Weeknotes 27
Stove Minivan
- Happy April
- My daily double squirt of Flonase is completely outgunned by the rolling hills of pollen outside. This—among other current events—sucks, man.
- Taxes: filed! I’d been putting this task off because of all the what have you. But turns out, I apparently way overpaid federal taxes last year. Who’da guessed overpaying income taxes would be the best investment returns goin’ right now?
- Trying to get back into some semblance of running shape. Ran a few 5K’s this week at an easy party pace. It’s always surprising to rediscover how much easier runs feel when it’s 60 degrees than when it’s over 80.
- I caved and paid our ridiculously over-appraised property taxes.
- Biru decided to give anorexia a brief try. After a couple days of her basically eating nothing, we took her to the vet to get checked out. Got blood tests, poop tests, urine tests done. Surprise surprise, the very next day she’s back to normal, and all the tests come back fine.
- Stumbled upon this excellent essay by A.R. Moxon: One About The
Atmosphere.
After recently ending conversations with a few “Stove Minivans” from my life,
this really hit home. I wish I’d read it earlier.
Because Stove Minivan, it turns out, wasn’t some weird outlier. He was part of a growing new normal, a group of people who had been offered a chance to immigrate from observable reality and enter a dark world of constant hostility, misinformation, and self-loving grievance; a group of people who leapt at that invitation, and cling to it to this day, no matter what happens, immune to proof; a constituency who blame others for the foulness of the shallow puddle of reasoning in which they demand to sit, even though we can all see them fouling it themselves, every day.
And, crucially, when you discover that somebody isn’t open to persuasion, leave them. Leave it. Engaging with that elevates them into the sphere of people who deserve to be taken seriously, and their ideas into the sphere of things that merit debate. Even worse, it sharpens their dull knives for them. Worst of all, it wastes your precious time.