I (briefly) considered taking this tree down myself but it would have taken many hours to haul the logs and brush away. View on YouTube.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Ring Light iPhone mount
“If I’m not supposed to be up here, why did you leave the chair out?”
Our Long National Nightmare Finally Over
“On Wednesday, January 20th, the current president of the United States will drink his very last Diet Coke in the Oval Office. On Wednesday, January 20th, our national nightmare will be over. It will be the end of four very dark years in American history. It will be the end of separating children at the border, it will be the end of ignoring the pandemic, it will be the end of the insane tweets (well, at least the end of insane tweets from a sitting president). Military actions will no longer be announced on social media. White House press releases will no longer be typo-riddled messes that link to stories by far-right publications. A lunatic will no longer have access to the nuclear codes. Our government will no longer be stacked with kleptocrats like the president’s eldest daughter, the president’s son-in-law, the sleepy Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and various other low-level grifters. We will no longer worry about the President of the United States weaponizing the federal government against its citizens. We will no longer see photos of children on the Mexican border being blasted with tear gas. We will no longer be a cautionary tale for what happens when you elect the con-man monorail guy from The Simpsons. Other countries will no longer pity us. Our Canadian neighbors will no longer feel like the family that accidentally bought the apartment over the meth lab.”
True Believers
“In the 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, three social psychologists studied a small religious sect in Chicago called “the seekers,” who believed that the world would soon be destroyed by a flood, and that a flying saucer was coming to save them. The seekers were deeply invested in the prophecy’s fulfillment—many had quit jobs and left spouses to prepare. On the appointed day, they gathered at their leader’s home to wait for deliverance. The psychologists wanted to know how the seekers would react when the world didn’t end. Would they realize they’d been duped? Denounce their former belief system? Turn on their prophet? As it turned out, no. When Armageddon failed to materialize, they simply decided that God had spared Earth from destruction because of their faith; that they had been right all along.”
“The psychologists who studied the seekers attributed their rationalizations to the discomfort of cognitive dissonance: When a true believer is faced with “undeniable evidence” that what he believes is wrong, he “will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view.”