Incompatible taste in music. My taste is the benchmark they have to meet and I will not compromise, obviously.

Not from a person. When I was younger I took an online personality test. Nothing from a reputable source, just some random pop psychology thing. The result was short and had a few things on it, but one line hit me like a ton of bricks: “You don’t like people who aren’t as smart as you.”

I was incredulous at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably true at some level. I was pretty horrified by this realization, and I ended up thinking about it a lot and doing a ton of introspection. I knew I was smart, but I started acknowledging that there were also a ton of things I was terrible at. Whenever I had intrusive thoughts about a person I thought wasn’t very smart, I tried to think about things they were good at or at least acknowledge privileges I had that they didn’t.

We are a product of our experiences, and different people have different skills and aptitudes for things. All of that is ok and doesn’t make someone better than anyone else. I’m not perfect at it, but I found some value in confronting uncomfortable truths about myself.

Biden claimed in his State of the Union address that the 25 percent minimum tax on the ultra-rich will raise $500 billion over 10 years. “Imagine what that could do for America,” he said.

Maybe I’m not good at comprehending numbers at this scale but does this seem kind of low to anyone else? I mean, that’s a lot of money in absolute terms but the government spent $6.3 trillion in FY 2023 alone.

We should still do it obviously. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good and all that.

We’re in a weird spot. On the one hand, legitimate criticisms should always be welcome especially when directed at our elected officials. In a healthy democracy we would vote out people who disappoint or underperform. On the other hand, we don’t have a healthy democracy and one side is determined to vote for a man with the most extensive list of abhorrent behavior ever documented in the nation’s history. Criticizing Biden just makes it more likely that a super close race will go to Trump, who is unquestionably worse than Biden.

Part of me wants to say “let’s get the Trump threat behind us and THEN we can work on building a healthier democracy,” but that isn’t how a healthy democracy works! If we compromise on our values to get rid of someone we disagree with, are we the baddies? It’s a frustrating and scary place to be.

I’m 38 and I did not know this.

The battle of crait from the last Jedi with the red salt was visually stunning and doesn’t really get much credit.

Stop Skeletons From Fighting.

Video game channel with absolutely top tier writing, production, and presentation that stacks up against the biggest channels out there, but it’s from a team of only 2 people. The host is super likeable and entertaining. No low effort click bait videos. Criminally underrated with only 330k subscribers. I know that’s still a lot, but they easily have 1m+ sub potential.

The “punching weight” series about ambitious and wacky titles/peripherals are my favorite. They also have some super well researched video game history videos that are great.