, I've known who I am (not) going to vote for the last year, or the last decade if I'm thinking generically. Knowing the exact phrasing of whatever crazy thing Trump just said is not going to push me one way or another.
In a recent Facebook post I compared Pokemon Go to Fantasy football:
I feel that Pokemon Go is a bad thing: Instead of chasing made-up animals, people would be better off putting together the perfect imaginary football team, or explaining to their Facebook friends exactly how their non-favorite candidate will destroy the world.
I was just a one-off, good-natured joke aimed at those who think their particular hobby is less silly, but after thinking about it for a while, I think there's an opportunity here…
I made a new web application. It's a simple drum looper with sounds I extracted from Hydrogen drum machine. Check out Drummy In The Tummy! (It's a dumb name, I know.)
Tired of hunks of your body falling off? Don't go to the doctor! Our diligent researchers scoured the web for a few minutes and put together a list of essential oils you can probably use to cure up your leprosy real fast.
"So, you only believe in what you can see, hear, or touch?" It is a (somewhat derisive) phrase you might come across every now and again if you don't believe in the supernatural. It's inevitably followed up with something about believing in love, freedom, or subatomic particles. After all, the reasoning goes, if you don't believe in the supernatural because you can't see it, how can you believe in love, freedom, or subatomic particles?
Researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered that no common food ingredient is actually a deadly poison, even white flour, sugar, or those with chemical-sounding names. This comes as shocking news to many people, who had assumed most foods were, in fact, life-threatening substances.
I'm not one to make fun of the overweight and obese (being a member of the group and all), but… while I try to avoid mere cosmetic judging, I think pointing out negative consequences of obesity is sometimes OK. So, that's what I'm here today to do: talk about problem obesity… Your website is just too fat.
A long time ago, in some class I don't remember anything else about, and in an unknown grade level, I remember the teacher going over the topic of logical fallacies. From that day, I remember mostly the ones with funny names: the "bandwagon fallacy" (everyone believes it, so it must be true!), the "red herring fallacy" (bringing in unrelated), the "ad hominem fallacy" (it's wrong because you're stupid), and lastly "hasty generalization". There's a particular variety of "hasty generalization" which is very important to me.
No, I'm not talking about Ray Stevens.
"Oh, dear, we are all like that. Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all - the rest, to a man, are fools and deluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one knows there isn't; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn't; one age knows there are witches, the next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it isn't so." -Mark Twain
"I'm tryin'" -Me
Introduction to the Jungle.
Isn't it funny how guys hate to be perceived as gay, even for a second? Anything associated with gayness or femininity is instantly discarded. They won't hug or touch hands. They're even afraid to express emotions or cry! Men are so insecure in their masculinity! LOL!
Because, apparently, many state legislators are doubling down on proving how Christ-like they are by refusing to associate with those they think of as sinners, I thought I push the thing I wrote a few years ago back to my front page: Yell "FREEDOM!!" a little louder…
Recently, while I was working in the flower beds in the front yard, my neighbors stopped to chat as they returned home from walking their dog. During our friendly conversation, I asked their 12 year old daughter what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be President some day.
So a guy was hired to help move furniture in Buckingham Palace, but while there he broke his glasses.
This is my third piece in my award-winning[1] "Hey, don't be such a judgey dick to poor people" series. The first was a general essay on not being judgey of those in need, and the second explored the idea of "making bad decisions" specifically. Neither should have been too controversial (though it angered some on other threads who seemed to take it personally), but this one might generate some disagreement.
It's easy to see that my political/personal opponents are stupid, or evil, or both.
Betty: "Hey Joe, what are you doing?"
Joe: "I'm looking for a needle."
Betty: "Why?"
Joe: "I thought maybe a needle would be a good thing to have."
I love my slow cooker. I have a baby who doesn't like me to not pay attention to him, so cooking is sometimes hard. So I use the slow cooker to start meals when he's sleeping. The other day I thought: "Can I make mac and cheese in it?" I googled a recipe, and thought it'd be worth a try, but I modified it enough that it's something new. Here goes:
If you haven't already, read my last post before reading this. In it, I used some personal anecdotes of the bad decisions I've made and the relatively light consequences I faced. I brought them up to illustrate an important point about assuming poor people made poor decisions to get where they are. In this post, I want to expand on the idea of "making poor decisions".
"Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime." We've all heard it, and we have a general idea of what it means. As an instruction manual, it gives you two choices for helping people: either do it for them, or educate them so they can do it themselves. There's no third option, but a lot of people add one anyway.
My daughter and I have been watching a lot of Powerpuff Girls recently, so when I thought of making this, I just had to set this up… 
People have an odd view of odds. The recent Powerball mania, combined with October's "Bacon causes cancer" fiasco brought to mind a few oddities… (all odds are guestimates)…
PR rep 1: "We have a problem. We all know this great land of ours is a Christian nation, and we all believe our government should uphold Christian values, but there's a lot of people out there now who disagree. So, we're starting up a PR campaign to convince everybody. Now, how can we really let people know we are a Christian nation?"
The Speechifier is a speech mangler I'm working on. 
Look at your life: do you have everything? You have a nice car, a nice home, a nice phone, and nice pants, but do you have peace of mind?
You've lived in a quiet suburb in Michigan all your life. You like it there. You have many friends. Your son is on the high school football team. Over the years, there's been more and more Muslims move in, but that's all right: they're nice people and you get along just fine. Recently, the Muslim students began to outnumber the Christian population at your school, but again, that's all right: you're ok with that. Then school hired a new coach for the football team, and he's beginning to seem … not all right.
Apple Buyer: "I bought a bag of apples the other day and one of them was bad. I got really sick. I'm thinking of complaining to the company, and maybe warning others that sometimes apples can harm you."
A story came across my Facebook feed. It was about a black man who wasn't killed instantly by police and therefore there is no police racism problem. In accordance with my diet, I'm posting my response here.
I had a problem. Facebook was becoming an un-fun place for me. There was too much content, too much click bait, and too much comment bait. It was taking up too much time, and causing too much anxiety. I guess what I'm trying to say it was too much, in general.
I don't think the guns-rights people are going to go for this proposal, but I guess you could give it a try.
Proposing that for anyone to acquire and continue possessing a firearm, they need to go through several rigorous, multi-week training courses, be continually and intensely monitored by government officials, and any improper handling, storage, or usage of the weapon is immediately and harshly dealt with via fines, forced labor, or even jail time? Big steps!
Those other people: Geez, they're the worst. They believe that stupid thing. Not you: you never really believed it, and now you're more sure than ever that it's the wrong way to think.
"Food stamps, WIC, and welfare are OK, but there are too many moochers. The assistance programs are for single moms who are busting their asses, but just today I saw a woman use it for buying frozen pizzas, TV dinners, donuts, and gummy bears, then she took out her iPhone and started gabbing. After that she walked out to her goddamn Escalade and her baby daddy helped her load the groceries! Why can't he pay for the gummy bears? She's probably lying about his income, too. These people are abusing the system, mooching off our tax dollars. Sure, when I was younger I was a single mom, and, yeah, I got a little in food stamps, but I didn't buy crap food with it, and I had the decency to drive a crappy car!"
I wasn't going to write about the whole Ahmed Mohamed homemade clock thing, thinking it was yet another social media people-talking-past-each-other-along-party-lines thing, but then an interesting thing happened.
In the online feminist world, there's a concept dubbed "mansplaining". It's where a woman will share something which happened to her, and someone else (canonically a man) will "explain" the experience for her. For example, if dozens of men scarily harass a woman on the street, and she complains about it, someone pops up and "explains" that it wasn't scary or harassment, it was just people being friendly! Mansplaining, or "X-splaining" to keep it gender neutral, is not the passing on of information, it is the condescending denial of personal experience.
Over the years you've blended into your community, in part by taking on the beliefs and behaviors of those around you, and in part by influencing others in your community with your beliefs and behaviors. In your little community, you fit in. You're quietly living your life. You understand the beliefs in your community. You all proudly, if quietly, stand for A and B!
Ever search for a product on Google, only to have that product later advertised to you on Facebook? Weird, and a little creepy. The explanation is simple, but it's hard to avoid. Here's how I try. 
Ever wonder what things have gender? Well…
Can you believe those irresponsible parents? Letting their children walk around the neighborhood unsupervised!? That's a recipe for abduction, that is. Every year in the United States, somewhere between 100 and 200 children are abducted by strangers. That's, on average, about 1 every 3 days or so. So I never let my child out without me watching. You can never be too careful.
A few years ago I thought of making a list of euphemisms that made no sense. Here are a few. I ended these with "if you know what I mean", but "that what she said" would work as well.
Hi anti-vaccination friends! How are you? Didn't we have fun chatting the other day? I liked those cookies too. Great. But, there is something I didn't mention. I went quiet for a bit when a few topics came up, and later I didn't respond to your related Facebook post, either. That's what I want to talk about.
A few months ago I went on a little walk. I popped in my earbuds, pressed play, and started out of our apartment complex. Up ahead, I noticed someone had left a bit of trash in the greenspace between the building and the parking lot. A slightly crushed can: Monster Energy drink.
By now you've probably seen this video of the harassment faced by women on the streets in New York:
Every once in a while, something odd happens. Ok, I guess odd things happen all the time, but this is a particular odd thing. I'll be in a discussion with someone, and they'll absolutely insist I'm not an atheist. They are positive the term I should call myself is "agnostic". This usually happens right after I explain that I obviously can't be 100% certain and could hypothetically change my mind, given the right evidence.
I propose a new law. This law would come into effect when a person began a weight loss plan. Consider it a consumer-protection law to curb false advertising.
My wife is pregnant and due in December. This will be our second child, and everything is going fine so far. With our first child, she didn't have many of the standard pregnancy problems. This time she has swollen feet and ankles, and pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome, and is generally more tired and out of breath. Because I'm a stay-at-home homeschooling dad, it means I hang out with many pregnant women and hear all the intimate and graphic details moms share with each other, and so I know my wife's symptoms fall into the "stuff 99% of pregnant women have" category.
Almost everyone thinks they're a good driver. Ask them, they'll tell you. Here's a survey which did just that. Most Americans (and, I presume, most people in other countries as well) believe themselves to be "excellent" or "very good" drivers.
I decided I'm going to occasionally repost some of my older stuff that I still like quite a lot. First up: Participation trophies. Enjoy!
"English is great: learn a few rules and you can misspell 99% of words pretty easily." -me
Suppose you're on Facebook, minding your own business, when somebody posts a link to an article. This article is about a study, or, more accurately, the article uses the study to support its argument.
Down on your luck?
Hmmm, so let me see…
Don't you hate it when someone who disagrees with you uses stupid arguments to support their position? Like "Yeah, well, if global warming is true, how come it's snowing outside?!" Or "If evolution is true and we evolved from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?!"
Person: Oh, you live in [city]? I bet you [sports joke about city team].
