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What is “cool,” anyway?

I am blatantly stealing this from a friend on the Internet.

This is maybe a hot take (or perhaps a deep dive? or philosophizing a little?) but I think sometimes, people use the word “cool” as shorthand for “knows and embraces fully who they are,” which I think is mostly true for all of us here, even as we continue down the endless journey of knowing ourselves. And that, for sure, can be intimidating for peeps who are still learning to accept themselves (flaws and all), etc.

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Homeownership and Communism

Today I watched this little YouTube short, and I think it’s pretty interesting!

https://youtube.com/shorts/Irgi6kR5d1o?si=cNS6kMMz1eaLnfwG

I haven’t checked the math myself. However, I do find it fascinating that the comments/the Discourse can’t agree on whether Encouraging Homeownership is pro or anti communist.

One of the things I hear a lot on the Internet (yeah, yeah, I know) is that everyone SHOULD be able to own their own home, because landlords are rent-seeking, etc.

Typically, the people who say this have never owned a home and in particular have never rented out a home to someone else. They have the mistaken assumption that rent is all for the personal enrichment of the landlord and not for things like maintenance or interest or anything.

Now. Are there bad landlords? Of course there are. Slumlords have always existed, and we should make sure that we have strong regulations to prevent landlords from abusing tenants by providing unliveable facilities.

I also think there should be more of the “missing middle” available (smaller, cheaper homes, for one step above renting). Amd I think there should be more ways to deal with the difficulty of getting a down payment, although I am not chock full of good ideas on how, at the moment. (Perhaps some kind of land trust? Co-ops?)

But: “Landlords are inherently evil, praise the revolution, home ownership for every proletarian” is sort of diametrically opposed to “home ownership is a tool of fighting Communism.”

My personal opinion falls on the side of the latter. I think that ownership does give you something to lose, gives you a stake in your country and your community. And I think that’s a good thing!

Now, I don’t think everyone wants or needs to own a house either. A lot of folks like the freedom and flexibility that leases give them. And again, I think we should protect those people with strong tenant rights laws.

And I also think that socially, we should decouple adulthood from home ownership. That’s not a great metric. (But that’s a whole nother complicated post.)

Anyway. Just wanted to share some thoughts!

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BBC article about Rogozov

Today someone linked to this BBC article about Rogozov, the guy who performed his own appendectomy in Antarctica.

His description here is 100% accurate for appendicitis:

It hurts like the devil! A snow storm whipping through my soul, wailing like 100 jackals.

Anyway, go check it out! A neat piece of medical history.

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Make the best choice possible

I wrote this down a little while ago and can’t remember what conversation it was from, but: still wanted to share it.

Don’t write alternate history fanfic about your life. Just keep moving forward and making the best choices you can with the information you have.

Or, “Do the Next Right Thing.”

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The Martian

I’ve been listening to The Martian on audiobook and I love it so much. It’s really a great exemplar of the “Man vs Nature” conflict structure that I learned about in elementary school.

  • Man vs Nature
  • Man vs Man
  • Man vs Society
  • Man vs Himself

Which, I think, is what the writer meant when he said he likes stories “without politics.” Because yes, I will forever clown on him for thinking that Star Trek, of all things, is “without politics” – the entire show is political storytelling overlaid onto Freudian and Jungian archetypes – but everyone is allowed to discover things they missed. Yes, even late in life. We’re allowed to not all have it figured out by Age Whatever.

But I think the appealing thing about Man vs Nature stories is that there’s no evil intent to contend with. All the other structures involve human motivations; but Nature has no motivation. It just is. We can either adapt around it, or perish. And that adaptation is what’s so satisfying to watch or read about.

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome. MacGyver. Odyssey of the Mind. Destination Imagination. Heck, even puns. The heights of human achievement come from using things in unexpected ways.

I do love the other story archetypes, don’t get me wrong. But right now? There’s something comforting in good old Nature trying to kill us.

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Trust, but verify

Recently, one group of friends started talking about a YouTuber that another friend is a huge fan of, in very disparaging terms.

I asked about it, basically asking for receipts, and nobody provided them..

I’m not really a YouTube kind of person, but this contrast (between people whom I like and respect the opinions of) was too much for me to ignore, so I went and watched the YouTube video myself.

I should say that I really hate video as an information format. It’s long, you can’t really do much else while you’re absorbing it, you can’t easily skip around, you can’t copy paste quotes.

But I stuck it out, because I’m stubborn, and by this point I was INVESTED.

I should also say that normally, I am wary of the “both sides have valid points” rhetoric. It used to be true, or at least truer than today, but that was before people started telling us to inject bleach to cure diseases or what nonsense Tiktok trend is going on these days.

But I made an exception in this case, because both “sides” here are people I generally trust to be working in good faith. I don’t think any of them are acting disingenuously; I think all of them believe what they believe.

I watched the whole video over the course of a couple days.

It was this one: https://youtu.be/7gDKbT_l2us

The initial group of friends were saying that in it, Contrapoints was “defending” JK Rowling.

I watched the whole video, and I didn’t see any defense.

About a third of the way in, I messaged the group to say “hey, I didn’t see any of the stuff you guys are talking about so far in this video…am I watching the wrong video?”

Instead of sending me the Actual Bad Video, they doubled down. One person said “If your friends telling you this person is a Nazi and a transmedicalist isn’t enough for you to keep their voice out of your head, then I don’t know what to tell you.”

That comment made me see red. And after I calmed down a bit, I said, look. When two people I like and respect tell me opposite things, which one of them am I supposed to blindly trust?

And then I thought to myself: I *don’t* blindly trust. Or rather, I don’t do it as a matter of conscious policy. Sure, there are lots of things in life where I can’t be an expert, and I do have to trust other people. But “the contents of a goddamn YouTube video” is not one of them.

Yes, we trust. But we also verify. And it’s not anti-friendship, or anti-trust, to say “I’m going to watch this for myself.”

I’m a little worried that by phrasing things this way, I’ll give steam to some kind of “do your own research” alt-right pipeline. If my friends have actual concerns about this content creator, I expect they will continue to share them with me.

But so far I haven’t actually heard any real concerns; I’ve only heard single-word adjectives with no details and no receipts. 

So I am cautiously proceeding, and looking at the primary sources myself. Because that’s what I do. “Citation needed” is just a way of life, I guess.

I’m starting the second Contrapoints JK Rowling video tonight. We’ll see if this one has the defending in it, I guess?

Coda: The day after I write this, I see the following from a friend of mine:

https://blast-o-rama.com/2026/05/13/dear-internet-read-a-little-deeper-it-wont-hurt-you-i-promise/

This. All of this. PLEASE don’t stop digging deeper and fact checking, even on things your side writes.

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Really excellent comment from Reddit

I know the original will probably get deleted, so I’m just going to paste this here.

The original context was a young woman asking for relationship advice when her boyfriend wanted to have sex and she wasn’t ready yet.

Assuming that you are in your early 20s (as listed in your other post)


If you want to remain a virgin and your boyfriend wants a relationship with sex, then you are not compatible, and yes the relationship will probably end. 


> I kind of like being a virgin


> it’s not even like “oh I’ll be ready soon,” I genuinely don’t know when I’ll be ready


You may be asexual. 


> how do you even know when you’re ready? it’s not something you can undo


There was a time I had never tried Thai food, and then I tried it and realised I liked it, so now I eat Thai food regularly. I don’t think about “who I was before I had Thai food”, it’s not like I lost anything by having a new experience.


But if you don’t want to have sex and you don’t think you ever want to have sex, you should tell prospective partners that you’re asexual. It means “I don’t want sex” vs “I just haven’t tried it yet.”

The Thai food metaphor, in particular, I find very apt. Sex isn’t particularly special; it can be risky; it can carry extra religious or cultural weight; but in the end, it’s just another experience, one that you are free to try or not try, as you wish.