Oh hello.

I knew Dr Rorabeck. He was a wonderful guy. @SchulichMedDent does have much to be proud of. Like any institution, it has its warts.

After the 9/11 attacks, airlines and public buildings adopted a flurry of "security" measures, like taking away pen-knives from fliers or requiring visitors to office buildings to be photographed or present a driver's license.

1/

Bruce Schneier's seminal 2003 "Beyond Fear" called these measures: #securitytheater.

Schneier pointed out that these measures would be easy to circumvent, and were thus providing only the comforting appearance of security - not security

Security theater is worse than nothing. Security theater gives people the false impression that their risks have been mitigated, when actually things are just as dangerous.

After al, if you know that danger exists, you can take some steps to mitigate or avoid it.

3/

But if you have the false impression that you've been made safer, you might unwittingly engage in risky behavior.

4/

Like, if you know your car's brakes are flaky, you might nurse the car along to the mechanic at low speed on side-streets.

But if you don't know about the brakes, you're apt to discover their flaws at 75mph on the freeway.

5/

Time once again to emphasize the differences between totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and fascism. They're often used as synonyms but they are different, although they do tend to lead to each other. Order one, and the other two are usually delivered soon enough.

Totalitarianism is best understood as the politicization of everything. Every facet of life is infused with political meaning... and subjected to political control. There is little room for privacy or individualism. Every word and deed is seen as a political action.

Totalitarianism does *not* require authoritarian government, although it usually leads to such. You can be totalitarian without having any real government power at all, enforcing your political will through mob actions and corporate power. Examples from recent history abound.

Totalitarianism is the easiest of the three deadly "isms" to slide into, because it can easily be disguised with claims of its good intentions. Totalitarians usually claim to be motivated by the Greater Good. They claim to represent the interests of sympathetic victims.

Totalitarians claim that society is unjust and must be corrected by force. Before they gain the power to become authoritarians, they often assert the right to use force outside of the law because the government is corrupt or serves the interests of their ideological enemies.

There's a particular kind of romantic partnership, with a certain sort of person, that I've wanted since I became a self-aware, directed agent at around age 15.

Empirically, this kind of relationship has been hard to achieve. It hasn't worked out yet, at least.

And this sometimes leaves me wondering if my standards are unreasonable.

In years past that desire was often very alive.

These days, I'm rarely directly or viscerally in contact with it.

I sometimes contemplate aiming for some other kind of romantic and/or sexual relationship instead. In part because I might be more effective if I...I don't know, got laid more? But that's not really the thing. More like, if I had someone around whom I could regularly relax.

But mostly, I don't pursue those alternative relationship-setups out of a sense of something like loyalty to myself + a vague sense of wrongness and/or sadness about it. It often feels like giving up or giving in.

[I might elaborate on the wrongness sometime.]

My view on lent:

My biggest problem with lent is the public display of fasting which is contrary to scripture: Matthew 6:16-18

Just as well, overhearing discussions of humble brags, “oh man, this is so hard fasting from x” while displaying ashes on one’s forehead seems overtly contrary to scripture. Again, Matthew 6:16-18 is clear.

Additionally it has been my experience that repentance and fasting lose much of their substance for those practicing the tradition.

However....

We cannot oversimplify and call lent a “Roman Catholic invention” or a “pagan” practice given its presence, minimally the term, in the early church with people like Athanasius.

In the modern conception: Advent is to Christmas what lent is to Easter. While asceticism is removed and shallow tradition enters into the practice, this can happen in most everything.

THREAD: My thoughts on the decision not to call witnesses. Please correct me if I'm wrong. This take is based on what I think I know, and there's much I don't know, but I do not understand why the dems didn't depose Rep. Beutler. Let's talk about the objections: 1/

First, many are saying it would drag this thing out and prevent Biden's agenda from moving forward. I don't see how that's possible. The senate had the votes to depose Rep. Beutler. We saw that with the 55-45 vote to allow witnesses. GOP can't filibuster that 2/

It would have taken probably a week to depose her and introduce her testimony into the senate record. The senate is scheduled to be in recess this week. The only thing a deposition of Beutler would have done is stopped the senate's vacation. 3/

Since everything would have been done in roughly a week, and the senate was scheduled for a week-long vacation, the deposition of Beutler wouldn't have delayed any of Biden's agenda. 4/

Next, many are saying Mitch threatened to filibuster Biden's agenda. That's also an empty threat. Cabinet confirmations require only a simple majority vote, and the Covid relief package is going through the budget reconciliation process so it's not subject to filibuster 5/