Burning Rage

Yesterday I took my two 4-year-old daughters to our local public pool—a nice, fairly new facility. They don’t have “Family Change Rooms”, they have “Universal” ones, but whatever - what’s in a name, right? There are about 14 individual private stalls, designed for parents with young kids (especially mixed-gender siblings), or people needing extra space or assistance, or anyone that needs extra privacy. We arrived to find every stall occupied except one. As my toddlers and I approached it, a sixty-something golden girl elbowed right past us, dropped her shoes on the bench inside, turned to me without a hint of apology: “I’ll be right back—my shoes are holding this spot.” As we waited we watched six or seven other stall doors open, in each one a boomer (men and women alike) lounging single-occupancy, leisurely packing bags, blow-drying hair, gabbing loudly across the corridor like it was a coffee shop social hour. No rush. No awareness of the growing line of actual families and one wheelchair waiting. This is a perfext snapshot of why we are where we are as a country. A vocal cohort—often the same demographic that polls show still reliably backs the Liberals by wide margins, even as GDP per capita flatlines and housing/affordability crush younger generations—cheerleading “progressive” redesigns and policies while quietly hogging the practical benefits for themselves, leaving everyone else (especially those coming up behind) to queue, adapt, or go without. No shame. No urgency to yield. Just a casual assumption that the system should bend around their convenience, forever.

This song was written in 20 minutes of pure rage after hearing how a senator got his son out of the draft for Vietnam...

>From these experiments, it was thought that there was to be only one cure for helplessness. In Seligman's hypothesis, the dogs do not try to escape because they expect that nothing they do will stop the shock. To change this expectation, experimenters physically picked up the dogs and moved their legs, replicating the actions the dogs would need to take in order to escape from the electrified grid. This had to be done at least twice before the dogs would start willfully jumping over the barrier on their own. In contrast, threats, rewards, and observed demonstrations had no effect on the "helpless" Group 3 dogs.

A man spent $81,000 on height-lengthening surgery, going from 5'5" to 6'0". Now, more than two years later, he’s finished an extensive course of physical therapy to complete his transformation.

The way some people (not everyone) are talking about Paul Thomas Anderson like he’s some middling talent that was just discovered yesterday and not one of the industry’s most respected and celebrated filmmakers who’s been making revered masterpieces for thirty years.

You also don’t walk out of college or university expecting to buy a new 4 bedroom house, two cars, boats, skidoos, etc. The reason you struggle is because you aren’t willing to wait and make do like we did. Your entitlement is causing you to struggle.