Monster

I keep thinking my job is done, but she always comes back to me eventually. Oh, I know when she is coming for me. Yes, I have studied every footstep she makes in her little footed pajamas when she tip-toes into her safe green bedroom, past the dresser with the mirror, over the fluorescent-patterned space-themed rug, and sneaks ever so quietly, ever so carefully, underneath her twin sized bed. To me. I will know she's coming even before the door is all the way open. I get started when it opens slow, when her heels are lifted off the ground, when she twists the door handle so gentle as though if she were to treat it wrongly, even just a little, it might scream and clang and cause a real troublesome fuss. Yes, it's then when I start to pull my scaly lips over my scores of yellow, pointy teeth. It's then that I open wide all my eyes and pull out the crumbs with my stripey talons. And when she gets under the bed frame, I've got a big, monstrous grin on my face like I haven't got a care in the world.

I love those nights. Sometimes she smiles back, and we have great fun together and play cards or tell stories. Sometimes she just sits with me for a while before she goes to bed. Sometimes she wants a hug. It's my joy to be exactly what she needs me to be, but those aren't my favorite nights. On my favorite nights, the door flies open and before she has two steps into the room, she leaps like an Olympian onto the bed with a booming thud, and I cover my head with a few of my arms to brace for impact. And when she sleeps so easily, I feel like I can sleep, too. That maybe soon, I won't be needed anymore, and I can just leave my spiky teeth hidden and the crumbs in my eyes and roll over and just sleep forever. I guess I'm a lucky beast. One way or another, I smile every night.

But tonight, I have a new thought, as my six-fingered paw smooths out my unkempt mane for her. I think maybe I'll never get to rest. Because tonight is different. Tonight, the noisemakers are silent. No one is yelling or screaming or cursing, and no one is crying. But her gait is unmistakable. Has it been months since last time? Has it been years yet? Maybe when she is long free of them, still, on some nights she will hear them, and still on those nights she will need a monster to sit by. Maybe this isn't the kind of thing that ends. And I'll be there, even when she is old, watching the door, waiting to pounce on any foul invader and protect her little green room. But already, I am so tired. I don't want to go away. I want her to need me. I want her not to need me. I want to go away.

And sure enough, she crawls under the bed. She's older. I am smiling.

Week of March 9th, 2020

It was good to see you this week. And what a week it has been. I will not do what I have started to fall into and give a news recap for the week since there is simply too much news, and everyone’s aware of it, so I’m sure you already know this. I’m going to try to keep this brief. We shall see if I succeed.

For me, I feel like I’ve been in a dreamlike state for the past few days. The current situation feels surreal and strange, and I don’t know how I’m going to get back in the groove of schoolwork next week as I stay here. At this point, I have no plans of returning to school until possibly the summer. It’s weird being home for an extended time again. It feels like a time warp. It’s like High School all over again. Hopefully jumping into a routine will put me back at ease.

Here’s CNN praising President Woodrow Fucking Wilson, literally claiming that God chose him to be President. Those who reject that media has a political bias are being willfully ignorant.

Alex Jones got a DWI.

Before President Trump’s shitstorm of an address in which he got virtually all information about his own policy wrong, he was being broadcast on CSPAN without his knowledge. Here’s a recording of that. He was also caught on video after the presentation, which was fairly funny.

OJ Simpson tweeted a joke about running away from police.

Remember that the only reason people ever thought Senator Sanders was viable was his ability to win Michigan in the primary in 2016. Well, we confirmed this week that Biden won every single county in Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. There are still so many “Bernie could still win, guys” people on Twitter, and I honestly feel bad for them. “This is like Obama vs Clinton in ’08.” Really it’s just sad to see.

Here’s something I cannot believe isn’t satire. A website LITERALLY CALLED Above the Law, posted a podcast with the title “Yup, Constitutional Diehards Are A Cult” because fuck democratic lawmaking, I guess. The podcast is described as follows:

The Jabot podcast is an offshoot of the Above the Law brand focused on the challenges, women, people of color, LGBTQIA, and other diverse populations face in the legal industry. Our name comes from none other than the Notorious Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the jabot (decorative collar) she wears when delivering dissents from the bench.

I cannot believe that I am not making this up.

Forgive me for sharing a video posted by Andrew Kaczynski, but this must be seen. Any other week this would have been a story, but not this one. The Masked Singer, if you don’t know, is a show in which celebrities compete in a singing competition without revealing their identity to the judges or the audience. Well at the end of this week’s episode, the singer was revealed to be Sarah Palin who then immediately started singing “Baby Got Back.” Again, I am not fucking joking.

HOLY SHIT THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS. EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENED THIS WHOLE WEEK AND THEN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS ARE FAKE. To be clear, this story isn’t about all the scrolls. The ones in Israel are OK, which is most of them. But you may remember that in the early ‘00s, the Museum of the Bible in D.C. bought a bunch. All of them are fake. All sixteen of them. And approximately 70 around the world. This is huge news that also missed the cycle this week. The story from National Geographic is fascinating.

Finally, French mayor defends holding massive Smurf rally despite Coronavirus, saying “We must not stop living.”

And here is a video sent to you without context.

Thanks,
Jacob Morris

Week of March 1st, 2020

Hello and happy March, I guess. I’m actually writing this from Asheville. I’m back in town this week for Spring Break. I don’t remember when you said your spring break was, but I hope you have enjoyed, will enjoy, or are enjoying it whatever the case may be. I’m trying to lie somewhat low this week, but I have some projects to work on and a movie to edit, so they’re keeping me on my toes. But I have time today, so this one is probably going to be ridiculous in length.

 

This week started with us making a stupid deal with the Taliban that appeals to all the “stop endless wars” people on both sides who do not know anything. Yes, Twitter, please call me a neocon again. I’m so sorry that I think the United States should maintain stability across the world. Nah we should just keep to ourselves and wait for the sequel to 9/11. This is truly a “both sides” problem, and it’s just going to get worse as populism gets a stronger grip on our culture. The week got stupider from here.

 

As we both know, Joe Biden had a remarkable Tuesday, and I revel in the cries of Senator Sanders's base and the accuracy of my prediction. That being said, he exceeded even my expectations, and I'm very, very happy for it. We are watching the Democratic Party crumble even as it appears to unite, and it is so deserved. While a Trump versus Sanders debate would certainly be more entertaining, I am thrilled that we are keeping a socialist populist who is a literal anti-charity activist away from the White House. A right-wing populist has been bad enough. President Trump will mop the floor with Biden on the debate stage. I have not wavered in my opinion since around June of last year. Biden will secure the nomination and lose to President Trump.

Many long campaigns (and one ill-conceived short one) met their bitter end this week. Steyer, Buttigieg, Senator Klobuchar, Bloomberg, Senator Warren, and weirdly not Congresswoman Gabbard, whom I will get to soon, saw their hopes of being Commander in Chief shatter. These, of course, came in two waves: pre- and post-Super Tuesday. For the pre-Tuesday gang, Buttigieg and Senator Klobuchar dropped suddenly and endorsed Biden leading to what Shoe0nHead calls the assembly of “Neoliberal Voltron.” Both Buttigieg's and Klobuchar's withdrawals were remarkably abrupt with some evidence that neither candidate intended to leave the race just hours before he or she endorsed Biden. Biden then almost immediately said that he wants Buttigieg and possibly Senator Klobuchar in his administration, something which Buttigieg—the savviest of the Democrats—needs if he wants any hope of remaining relevant. This has led many to throw the word “conspiracy” around. President Trump used language he's a bit more familiar with, calling the successive suspensions a “quid pro quo.” So, was there a backroom deal here? Well you're not stupid. Obviously there was a backroom deal, and there's nothing unusual, illegal, or unethical about such an agreement. It's utterly moot. In addition to the two leading Democratic “moderates,” Biden also secured the coveted James Comey endorsement, which a Biden campaign PR staffer literally asked to be returned. He was also endorsed by Robert “Beto” “Hell yes we're going to take your AR-15” O'Rourke, and promised that O'Rourke would lead on guns in a Biden administration to which Congressman Buck did the whole “come and take it” routine leading many to lose their fucking minds because they don't understand the legal definition of a threat. Yuck. Fuck 2020 for making me vote for this dude.

Bloomberg joined Neoliberal Voltron after Super Tuesday, taking one final Boomer jab at the President on Twitter, though not before this legend destroyed him on gun control at a Fox News Town Hall. I won't spend too long roasting Bloomberg because everybody has already done it. The guy threw six hundred twenty million of his personal dollars into the trash can in order to win American Samoa. He has now retroactively made Jeb!'s 2016 campaign look reasonable, which is an act of heroism in itself. But rather than continue to bash his face into the pavement, I'll leave you with MSNBC saying that the Bloomberg campaign could have given every American a million dollars.

Nevertheless, she desisted. It's strange yet satisfying to watch the former front-runner become an also-ran. Senator Warren made a grave miscalculation. She'd rightly predicted that Biden would be the more durable candidate, so she ran in Senator Sanders's lane, making his positions a bit more digestible. But she didn't stick the course. She saw Biden falling off and Senator Sanders gaining speed, and she pivoted so quick it was more of a swerve while trying to position herself as a possible Sanders Running mate. This is the shit that happens to people like Senators Harris and Warren who don't actually believe in anything. And on Super Tuesday she crashed. Senator Sanders' base feel as though she stole votes from their king, and they hate her now. Even the President has gotten in on it. Really, 2020 was not Senator Warren's time, 2016 was. It goes to show, you can wait for a Clinton, but the world won't wait for you. Good riddance. President Trump hit the nail on the head in a hilarious SELF-DEPRECATING statement that Twitter libs are pretending not to understand. Like, just admit the President is funny. You'll be okay.

Now that we've finally narrowed to a two-man race in the Democratic Party, many have started asking, “Wait, why is Tulsi Gabbard still here?” That's a wonderful question, and my only answer is that she's a disruptor who wants to burn everything down. I think the only person who fully understands Congresswoman Gabbard is Congresswoman Gabbard, but it's obvious she's out for blood, constantly going on Fox News to tell DNC chair Tom Perez to resign. She hates the Democratic establishment with a fervent passion and never ever holds back. During this campaign she has sued both Hillary Clinton and Google out of what I can only interpret as pure spite. Neither lawsuit is really based in any law, but I guess Congresswoman Gabbard thought pure rage might persuade the court. Congresswoman Gabbard is pretty good at pure rage. This week, Judge Wilson dismissed her lawsuit against Google with palpable contempt. He absolutely dragged her for her nonsensical lawsuit. The dismissal is very much worth reading. For all these reasons, Super Tuesday made me very excited. After Bloomberg, Congresswoman Gabbard won second place in American Samoa, netting two pledged delegates. As a delegate-holder, per DNC rules, which had been loosened to allow Bloomberg to debate, she qualified for the debate next Sunday. I was thrilled. She's a genuine loon who makes everything so much more interesting. But the DNC she hates so much just fucked her over. They changed the rules just to exclude her, and she is rightfully pissed. The Democratic Party needs to be burned to the ground, and I hope Congresswoman Gabbard pulls it off.

Joe Biden got attacked by vegans at an event. That dementia patient is in desperate need of Secret Service right about now. His badass wife literally had to put hands on one of them when they were storming the stage. This is a rare kind of photo in American politics.

In a flash, or perhaps habit, of insanity, Senator Schumer literally threatened Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh and was rightly rebuked by Chief Justice Roberts. I can't believe a Senator would even try this shit.

Here's Glenn Beck being racist!

Here Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez says religious liberty is invoked only for bigotry!

You remember former Congresswoman Katie Hill. She was a young, attractive, bisexual feminist who turned a long-red Californian seat blue. As she campaigned, the breathless praise was really sickening. There was a feature length HBO documentary about her campaign that positioned her as some kind of feminist hero (you know the kind that says you're sexist if you don't vote for a woman). Of course, then there was the scandal. Her nudes leaked (all of which I have avoided looking at) and showed that she had an iron cross tattoo above her vulva and was fucking a female junior member of her campaign staff. And then she was secretly dating the journalist who defended her. So she got into Congress, and got right back out. There were many other weird details and I could write about this story all day if I let myself, but it feels like the plot of a bad erotica novel and not, you know, real life. At the time, I was extremely concerned for Hill's well-being, since she wrote this graphic NYT piece about almost killing herself. She since founded HER Time, a PAC that only promotes female candidates, as well as an organization which supports victims of revenge porn.

I found the messaging around the situation very strange. It seemed all the conversation was about revenge porn and how Hill was a victim held to a higher standard when the conversation should have been about how you're not supposed to fuck your employees whether it's creepy old-man sex or hot lesbian sex. People who sell their labor to you cannot freely choose to have sex with you just for funzies. Welp, New York Magazine did a piece on her this week that got me thinking about this all over again. It tried so damn hard to make her the hero and it failed so spectacularly. That being said, there were a lot of people who surely read the tweet and not a word of the article going “haha yaaass my bisexual kweeen” who can fuck right off. In the interview portion of the piece, Hill explicitly declares her intent to lie about multiple things. There was a remarkably non-credible backstory for the Iron Cross tattoo taken at face value. She uses her mental health as a tool by which to strong-arm the journalist.

But when the narrative shifted from the story she wanted to tell, so did her tone. After letting her know in person that a detail she’d omitted came up in my reporting, she sent me a series of increasingly agitated texts. On the phone, she choked up and yelled, saying that unless I promise her it won’t be included, anxiety would hang over her. “So you should know that,” she said. A week later, even though I told her I couldn’t promise not to include it, she texted to apologize for getting so emotional.

But worst of all was this damning quote:

During her campaign, Hill often tweeted about Me Too issues of harassment and abuse. As the candidate, she was unarguably at the top rung of her campaign team. Yet she said she didn’t feel like she was in charge, not when she was barely 30 and most staffers were in their 20s. “We joked about this a lot. Morgan was way more my boss than I was hers,” said Hill, “because she got me to places on time. So yes, I recognize that I had power, but also it just wasn’t like that at the time … I was a fucking person that was a few years older than her, and we got wrapped up in this movement of trying to do something, and I happened to be the face of it. But to me, she was just as responsible for it, you know?”

No! If the staffer was that essential to her campaign, why was she never promoted from Junior staffer? Hill said Morgan eventually broke up with Heslep but remained on the campaign team in California. “It’s not like I could fire Morgan,” Hill said. “That’s part of why it’s problematic, right? You can’t promote somebody without it being a problem. You can’t give them a raise. You can’t fire them.” 

Oh shit! So the staffer was underpaid because she was in a sexual relationship with her boss! Anyone who can read that shit and not see that it's fucked up has a major problem, and yet so, so many are defending her online. I can't wrap my head around it. Just imagine if an old Republican man was caught fucking a junior staffer with an Iron Cross on his dick. He'd be stoned in the public square. I recommend you read the NYMag article. It's heavily biased in her favor, but it's incredible and very revealing.

Apologies that this upload is presented as a Curb Your Enthusiasm meme, but the upload I’d saved got deleted, and honestly if the meme isn’t appropriate here, it’s not appropriate anywhere. A woman in Halifax County, Virginia lost her sister and her house in a fire. In a local news embarrassment which I pray is not soon forgotten, ABC News 13 made their top story the act of giving this woman a single umbrella “for a rainy day.” It’s baffling and horrifying to watch with indigence after indigence (“Twirl the umbrella. Come on, twirl the umbrella.”), and it is painfully real.

 

The fallout was also amusing as ABC News 13 tried to defend itself on Twitter. It turns out that the story and the tweet neglected to mention that this woman emailed ABC News 13 asking for a new umbrella since her mother lost hers in the fire.

 

Now that's what I call a fucking trap. This woman's mom is about as big of a fan of local newsman George Flickinger as could possibly exist, has been through some real shit, and specifically asked for him to hand deliver the fucking thing. He can't say no, and as a newsman, this must be a story. The fact that I can easily see every single part of the thought process in this flabbergasting video really enhances the cringe comedy for me.

 

Well, that's all. I'll see you Monday.

 

Thanks,

Jacob Morris

Newspapers Without a Government

This post was originally written for an assignment under a different name.

I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army. They may be led astray for a moment, but will soon correct themselves. The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

—Thomas Jefferson, to Edward Carrington

Thomas Jefferson's vision of a constitutional republic insulated from the whims and passions of the public but ultimately checked by an informed, armed, and thoughtful people is an essential part of the canon of American liberalism and an aspirational one even centuries later. His preference for a free and accessible press over a strong, controlling government was, and in some contexts still is, radical and is necessitous to that vision. As connectivity has made the distribution of information and ideas increasingly free and frictionless, we've faced new problems and have watched old ones grow. Today, we face issues of truth in media and informational division at unprecedented scopes which appear to reveal “newspapers without a government” as a chaotic, divided dystopia. But I argue that this is a narrow view.

First, communication over new channels has enabled a tremendous amount of positive change, some of which has been mischaracterized as negative. Free-flowing communication has, to some extent, kept powerful people in check in unprecedented ways. This is both by informational means, such as distributing data those in power would prefer stay hidden, and by cultural means, such as the #metoo movement. The say of the public has gotten more sway. It has also facilitated the galvanization of people separated by great distances to political and social causes representing voices which might otherwise go unheard or even unspoken. So many movements for good have found their roots online and have had their spread expedited by social media. That's not to say by any means that every movement made possible by the open internet has been positive, only that this way of organizing can promote the protection of people's rights.

Second, much of the hellish racket attributed to the politics of the internet reflects deep-seated issues not unique to the digital discourse. On many issues, the division on the surface long predates the furious tweeting observed. Instead, these disagreements are being expressed and discussed. And though in a hectic online life where non-experts argue incessantly with their kin discussion may seem unproductive or counterproductive, in reality, a messy, involved conversation offers a hope of future understanding that little to no conversation never could. Although it may be unpleasant to witness the rancor in our politics bubble to the surface, it's not the curse it may appear to be.

Third, many of the problems in our “freer papers” are circumstantial in nature. Our world has shifted faster than our culture has been able to adjust, and the platforms we use often present us with bad models of the nature of discourse they enable, sometimes innocently and sometimes irresponsibly. Social media in an appeal to accessibility has made public speech feel weightless and unserious. We're presented with social media that conflates friendship with agreement and quality with palalatability. The act of publishing something to the entire world is made to feel like chatting with friends, and so complicated and heated discourse feels like an attack. These issues are undoubtedly huge. But with time and effort, I believe that we can strengthen our culture and the platforms that we use and that we can understand a world in which everyone is a reader and a publisher.

But imagine the alternative. Computing has given people awesome power over media. What if computing had somehow done the opposite and made it easier for governments to control and limit information. What if we had instead moved closer to a government without newspapers? Would that be preferable to what we have today? No. Tyranny would flourish in the very peace and quiet which gained. And a billion screaming voices would be replaced by a single whisper at the other end of a stick. No. Despite the struggles of the day, Jefferson's views are as warranted today as when he marked them down. We should celebrate our freedom of the press and exercise it with thoughtfulness and sobriety. We should celebrate our right to privacy and protect it together. We should remember Jefferson's words, that the opinion of the people is the basis for our governments. And critically, we must not forget that our newspapers are more important than even liberal government to protect our rights.

Week of February 23rd, 2020

Happy leap day! Hope you’re doing well. I have had a hell of a week due to a massive project that was due on Wednesday in which I had to build a shell from basically scratch. Many very late nights were involved. I’m looking forward to Break week after next when we can catch up and I can start editing my movie.

First, politics! Yay!

I know you watched the debate and heard Senator Sanders taking heat and having a tough time. The audience was giving him a lot of shit. After the debate, the Senator remarked about the makeup of the crowd while parroting some apparently not exactly true information. But it makes you wonder why he didn’t say as much onstage. I can’t help but remember this glorious moment of Trump destroying Jeb! in 2016 as an establishment candidate. I think the more that Senator Sanders evokes Trump, the better he will do in this election. Also, why the hell do these debates have live audiences?

I’m sure you’ve heard the “Bernie Bro” narrative making a resurgence. Yes, the biggest problem with Senator Sanders isn’t that he’s an anticapitalist with a soft spot for communist dictators, it’s the toxicity of his young fans on Twitter. I can’t believe this is a narrative the media is really trying to pass off as honest. Every politician has toxic fans, so of course the most popular one in the race, whose fans tend to be younger, would have a such a base on the most toxic social media platforms. Jennifer Rubin, per her tendency, published an opinion piece so comically wrong that it demands to be seen. (Trump is right about her.)

Seeing this come up in debates is almost surreal. I can’t help but think it’s due to President Trump weirdly legitimizing Twitter as a central part of the political discourse. I wouldn’t suggest that Twitter ought to be ignored outright, but it’s influence is way overemphasized. And Senator Sanders’s opponents are trying to capture his bloated base, so instead of attacking him for his odd admiration for the Soviet Union, they play the whole Social media game. The Daily Beast has a whole section Ahead in the Trolls about this bullshit, including an article about a Senator Sanders staffer EXPOSED for the crime of being extremely funny on a private Twitter account. I’m particularly partial to the following:

Amy Klobuchars face looks like that optical illusion where it’s an old lady but also a young woman depending on how you look at it but with her it’s just two different old ladies

I can’t stand people pretending to be humorless to score political points.

Next, here’s one of the worst ideas in U.S. political history: telling Republicans to vote for independent Senator Bernie Sanders to weaken the DNC to help Trump win. God this looks like a monkey’s paw situation. I don’t understand what people find so hard about the concept of “vote for the best electable candidate.” Senator Sanders was an independent because he was to the left of the Democratic party. I find this clip to be particularly hilarious. Just watch the face of the white woman in the background light up. I can only hope to one day be involved in such an ill-conceived but cool-sounding O P E R A T I O N   C H A O S.

As I touched on with the silly Jennifer Rubin article, there’s been much discussion about how the Democratic National Convention ought to operate. So called “democrats” are so rightfully afraid of Senator Sander’s campaign, that they, including this President Obama campaign staffer, think that maybe democracy was a mistake. The superdelegates can save us! And isn’t it fucking hilarious that Elizabeth Warren speaks so strongly against the electoral college but thinks that the DNC just ought to do what it do. God she’s full of shit.

Speaking of Senator Warren, her Super PAC is now up and running and shady as hell! It’s worth remembering this. Hell, it’s still on her website!

Coronavirus did a number on the market, and it’s worth being worried about. It’s spread to every inhabited continent, and isn’t really slowing down. There will be a U.S. outbreak. Trump is being a big idiot and not listening to his own experts. The response is being headed by Vice President Pence, and he said this week on The Rush Limbaugh Show that Trump picked him in part for his experience handling the HIV outbreak in Indiana as governor. Well, that’s terrifying, because he did a terrible job at that. Free HIV testing was no longer available due to the local Planned Parenthood closing. Experts found that the outbreak was coming from needle use and recommended that free sterile needles be distributed in at-risk areas. He initially declined, citing moral objections to giving drug users needles which I think is exactly what you would imagine a Governor Pence doing. The delay almost certainly worsened the outbreak.

All that being said, the number of diagnosed Americans is still in the double digits, which is why this article is so absurd. We can’t blame President Trump for a pandemic yet to happen. And Senator Warren, yep her again, announced the greatest possible solution: redirect wall money to Coronavirus action. Because nothing slows down an international epidemic than open borders.

Also, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez touted her “awards from MIT Lincoln Lab &others for accomplishments in microbiology” in a Twitter feud with Senator Cruz (in which he was also being a dingus). Those accomplishments in microbiology? She got second place in a High School science fair sponsored by MIT. I’m not kidding. I need AOC to write my resume.

Moving on from all that, here’s the follow-up to the quantum mechanics video I shared, if you’re interested… and I’m guessing you’re probably not. I find this stuff fascinating.

Fuck Disney. I know, a real hot take. But, sorry, faking wokeness while serving Chinese communists pisses me off. As I’m sure you’ve heard, they’re making a live-action Mulan movie for some fucking reason. But they’re removing Captain Li Shang, the romantic interest. Why? Well, really it’s fucking obvious why, isn’t it. By the text of the film, it is obvious that Captain Li falls in love with Mulan while she’s presenting as a man. And then he’s totally unbothered when she turns out to be a woman. It’s the gayest straight romance Disney could possible fabricate, and a lot of overly-online bisexuals love this shit. It’s a good time. Type “Li Shang,” and Google suggests “bi.” And that means it ain’t flying in China! So they cut it.

And if Disney just said, “Uh, that’s on Communist China, not us,” I’d be fine with it. I’m not that guy, you know? But that’s not what they did. No, they say they removed Captain Li because he’s Mulan’s commanding officer and that the romance made them feel uncomfortable in the post #metoo era, as if Captain Li was rapey. If you watch the fucking movie, there’s absolutely nothing untoward, though, probably due to the creators not wanting that shit to be too homosexual. Mulan asks HIM out after the war. Captain Li is respectful and dutiful. The film demonstrates the flaws in China’s social structure at the time. The excuse falls so flat. China’s censorship is really harming American progress, and anyone trying to let them get away with that is being weak.

Billie Eilish is in trouble for saying true things about Hip Hop music. I don’t have much to say about this, but I know this article will make you mad.

Well that’s all I got. World’s going to shit. What else is new?

Thanks,
Jacob Morris

Week of February 16th, 2020

Hope you’re doing well. I’m sick as hell and way behind on a programming project. Joy.

Perhaps you saw it, but my younger brother posted the first trailer (for your left ear’s enjoyment apparently) to his first feature-length, though probably not feature-quality, film. I am in this, and it’s coming out this spring, so it is technically my first feature. I couldn’t be prouder. In addition, his friend announced the end of his Portal fan movies with a trailer. I love seeing the academy film tradition that we saw start continue on its own terms.

Did you see the debate this week? If you didn’t, do. It’s tremendous entertainment watching Mike Bloomberg self-destruct as shitty apologetic Donald Trump and making me root for Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar. Strange. We saw that Senator Sanders fucking hates Bloomberg and that Senator Klobuchar fucking hates Buttigieg, and both justly, if you ask me. Moderate Republicans rooting for Buttigieg can fuck right off (just look at this shit). There were so many wonderful moments. Everyone was so intense and aggressive. Everyone was visibly angry and unreasonable. It’s everything politics should be. Though, it is very important to note that something very shady is going on. NBC, without explanation, cut this part of the debate wholesale from the video on all platforms. It is very, very suspicious.

President Trump should be laying low and getting his approval rate up. He should go kiss some veterans and shake hands with babies or whatever the hell politicians do in times like these. He should be the winner of this week’s debate! Instead, he’s being a fucking idiot and pardoning his buddies. Not only is it disgraceful, it’s fucking stupid. Wait until after the election, damnit! This is the president’s race to lose, and it looks like he might just do it.

And now, Senator Sanders has reversed his promise of transparency over his medical records despite having had a heart attack! Geritocrasy is a great time.

Have you heard of what’s been going on with Dr. Jordan Peterson? He was such an important alternate culture right-wing icon back in, say, 2017. I was even a fan before I realized that he’s a terrible philosopher who makes his clout on misquoting Kant. Even when I was a fan, it was clear that he wasn’t totally stable. He’d talked about his depression and mental illness from time to time, and seemed to be in some personal pain. In 2018, he started losing his marbles. His daughter, a critical part of the JP lore, got him onto an all-beef diet which he advocated. He started to become more and more incoherent, which is why I stopped following him, and it’s now come to life that his mental health was severely declining.

Well he got addicted to Benzos, and his daughter shipped him off to Russia to recover cold turkey, contrary to medical advice receiving experimental treatment such as being put into an unnecessary coma. Strange. I think what feels so odd about it is that this is a man who has positively affected the lives of many young men with a message, though carrying some odd political and philosophical views, showed them why they must get their shit together. He got me to clean my room, metaphorically speaking, and it’s weird to see him vulnerable, weak, and possibly insane. People have been trying and failing to make sense of the man since 2017. I’ll give it a few years before I even try.

Whatever happens, now is a terrible time for hack writer Jim Proser to publish his new book Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization, perhaps the worst possible attempt to answer that looming JP question. It’s existence is so wildly out of time and out of touch, I can’t stop laughing about it. It’s such a straightforwardly misguided perspective, and I cannot help but think less of the people who buy into it.

In prior years of my life, I was a bit more susceptible to pseudoscience, though if you told me that, I would reject in on its face. Schools and other apparently trustworthy sources are wrong about virtually fucking everything, but dangerously so, at least in my case, regarding quantum physics. The explanations of quantum physics that I knew were part of the reason that I held on to faulty conceptualizations of consciousness and our place in the universe. Learning that so much of the language surrounding popular discussion of quantum mechanics was bullshit freed me in some ways to think more clearly. This entirely scientifically-oriented video does a great job at expediently cutting through that BS and demonstrates why science is philosophy.

This week, I discovered that another listicle website has stolen one of my Reddit comments as content, which is great timing, since the CollegeHumor article from before is now gone as their parent company has gone bankrupt. It’s a pretty popular website, too, from what I gather. I’d like to pretend to wonder who reads these things, but I think we both know the answer. I used to read these things.

The President decided to break from tradition, and write a good tweet! He has actually done so a few times this week, but this reminded me of something I forgot to share last week. You may remember that two weeks ago I wrote a whole thing about Rush Limbaugh’s cancer diagnosis and about how grace is crucial. Almost immediately after I wrote that, Limbaugh was saying the worst shit about Buttigieg. Follow that link if you want, but you already know what it is. And of course, the storm of people wishing Limbaugh ill rose again. And it genuinely pissed me off, too. I think I forget to easily just how shitty the shitty things people like Limbaugh say and believe really are. But I think this cemented the example for me. If I ever prance around shouting that I wish someone and his family pain, that I wish someone destruction, that I think someone is beyond grace (just grace, not redemption, not vindication), slap me because I’m not sure who I would be anymore.

Finally, I send you this short video without any explanation or commentary.

Thanks,
Jacob Morris

Week of February 9th, 2020

Forgive me, this one’s a day (update: or two) late. I spent yesterday (update: Saturday) wrapping filming on my movie. Production did not go perfectly, but after all these years, I’ve got a big self-driven project under my belt. It’s a good, strange feeling. I’ll probably edit a rough cut over spring break. Until then, you know how school is. Then we’ve got to do effects and music and sound… it’s a process. I’ve learned to enjoy acting more and more, and I now occasionally fall under the delusion that I might be halfway good at it.

As I think I said before, I’ll tell you more about this whole process another time. And as the weeks go on, I constantly collect tales I can hardly wait to report back on. I hope that school’s going well for you. I’m guessing that it’s finally heated up. At least for me, it looks like the water’s about ready to boil. I’m not sure I have the energy for this shit anymore, which might be a bad sign. We’ll see how I fare this week... In theory, you have some trickier classes this semester, so I hope you hang in there.

As we lamented by text, Yang is out. I feel genuinely sad about losing a candidate which I purportedly supported only in irony—what the hell is wrong with me? First Sky Mother Marianne Williamson, then the Cool Guy who promised me a G a month? And now Boring-but-Safe Moderate Joe Biden is fading fast—though perhaps not as decisively as some outlets suggest in my opinion—let’s hold out for South Carolina. People other than the nice ladies at Indian Gardens are endorsing Buttigieg as if he were a moderate. Senator Sanders is the frontrunner, positioning himself to be several firsts, some mild—first Jewish president, first secular* President in a longass time—some less so—first openly socialist president, though this doesn’t mean a ton—we’ve had plenty of socialist presidents—and the first octogenarian president in office, something which, despite the silly protest of folks of various political perspectives, actually does matter. Humans have an expected shelf life and Bernie was probably “best before” 2002. If we do really go that way, I think Trump wins, but I certainly don’t think it’s a sure thing.

A new disruptive electoral element is former fake Republican mayoral multi-deka-billionaire spending three times as much as all other candidates combined. This motherfucker just drops a cool 400 million dollars on commercials without showing up to a single debate or town hall, making fellow billionaire candidate Tom Steyer look like a little fucking baby, and to my utter shock and horror, it’s working, particularly among black voters—a critical part of Joe Biden’s base—despite stop and fucking frisk. In the states in which he’s running, he’s beating Biden and threatening Sanders as the “moderate” opposition. He could win. This 2016 sequel is going off the rails.

There are, in my opinion, scant few tolerable candidates left in the race. I think now is a good time to remember how comically abusive Senator Klobuchar is to her staff because, well, I just might vote for her.

In more important political news, here’s Joe Biden having a serious conversation with a polar bear. And here’s the President of the United States mocking Michael Bloomberg’s height in a barely comprehensible word salad tweet!

I’m really not sure whether or not you would be familiar with The Moviebob. He’s an old face from the gamergate days—the feminist side. He’s a neoliberal and not a very well-liked guy. I try to track what he does because he’s one of those unique, always wrong voices I think are so valuable. I could go on about his antics all day, but I’ll just share a recent clip in which he gives off extreme supervillain vibes discussing how space travel is more important to him than world peace. I find this mindset positively fascinating as well as pathetic. It’s got this intangible self-important white guy energy that I’m certain Bob would detest if he saw it in a different form, and more deeply, it’s an unmissable expression of the misanthropic pessimism that I think is going to kills us.

The Oscars happened. I’m so glad I don’t care about the Oscars. And not in the way that my film friends don’t care about the Oscars, where they’re a waste of time when they make the wrong choice and an essential part of the art of filmmaking when they make the right one. No, I really do not give a shit either way. I was rooting for Joker to sweep because I thought it would be funny. Parasite, a really great Korean film, won best picture, prompting this instant classic video of an idiot who hasn’t seen the movie declaring that Oscar’s gone woke. There’s something about this uninformed, self-indulgent rage, something about being a living caricature.  Maybe laughing at these clowns is old hat, but being one of them is more so, and it took me a little maturing to see just how funny it is for someone to be just this lame. We live in a society.

Shoe0nhead, who hails from the other side of gamergate long ago, who now spends her days as a brother of Bernard (assuredly a gender-neutral term) slamming the DNC on Twitter, and a YouTuber whom, despite her flaws, I’m a fan of, posted a very good 20-minute video about the abuse of male students by female teachers, and it made my blood boil. I was straight-up triggered by a YouTube comedy video by a self-branded anti-feminist. What have I become?

Loss is an intense emotion. Duh. Well here’s something unsettling! With the help of a lot of ostensibly good-hearted people of remarkably poor judgement, this woman resurrected her deceased daughter in CGI form in virtual reality to give her some parting words and perform a representation of grief to masses wanted to experience a moment of vicarious pain. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming reaction to this experiment was “What the fuck?” But I think it’s worth thinking about more, specifically in the context of Virtual Reality and ignoring the whole performance element to this situation. A creepy VR doll is not the first or only way we preserve an image of the deceased. We’ve been painting, sculpting, and staring at photos of the dead forever, and this comforts us. So one of the following must be true:

• This is just new and feels weird, but isn’t actually fucked up. This is difficult to imagine, but lots of new tech seemed offensive before we adjusted to it.
• This is fucked up and so is keeping photos and videos of deceased loved ones. We should be focused on the present and the future and ought not to keep emotional ties to the past. Iconoclasts rise up!
• The previous but even more extreme. All sentimental media is bad! There’s nothing necessarily wrong with art that conveys ideas or stories, but using media to feel the past again is a form of lying to ourselves, pretending that the past is the present, and we ought to be singularly focused on what we do now and what we do tomorrow.
• This is really fucked up whereas sentimental pictures and so forth are considerably less bad. It’s a matter of degree.
• This is fucked up whereas photos and videos are not because VR is a fundamentally different form of “media” to the image or video which requires a new ethical perspective. This suggests that VR is inherently disruptive to our society in a deep way that we almost certainly do not yet understand.

I really don’t know which one of these is true, and I’d love your perspective. But my gut tells me that reviving simple imitations the dead in a virtual world for personal emotional fulfillment is a form of blasphemy impossible to overstate and this is deeply, deeply sad. I think we need a modern conversation about the benefits of embracing a new stoicism in an age of technology capable of doing this to us.

For something a little closer to home, did you know that the academy has a podcast hosted by the new principal? I didn’t until recently. They’ve had a few familiar faces on, and now my brothers, which I thought was pretty cute. Part of me desperately wants to go on (which I think could be easily arranged) and, calmly and friendlily, hold nothing back. What I won’t do is go on and be an advertisement for the school or crawl back into my juvenile performance of religiosity. I think this will probably have to remain a silly fantasy for the time being.

Denis Prager news! Well, Denis Prager olds, this happened in 2008. Nevertheless, I think this is an important segment I mustn’t overlook. Here’s a two-part article posted by Prager about how his wife should fuck him even when she doesn’t want to because, and I quote,

A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him.

The Prager lore is always deepening.

Well, I think that’s all, I say after writing way to many words. I’m going to have to start cutting these things down probably. Let me know if you’re not reading/enjoying these because I can stop attacking you with them every Saturday if you want. Oh well.

Thanks,
Jacob Morris