Todd's Mischief Blog

~~~ Real Antifa has never been tried. ~~~ In retrospect, anti-vape was a dry run for c19 insofar as “We don’t have 100% of the science so we should just ignore the 95% we do have.” ~~~ Government is going to take over healthcare and monitor what you eat, yet continue to subsidize sugar and HFCS. Because government. ~~~ You might not like it, but this is what nature healing looks like: ~~~ “Talking points” means “true, but not useful to my side.” ~~~ I liked Grogu better when he was known as Baby Yoda. ~~~ This is so obvious once somebody actually says it. When the formal government defers to institutions that are formally outside the government, it leaks power into them and makes them de facto state agencies.  ~~~ Democrats: *cause inflation* Media: “Consumer spending is up!” ~~~ There are dichotomies and then there are false-dichotomies. ~~~ Imagine a cult that does not believe in a god but does believe in the devil. Now think about NeverTrump and stop imagining. ~~~ ...

One of the more pernicious ways that the press and the left (but I repeat myself) promote their worldview by making everything seem worse than it actually is. They paint everything within a narrative of oppressed classes being systematically persecuted and hunted by the oppressor class, facts be damned. One version of this narrative that pops up with annual regularity is the story that trans people are being killed at "epidemic" rates. The only trouble is, it just isn't so.  OBVIOUS DISCLAIMER: Every death is tragic and every murderer should be punished. This narrative caught my attention for the first time about four years ago, and I dug into it using the most recent data available from 2015. I found conclusively that, contrary to the narrative, being trans is one of the safest demographics to be when it comes to homicide. Here are images of my notes from that time (sources appear at the end of the article): Apparently, no journalist is interested in digging into t...

Frankly, it's criminal that SCOTUS doesn't have a daytime round-table talk show. ~~~ Feminist: "Work sucks!" Nobody: "..." Feminist: "It must be because I'm a woman!" ~~~ 🏳️‍⚧️: “I was born this way.” Reality: “But you weren’t.” ~~~ In a way, everyone who has died since January 6 has died as a result of the insurrection. ~~~ Very unfortunate when the source of your conspiracy theory is the truth. ~~~ You may not like it, but this is what de-escalation looks like. ~~~ When you declare the police the bad guys, only the bad guys will join the police.  ~~~ I don't personally like Texas, but I recognize the need for Texas. ~~~ What we are witnessing across-the-board is an effort to push the adage of "history is written by the victors" to its end by simply declaring victory by writing a history. ~~~ When anyone says "I ♥ Public Schools" what they're really saying is  "I ♥ Systemic Racism" ~~~ It’s risky to start...

John Hayward, a.k.a. @Doc_0 , writer of thought-provoking Twitter threads, has been on a roll lately with examinations of how Democrats' methods of anarcho-tyranny come down squarely on the middle class. (Quick note, as I use it, this includes the working class.) I could easily post dozens of tweets from the thread, but I think this one really sums his thoughts up:  And as you might have noticed after the Year of the Pandemic, the Left wants Americans to live in fear. They hate red-state middle class communities where everyone feels secure and happy, insulated from the social crises the Left seeks to exploit for power. — John Hayward (@Doc_0) April 21, 2021 To read just a sampling of Hayward's thoughts on the subject, see  here , here , and here .  Hayward writes in an aggressive, fast-paced style that seizes attention and gets his readers nodding along. I enjoy his observations very much and and happy to share them. At the same time, I'm gifted (cursed) with a menta...

Late thoughts on the George Floyd/Derek Chauvin thing. NOTE: If you are unfamiliar with René Girard’s insights into the scapegoat mechanism, I'll probably be talking right past you. For a very  brief introduction, see here . If you have a long drive ahead of you, the CBC did a series on Girard that is well-received by scholars. I've linked to the mp3 files below:  Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3  |  Part 4  |  Part 5 (If I were you, I'd download them, as the internet isn't nearly as forever as some claim it to be.) What does the scapegoat mechanism have to do with George Floyd and Derick Chauvin? While examples of the scapegoat mechanism abound, in this case I see a particularly illustrative example of how this mechanism, which is already very wrong in a moral sense, can go wrong further. Insistences that Floyd was a scapegoat for white supremacy or Chauvin a scapegoat for racial grievances are both are misapplications of the term. A scape...

People often like to ask what has been the biggest change of opinion you've had on a major topic. For myself, after coming to accept that hotdogs are in fact sandwiches, I would say my biggest shift is in how I regard corporations.  I used to be sold on corporations as private businesses. But really, corporations are government creations. I knew this for a long time before I eventually understood it. If government is prone to treating adults like children, it is equally prone to treating corporations like adults. But really, corporations are the children of government. This new understanding didn't turn me anti-corporate, and I certainly don't want to do away with corporations. Their benefits are indisputable, especially the liability protections they provide to individuals who create jobs and provide goods and services that make society function. Still, while men may be endowed by their creator with unalienable rights, that same Creator did not create corporations.  I real...

 If you assume people are liars, then you have to assume nothing works The above graphic is making the rounds on twitter. I came across it from Kyle Becker, who elaborates thusly: Good morning, mask fanatics. Take a good look at this chart. Blue are mask mandate states, red are *free states.* This is called *NO CORRELATION.* That means your mask mandates have no statistically significant effect fighting COVID. Just thought you should know.🔻 pic.twitter.com/StS4bU1wuq — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 16, 2021 This, of course, meets with the usual challenges from pro-maskers. What counts as a mask mandate? What timeframe is this? How do we even know what percentage of people wore masks?  It's that last one that tears the challenger's entire argument apart. There are only two ways to get that information: observation or survey. Realistically, survey is really the only way to go. Yes, there could be people on corners in cities and towns across America acting like traffic ...