August 15, 2025

Hello World !

1 hour 33 minutes

I was on LinkedIn and happened upon this

Denise ConroyDenise Conroy said:

• FollowingFollowing

Lover of Humanity | My Writing is Kryptonite for FascistsLover of Humanity | My Writing is Kryptonite for Fascists

7h • 7 hours ago • Visible to anyone on or off LinkedIn

I'm about to delete my LinkedIn account. As some of you might have noticed, I haven't been posting at all. This platform and its parent company, Microsoft, is trash.

I've been focused on in-person community activities and my Substack.

But before I go, I'd like to introduce you to Ricky Patel. Ricky is the the Special Agent in Charge at Homeland Security Investigations (AKA bureaucrat thug) who kidnapped Newark Mayor Ras Baraka when the mayor and members of Congress were DOING THEIR JOBS and performing oversight at a detention center.

If you're connected to Ricky in any way, you might want to do some soul-searching about the sorts of people you associate with.

Fascism isn't a good look -- getting uglier by the day. Fascists deserve to carry the shame of their chosen "profession."

to which I replied:

Good to get off of this place but find someplace better than Substack - they platform Nazis

to which Denise replied:

Scott M. Where do you post your created content? I’d love to follow your work.

Which I answered with 「 places like Genetics and Physical Biology or Bluesky but I don't have a blog 」 but then I thought.. why not ? Maybe I should.

So I made this ( notably not on Substack ).

IDK how often I'll post or what I'll do with this but I've got the site so I figured I might as well put something here other than just some weird bio stuff.

Episode Transcript

Hey there. It is the 18th of August 2025. This is Tangents again, and I haven't recorded

one of these in I don't know how long. I don't know if I'm going to bring the old Archive

episodes back. I think I might, but we'll see. But what I am doing is restarting this,

and it's something that I've been thinking about doing for a long time, but for a variety

of reasons, I haven't. And I guess I'll take today to kind of talk about that a little

bit, probably reintroduce, maybe not myself exactly, but I will introduce what the show

is, talk a bit about what I'm going to do with it, and where I think it's going to go,

all that kind of stuff.

First of all, I'm Scott Menor. I go by「 smenor 」 sme-nor as one of my exes

used to call me, which is just my first initial and last name. That is the username they gave

me when I worked at Intel at my first job, and it was smenor at Intel.com. And then I

was a contractor. I wasn't actually an employee. So at a certain point, they changed it to smenor

X at Intel.com, which was much less cool. And then finally, you know, I stopped working

there. So that was my first job. I was in my senior year of high school and then first

year of undergrad at ASU. I guess, yeah, this is a reintroduction episode. So I will go through

a brief bit of my bio since I'm mentioning that.

I did my undergrad in, well, I didn't

actually have a specific goal in mind, to be honest. And I think this is kind of, I would

say this is sort of how you should do, how you should approach undergrad. It's obviously

not practical. And I'm not saying that this is what you should actually do if you work or

if you're going to school in the United States at the present moment in 2025. But I think

this is how undergrad should go.

So I basically looked at the classes that they offered. And

I thought, these are the classes that I want to take. And at a certain point, I went through

and I kind of, I took every semester, five or six classes. That was the maximum load you

could take.

There was one semester where I worked 40 hours a week in addition. And I got

to tell you, it is fucked up. You should like going to school should be a full-time job, hard

stop. You should not have to work during it. And I believe me to this day, I am paying for

doing that because I have, I don't even know what it is, like 180K in student loan debt,

including like 8K of private debt, which I knew how bad the private loans were. I deliberately

avoided them. I don't know how it happened, but somehow I got like six, seven K in a private loan

at some point through undergrad or grad school. And that I have been paying like that, that has not

been paused.

It hasn't been, you know, I've just been paying it continuously since I got out of

university. And I have paid the principal over two times over. I think probably by now it's like

two and a half times over. I've had like 20K. I know it was at least 18 the last time I checked

and that was a while ago. So I'm sure, I'm sure it's over 20K that I've paid. I paid that and I still

owe more than I owed originally, which is, you know, chef's kiss.

Pretty fucking awesome.

But anyway, that was that. And then I don't even want to get into the other student loans,

obviously disgusting and horrible and excessive. I'm recording this incidentally on my AirPod Pros

and I am sure that the audio is ass. I'm currently in, actually, Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. And I don't

have a mic or anything decent. I have the mics in the AirPod Pros. I have the mic on my phone,

which is shitty. And then I have the mic on my MacBook, which is also kind of shitty. And I'm,

I'm going to dabble. I'm going to see what works. I did, I did record like 20 minutes of this just

on the street with the rain before I got back here. It actually didn't sound terrible. I don't know if

this is going to be comparable, but I hope so.

The, the rain noise and street noise was a little bit

much, but I might, I might fit that in there if I can. We'll see how that works. But it was actually,

yeah, if this is comparable to that, this will not be terrible. This is not the level of audio

quality that I'm used to or care to provide. So I apologize for that, but hopefully, hopefully it'll

be okay. Um, anyway, I picked those classes. I found the majors that I could take, uh, or the degrees

that I could get with those classes. And that was how I decided what my degrees would be. And I went

like, one of the things that I did is I w I would have been, uh, um, biology and, uh, mathematics

because that was easy. Um, but to do biology, I had to, I hope that doesn't pop. That looks,

it looks like it's pegging when I'm saying like, but the way that I said back there, um, but that,

that I will, we'll, we'll, we'll see.

This is, again, this is a work in progress. This is an

experiment. Hopefully it's, hopefully it's not terrible. Um, but there it goes again. When I was,

uh, there, I didn't want to take botany and in, in retrospect, I should have just taken botany.

Uh, not because I wanted a biology degree, but you know, the botany was, it's one of those things

where I feel the absence. I feel like I missed something by not taking it. And so, you know, I,

I don't know, but anyway, I, I didn't want to do that. I ended up in microbiology instead of

biology. That was my undergrad degree. Um, in addition to mathematics. And if I would have

stayed another semester, I could have had anthropology as well. But what, what was the

point of three undergrad degrees?

I don't know that two has made any difference in my life.

Other than, other than I can sit there and tell people like I have a degree in mathematics

or I have a degree in microbiology. Um, not that that buys very much. So after that, I went to,

uh, university of Hawaii at Manoa and I was going to do a PhD in microbiology specializing in

virology. And I, I really like virology. I really liked the lab work. I love tissue culture and all

that kind of stuff. Fucking hate. Uh, and, and I'm not going to do animal work or giant air quotes

euphemistically animal work, uh, which I think you can probably gather what that means.

Virology is very difficult to do without, um, animal work without lab animals. And I, I did

like one experiment with the pineal shrimp.

My advisor there was working on shrimp viruses,

a couple of different ones, uh, white spot and yellow head. I think were the specific ones,

but there, there were a few others and these are agriculture, agriculturally important shrimp

viruses. So basically they are transmitted by birds, I believe, and they'll fly into the shrimp,

um, aquaculture areas and they'll transmit them from one to the next.

And so even though they're contained pretty well, it's very hard to prevent them. And so his lab

developed a rapid antigen test, uh, to detect these and, uh, a few other things that did some work on

them. I was working on tissue culture and that was the thing I was more interested in. But even when

you're doing tissue culture for, for arthropods, you're basically stuck doing primary cell culture

because that, that means primary cell culture means you're directly deriving those cells from an

organism. And I was trying kind of to work on cell culture conditions and optimizing media and figuring

out how to make a shrimp cell lines.

Didn't get very far.

I did use nonlinear optimization techniques

that, you know, I guess my advisor called it a little esoteric, but I think it was a nice way

because you think about it, you have all of these parameters and you're trying to optimize them.

And if you're exhaustively testing all of them, it, it's very complicated.

So what you could do is like

a steepest descent and just do a sequence of, um, of tests. Now the problem that I ran into

was that it was extremely difficult to get any kind of, you know, consistency or control

from test to test. Like even, even on the same 96 well plate, the cells would be different.

Everything would be a little different well to well. And then when you would go experiment to

experiment, totally different.

So it didn't work out very well. Um, but it was interesting. I thought

it was, it was worth doing. And it was at least something that let me work on the theory and not

really have to do, uh, the animal work again. So that was something.

So anyway, I did that, um,

finished it master's cause I didn't want to do the PhD, uh, that the PhD, I would have had to do animal

work and it would have also taken like a decade or some ridiculous amount of time. I didn't, I didn't

want to spend that long on it and maybe I would have liked it. I don't know. But in retrospect,

I'm kind of glad like looking at how much of a clusterfuck the CDC and every, everything has become.

And, and to be clear, I mean, yeah, you have Trump undermining it. You have Biden undermining it.

Um, it's just like completely gutted and it's just a fucking joke today. And looking at that, I just,

I'm glad that I'm not in that domain. You know, I'm glad that I have that in my background. I'm

very happy to have experience and knowledge in that domain, but it would not be, I would be so upset if

that was my profession. And also I have to say, I'm not a person, I I've learned this about myself.

I'm not a person who really, it's not just that I don't want to specialize.

I don't want to work in

the same shit, uh, for, for 30 years. I really don't. I'm, I'm somebody who likes to dabble. I

like to go from subject to subject given like if money was not a constraint, I would have just

collected alphabet soup and, and not just alphabet soup, but I mean, a lot of undergrad degrees in

particular, because the graduate stuff, like once you get to graduate school, you're, you're taking

primarily stuff in your discipline and don't get me wrong.

I enjoyed taking, uh, and teaching like, uh,

epidemiology and medical microbiology and immunology and, uh, virology and different classes like that.

I liked that, but I also wanted to take Spanish, which I did. I also wanted to take, you know,

things that were outside of it. And then when I did my PhD in physics, my advisor didn't even want

me doing like particle physics and field theory. Like not, not only didn't want me outside of,

um, physics and I did take some French and I took some other classes, but he wasn't super happy about

that, but he didn't even want me taking like general relativity or field theory again. And I was really

interested in those. I, I regret not taking them.

I enjoyed like classical mechanics. Um, I enjoyed

almost all of my classes actually, except for optics stat mech. I had a little bit, um, a little

bit of trouble with, I don't know what it was. And I'm, I'm going to, I know it's not the teacher's

fault. You know, it's not the professor's fault. And actually of the professors that I had as a,

as a grad student, he's the only one I think, or one of the few that I'm still, well, I guess one

of the few who I'm still connected with on Facebook. Uh, but just something about his teaching

style. I was, and maybe it was just that I didn't have the physics in undergrad, but the stat mech was

always, um, always a little, like it didn't quite click to me and partition functions and all that kind

of stuff. I just didn't, I didn't get it. I didn't get thermodynamics that much.

I get it much more

since then. And it ended up being actually a core part of my, uh, of my PhD. So I had to get pretty

good at it, but from the class, I was just fucking lost. Um, I still, I got a, either an A or a B in

that class. I don't remember which the only class that I really, really struggled and suffered under

was optics. And that again was the professor, a hundred percent in that case. Uh, that professor

was not really explaining things in a way that, uh, like the thing that I would always get is if,

if I could understand the concepts, I would just own it.

If I, if you explained stuff to me and I

understood the fundamentals, I just get it. You know, my, uh, advanced algebra prof said something

like, you know, you're, when you're doing these proofs, you're getting a packet of seeds and you're

taking those seeds and learning how to grow them. And you're not memorizing the whole like path,

but you take the seeds and you kind of know how to prune them and to take them to what you're trying

to grow. And that always made so much sense to me. Like if you, if you do that, then you have,

you don't have to memorize that much. You don't have to, um, I mean, it's not that you don't have

to study exactly, but you don't have to do this thing where like when I would teach physics, you'd

very often, we would let people take a sheet of notes into the tests.

And realistically for like

undergrad, first, second semester physics classes, I could get that on the formulas that you would need.

I could get that on like half a sheet of paper and pretty big font. Like you don't need that much.

People would write in micro print on both sides, like an entire book worth of shit. And it's just

like, Hey, how are you going to, it's like, I don't know how you're even going to find what you need

when you need it in there. And maybe it's just like a comfort blanket or something, but

I don't know, it's going to work. But what I do know is like, you don't need that much stuff.

And if you really studied it and understood it, you probably wouldn't even need, like,

I would never take this sheet of notes when they offered it or like a couple of times I made one,

but I never referenced it. I just had it there. And the reason was not because I was like some

master of physics. Um, but it was because I understood the stuff.

And if you understand the

stuff, it's not that hard. If you understand calculus, uh, and I know like people are like,

Oh, calculus. Calculus is not that difficult. Like it really genuinely is not. I think the

difficulties people have with calculus are like the difficulties that I had with optics and with

stat mech, especially optics. If you learn by rote memorization and you don't understand it,

then it just doesn't make any fucking sense. But if you actually understand, um, whether it's, uh,

even something like LeBag integration or, you know, limits or whatever, if you understand that stuff,

it just makes fucking sense. It's just not that complicated. And once you get that,

you know, you, you own it in a way that like, I took calculus as an undergrad. I don't even know

how many decades ago. And I still, I could go through and it's not just because I've used it a

lot.

I could do integrals. I could do, I could do volume and hyper volume calculations very easily.

You know, I could do all of this other stuff. Now I might not remember, um, like how to integrate

over an end sphere, but, you know, or, or to figure out the volume of an end ball. Um, but

I could write down the integrals. I could put them in Mathematica and then, you know, or, or look them

up in a table, which I think is what really matters. And, uh, because I know how to do it, I can get

those things.

I know how to ask the questions. I have the, the seeds and I've learned how to sort of do

the pruning and fertilizing and watering and all that stuff. So I really own it in that way.

Anyway, going on, um, undergrad degrees, mathematics, microbiology took a lot of different

classes. Uh, graduated, I think with 172 credit hours. Not, and I'm not telling you that because

I'm like bragging or something. That's just, I happen to remember it. Maybe it was 174, but it was

an order of that. Um, you need like, I think 120 to graduate.

Did that in four years. Uh, mostly,

mostly just the regular semesters. Although I took a couple of summers or a summer, I can't speak

summer sessions. And I did have to retake, um, chemistry 113 because I have ridiculous social

anxiety. And I, and that class, like I, I did, uh, extremely well on all the exams. Yeah. Um,

in fact, when I withdrew from that class, I went in, talked to the professor. He looked at my exam

scores and he's like, but these are all A's. Why are you withdrawing? And then he looked at my lab

scores and it was all zeros. And the reason it was zeros was I went in and somehow I didn't, I don't

know, this was, um, before I realized this kind of shit would be in the syllabus.

Um, didn't know

where I was supposed to turn in the, the homework and I was too embarrassed to ask. And so I just

didn't know where to put my fucking homework. And at a certain point I didn't do the homework

because it was like, I don't even know what to do with it. And then I got to the end of the semester.

I got two thirds of the way through the semester and I was going to fail the class because I didn't

have those things done. It was really foolish and annoying. That's other than an English class,

which was also, uh, that was in, uh, one semester of English in high school.

I had to retake

similarly because I didn't, I had to write something and then we had to read it in front of the class.

And yeah, I I've talked about this before, but like it's coming around. I was like two thirds of

the way through the class and, uh, I'm watching people and it's coming around to me. And as it's

happening, I'm feeling like my throat is tightening up and my upper lip is starting to like, I'm sure

it wasn't visible, but it felt like it was flapping so much and it's getting closer and closer.

My eyelid is also flapping and I was just feeling so like, and then finally I just said, I didn't do it

because yeah, I didn't want to read it in front of the class. And it was, it was a fucking ridiculous

thing. And I ended up taking that semester again, which sucked, but it did get me to, uh, did get me

to the point where talking in front of the class was a little bit less difficult. Um, I guess that,

and then you think about like, uh, as, as a grad student, I was a teaching assistant quite a few

semesters actually. And I was teaching the introductory microbiology lab and I wasn't great

at it. I wasn't very comfortable at it, but I was doing it.

And then we had the TA evaluation,

like the instruction person would come in and sit in and I, it was a train wreck. I had, I couldn't

talk. I couldn't think. I was just like, ah, I don't know what the fuck. And yeah, now I can get up in

front of a large lecture hall. And it's not that I don't care, but it just doesn't really move me in

the same way that it used to, which it's, it's, it's got its own. It's not all good. It's not all

an improvement because having that little bit of an edge, having a little bit of anxiety about it.

Um, it does actually focus you a little bit. It does make you, um, worry about it and do a good job.

Or hopefully.

And I, I don't know. I mean, I, I've also gotten to the point where like right now

I have no outline. I have no idea of what I'm going to say from one moment to the next. I knew

this was going to be called hello world. I knew kind of vaguely what I was going to talk about.

Um, I knew I wanted to make it like a reintroduction. And so, yeah, but the actual

details of everything I'm saying, just pure extemporaneous. And, you know, I, I, I think

this is pretty, I I'm going to say, I think it's probably listenable. I don't think it's probably

like, it could be tighter. It could be a little bit more focused. It could be a little punchier,

but I think, I think you could probably listen to this and not mind it.

You probably listen to it and

think that, yeah, this is actually fairly well put together and organized. And I've gotten to this

point where that is just something I can do. And it's taken a long time, uh, of a lot of different

stuff. So like teaching over and over again, presenting over and over again. Um, I did, uh,

as a grad student, college radio, and that was very uncomfortable. And then it wasn't very

uncomfortable. And I did a bunch of interviews there and it was kind of, it was kind of fun.

It was kind of like, I enjoyed it. And then at a certain point I didn't enjoy it as much because

I don't want to get into the details of that, but I was having, I, I, I, I liked having conversations.

I wasn't on the air to do like music, which I was there to, to talk. I was there to talk and not just

to like me monologuing like I am here, but to have conversations with people. And I often would

have guests, but sometimes I wouldn't have guests. And when I didn't have guests, I would have callers

and there was one guy who called a lot and the station manager didn't really find him very

compelling. Um, and she kind of got annoyed that I was talking to him a lot. And so she told me not

to, and I got irritated by that. And then finally I just, I don't know, I don't want to get into the

details of that, but that was my, my end of my college radio career was just getting irritated

and like saying something about her on the air. Uh, because I, and it's the thing that was annoying

there also, it's like, she didn't directly, she talked to me a couple of times and then kind

of went through the, uh, the station advisor or manager or whoever it was. It was, I think

an undergrad, I don't remember, but it was, it was very obviously like something she said

coming through him, but it was through him. And I, I don't know what it is.

There's something

in me when people do, um, indirect kind of passive aggressive bullshit. It, it really,

really irritates me. It really gets to me. And, uh, this just got to me. So anyway, through,

through talking there, through interviewing there, um, doing a lot of presentations, all kinds of stuff,

even doing a little bit of standup.

I don't know how I started talking with Bobby Oliver.

Um, I, I think I followed her on Twitter and, uh, at some point started talking with her.

We were kind of politically aligned. Um, and then I started explaining, you know, I have this social

anxiety with talking and she's like, Hey, I have a class where you're, you know, or I don't know if

class is the right word, but she does a thing. Uh, she made a book or several books probably.

And she does teaching, which is, or, or I don't know if teaching like workshops, basically you go

in and then you start making standup routines and then you do a standup routine. And so I did that.

And which was an interesting thing in and of itself, because I, I have, again, a lot of social

anxiety, a lot of anxiety about talking.

Once I got up on stage, I just started talking and talking

and talking. I don't know if it was funny. People did laugh, although they were laughing because,

you know, it was a, uh, comedy students. It wasn't exactly, you know, like a hard crowd,

but people were laughing and I just, I, I missed the exit cue. And then finally realized at the end,

I was like, Oh shit. I, uh, yeah, time is up. I, so I went over my time, feel bad about that still.

But anyway, um, got some practice with it there. I I've done, I don't know how many hours of just

talking to myself and talking to other people and doing interviews and, uh, talking with my former

friend Gil on these things, uh, just like this.

And in doing that, I have gotten, I would dare say

okay at it. I dare say maybe even pretty good at it. I I've certainly gotten to the point where

I'm not bad at it. It's not awkward and uncomfortable. I'm not struggling to come up

with stuff to say. I'm not, I mean, I am kind of rambling, but I think it's coherent enough that

you could follow the gist of it.

It's, it's sort of logically put together. And I, I don't know that

that's, that's basically what you're getting if you come here and I'm going to try a couple of

things. I'm going to try to put up automated transcripts.

I can't guarantee that the transcripts

are going to be perfect. Uh, voice to text is shaky and just the way that this works, the way I get,

because I know sort of how things go for me. Um, this takes the time that it takes to record.

So however long it is plus a little bit of extra, cause I will edit a little bit down. Although

I'm not going to edit that much. I try to make it as unedited as possible, mainly because editing

takes so long, but I will edit it a little bit.

So it's like, however long the actual episode is

plus a little bit for recording it. And then when you edit it, you're listening to it again.

So it's at least that length again. Um, and then, you know, if you're going to do the transcripts and

all this kind of stuff, it takes, it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time. And I'm not trying

to say, you know, like, Oh, you should thank me for the time that I'm putting in.

I'm just trying to

make an excuse or at least an explanation here for why, uh, the, the transcripts might not be

perfect.

You know, I'm going to put transcripts up. I'm going to try to have texts and make these

episodes sort of multimedia. So if you want, you can read them.

If you want, there'll be a transcript

on the podcast. And if you want, you can just listen to it.

Sometimes I might make video, although

I'm not a big fan of video, but I was recording these and it's another thing actually, like I got

comfortable, uh, doing audio for a while and I was super uncomfortable with video and I started

recording a bunch of videos and then I got okay with it.

I don't think it was ever very good. I

don't think it was ever something that I would like feel super proud about. I've, the audio stuff I've,

I've felt pretty good about. Like I think at its peak, it's actually pretty good. Um, at the very

least, you know, I don't think I've made a bunch of shit.

The video it's fine. It's fine. It's just

like video is another media and I can do a little bit of an audio performance in the sense that, you

know, I can vary my speech. I can make things hopefully not just, uh, like a, um, an

acoustic sedative.

I can make things I think that are worth listening to the video part. It's like,

I don't know. It's just not, it's not me.

I'm not.. I've never been comfortable with it,

but I am now at least somewhat more comfortable with it than I used to be.

I've never been really

like a huge fan of how I look. I've never been super comfortable with that. I think I think I have

an okay voice. Um, I don't think that I exactly have a face for radio, so to speak, but I,

I joke about that. Uh, but I, I just don't, you know, I, even though I've made a shit ton of

TikToks, um, even though I made a bunch of, uh, YouTube videos, um, I just don't like it.

I just never have liked it. I've never really wanted to do it. And it also like, you know,

the, the amount of extra work that it goes into making those videos and doing, you know,

like the TikToks, I, I enjoyed it at a certain point. I really, I was making like a handful a day

and I was having fun.

You know, I literally was making like five to 10, 10 minute videos every day

or almost every day for months and months and months when I first got on TikTok. And it was like,

most of them would not get that many views to be fair. But at the time, you know, like occasionally

I get one that had like 10,000 views, which I know by the scale of what people get there,

50,000 views is not a lot of views, but it felt good.

It felt like, oh, there's a chance that I

could make something that's not crap and that people will enjoy. And it might actually get some

distribution. And I have things that I want to say and things that I want to talk about.

And I have some things that I think are worth talking about. And so it felt,

it felt important and it felt like it was at least worth my time.

But then I, like my TikTok became

very much about the pandemic. And for some reason, there are a bunch of people who really don't like

the idea that anyone wants to talk about wearing a respirator.

They really don't like the idea that

somebody wants to talk about the fact that the pandemic is still ongoing. For example, it's 2025.

It's still fucking ongoing. It's still, you know, and it's not shocking that it's ongoing. It's,

and it doesn't, it's not what, it wasn't inevitable that it would be ongoing.

It's just that people

completely abandoned any sort of semblance of public health. And it's a bipartisan effort.

You know, first you had, it's one of the frustrating things, and you're going to hear a lot about,

like, you'll hear much more from me about brunch libs or shit libs than you will about Republicans.

And I want to make it clear right now, this is not because I in any way support or align with

people like Trump.

Fuck those people.

I dislike them so much that, like, in 2016,

after Hillary stole the primary, stole the nomination from Bernie, I don't think that's an

unreasonable thing to say. I think that's accurate. But after the party did that, I still busted my ass

after the convention, up until and including election day, making calls for her, and knocking

doors for her, and telling everyone that I could talk to, everyone that would listen, and people that

didn't want to listen, I would tell them, like, you have to fucking vote for her, because Trump was

fucking horrible. And, like, in a lot of different ways, too.

It's not like he just was, you know,

terrible, and it was a surprise. I was like, obviously fucking terrible. And also, like, I have

been a very big advocate for bodily autonomy and abortion rights, which incidentally really is

another thing that pisses me off about people with the pandemic, because they've taken the language of

bodily autonomy and twisted it into anti-vax bullshit. And, of course, the real bodily autonomy

argument with vaccines is that, you know, and with masks and all this kind of stuff, is that people

have the right to go out in public and not be exposed to deadly, dangerous pathogens. That is the,

that's the bodily autonomy argument.

It's not like, oh, you have the right not to,

not to get a very safe and effective vaccine.

You have the duty, the responsibility,

that if you're going to participate in a society, that you not expose a bunch of people to shit.

And, and the way that it's been twisted is fucking annoying. But anyway, I've paid attention to this

stuff. I've cared a lot about it for a long time. I've been active in it for a very long time. And I

knew for, I didn't even know how long before 2016, I knew what the Federalist Society was doing.

I knew that like my entire life, literally my entire life, these people have been, they got their

pennies in a bunch because of the civil rights era. There were a bunch of legal decisions, a bunch of

Supreme Court decisions, like Brown versus the Board of Education, like Loving Virginia. And you just go

through the list. They didn't like that. They didn't like, they used to call them activist judges, which

were people that just, you know, like gave people rights that were kind of essentially enumerated or

indirectly enumerated in the Constitution. The abortion thing, they, I don't think they cared that much

about, but they kind of decided that was an easy issue to talk about. That's another one that drives me,

like, I fucking lose my mind about it because like the language that people who are pro forced

birth use is very much like, oh, we're saving babies and all this kind of stuff, which is similar to the

language I would use talking about, um, the genocide and, uh, and Felistine and Felistine. Um,

and yet, you know, one is real and one is bullshit and it just irritates me the way that they're so

disingenuous.

And we're at a point now where people are disingenuous across the board and it fucking

irritates me. And I also is getting back.

I am going to talk a lot more about Democrats, not because I think

that the Republicans are good, not because I'm not aware of the shit that they're doing, not because

I'm not aware that they've been growing these injustices in the lab, again, my entire life and

then some, um, just so that they could overturn civil rights era legislation.

So they could overturn

or not legislation decisions rather.

So they could overturn environmental regulations and all kinds of

other shit.

Um, I'm not going to talk about them as much because I would never fucking vote for them.

I never, it would never occur to me to vote for a Trump.

It would never occur to me to vote for, uh, any of the

Republicans. And like, I, I don't know. It's hard to imagine like, and I think this is a problem.

It's hard to think of a single Republican elected official in my lifetime who I would even consider voting for.

And it's fucked up that that's the situation, but that is the case.

I can't imagine ever doing it.

My entire life, however, from before I was able to vote, I was a staunch supporter of the Democrats

before I was even political. And I didn't think about it. I think, I thought that they aligned with

me was part of the thing, but it was very cultural as well. Like, you know, it was just, that was kind

of what you did.

I didn't reflect on it that much. And as soon as I was able to vote, I voted in every

presidential election and you could go through my voting record. You can see all the, pretty much all

of the, uh, lesser elections with the exception of a couple where it was like, there's some side issue

and this is a weird, um, side election of a side election.

And I happened to be in Europe at the

time and it was a pain in the ass to vote. And even when I was in Europe, I voted for Obama.

I think

the second time, I don't remember. I think it was the second time. Yeah, it must've been. Um, and it

was hard. It was annoying to do that, but I did it and I felt great about it.

I felt fucking good about it. I was, I was not quite the, 「 uh, I would have voted for Obama the third time 」. In fact, I wasn't

quite like that level, but I was, I was pretty, pretty much kind of shit-libby.

I thought that they were, I really bought into the bullshit.

I really thought that, yeah, like there's something

for me about like somebody who looks cool, acts cool and has that professorial tone and cadence that

he has. Like everything he says sounds cool. And it just like, it was tickling a part of my brain

that I,

I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed it and how much it just like, it was like, yes, yes,

yes. You know? And in reality, like even, even like at the time I, while he was president,

I knew about blowing up babies.

I knew about blowing up weddings.

I knew about the deporter in chief stuff.

I knew a bunch of shit that he did.

I knew that he did not push for a, um, a public option. I knew all of this stuff and I still just made

excuses for him. Oh, it's Lieberman. Oh, you know, I mean, like he has to, he, you understand he *_has to blow up babies because if

you got those daily intelligence.. and he said this and I'm just like, this is the thing in my mind.

If you got those daily intelligence briefings, you too would be blowing up babies, which is

fucking ridiculous.

It's, it's fucking just disgusting and ridiculous.

And the fact that I ever thought that I I'm ashamed of, I'm horribly, horribly ashamed of it is a, it is a true blemish

on my record. And I have spent a long time since then trying to make up for it and trying to convince

people about this stuff. And like, there's no excuse, there's no fucking excuse for blowing it.

And, and the perspective that I have now is really that my country is extraordinarily imperial.

Um, we, we are something like 4% or so of the global population. And yet we cause, I would say,

upwards of 95% of the misery in the world. And we have done, um, not just in the duration of my lifetime,

but really since World War II, like most of the misery in the world has been caused indirectly or directly

by the United States. And it's not just that far. L

ike you go back and this is a country built on top of a

genocide on a scale that would make Hitler blush, like legit. And of course he was inspired by

Jim Crow and inspired by the shit that, that the Americans did, that the United States did, uh,

to the indigenous people that were there. And like the potentially like order of a hundred million

people, uh, killed that were there prior. And you think about like how much suffering and torture

and torment and, and not just like actually murdering people and taking their kids away,

but the cultural genocide as well, like taking away the culture, taking away the language and all of the

stuff that people have done. And you just look at that and it's like, holy shit.

And then the entire country was built on slavery as well. And you know, like it literally in the fucking constitution

is the three fifths compromise. Like, um, you know, and that is not saying that you even have

the rights of three fifths of a person that's saying like for, um, just, just in terms of what

you count as for representation for the area that you happen to live in, you count as three fifths

of a person. Um, so in reality, you don't even get three fifths of the rights of a person. And you

just look at that, that's, that's in the fucking constitution.

You look at the people and like, there was a time when I watched Hamilton and I was like, oh yes, this is awesome.

And now I look back at that and it's just such brain candy for people who want to feel good about, uh, the,

the foundational myths of my country, which are horrible. They're fucking horrible. Like most of

these people, um, had other people as property, like treated other people. And, and, and you know,

like you just, it's, it's hard to comprehend how fucking evil that country is. And it's, it's

actually funny.

I am again, I think I mentioned this at the top of this, but I'm currently in

Ha Long Bay in Vietnam. And this is a country which beat my country, like not, not even a

question. And you think about it, it's not because they had better technology. It's not

because they had better, you know, like funding or, or weapon systems or anything like that.

It was just, um, you know, it's, it's very difficult to be like a air quotes military superpower

and to win against people who are really determined and working together and, you know, like living

where they, they live and where they've been.

It's, it's very hard. And it's kind of, I don't want

to say like the most hopeful thing in the world, but it definitely makes you feel good. It makes you

feel like, I mean, I'm certainly not saying that there is no, like everything is perfect here by

any means. Um, but that aspect of it, the fact that that could happen, the fact that that did

happen and it happened more than one place, um, that tells you something.

It's, it's, it's very hopeful and very, like I, I talk to a lot of people in, in Urquaza. Um, I do every day, every day,

I talk to people there and I talk to people who are starving.

I talk to people who are, you know, like they've, they've had relatives and friends blown up. Um, their, their houses, their homes

have been destroyed. Uh, many of them have lost children. Many of them have lost parents.

All of them have lost friends and relatives. And, you know, even the ones that are surviving

that are still around, uh, a lot of them have injuries, like very serious, terrible injuries.

Everybody there has like, they don't have running water.

They have to wait in line for hours to get

like a gallon or two of water to bring back to their family. And that's, you know, that's not enough

water to drink and to live on much less to just wash your fucking hands.

They don't have soap.

They don't have water. And so like a scratch there can fucking kill you. And you get people that have

like, there's, there's one guy that I know there, um, he has a ankle injury and that ankle injury

would have been bad.

It would have been, um, I don't even remember what happened. I think he got shot,

but he, at least, you know, like pretty bad cut, pretty bad contusions. And again, it would have

been bad under any circumstances, but everybody's covered in filth. They can't wash shit. They can't,

you know, just do basic wound treatments.

Um, they, they have no real sanitation to speak of.

And so, you know, anything becomes an infection. Anything becomes like the, the idea that you're not

going to get septic there is, is ridiculous. The idea that you're not going to get gastroenteritis,

people get all kinds of parasites.

They get all kinds of, you know, like fleas and scabies and all

just horrible shit that is easy to treat and prevent. And yet it's impossible for people there.

Um, it's, it's, and you look at so many people have, uh, skin conditions, like they have, uh,

staph infections that are just chronic all over them. And again, you know, you get that,

you get a scratch and you're kind of fucked. You're in bad, bad shape. And then how do you

get antibiotics?

How do you get the soap to, how do you get bandages?

How do you get, you just think about like all the stuff that's happening there and it's so fucking horrible.

And there are a lot of reasons why I stopped reporting these. One of the reasons, but one of the reasons was my boss

was a fucking pain in the ass and started out cool. My, my, my previous boss, I'm no longer working

for him. I'm no longer working at ASU, but I was there, um, for a while. And that was a job that I

got through. I thought my best friend, I would have called him my best friend for a long time, Gil.

And, um, yeah, it was annoying cause it was like, I was making less money in real terms. And certainly

if you fixed for inflation than I was in my job out of, um, out of my PhD, I, I was not doing that

well. And I was, I was getting like a third of what I was getting prior to that before my company.

I'll, I'll talk about all of this stuff in greater detail later on, but you know, just, I'm going to

give you kind of like an overview of some things.

Um, I was getting paid like a third at ASU of what

I was getting prior. And I, I made some decisions.

Like I got a car that I shouldn't have gotten

and really regretted, but I could, it, it was a Tesla.

It was a model three. And there were some

nice things about it, but that fucking thing, uh, it's did a speed run to, uh, it's like every,

every new car that you buy depreciates ridiculously.

That one depreciated in a way that a normal car

has that you can't even fathom how fast it went down.

I couldn't sell it for the longest time.

I'm stuck with it. And also it was costing a whole fucking paycheck.

So that car between, uh,

the, between the loan and the insurance was literally a paycheck. It was like 1500 bucks

or the paycheck after tax. And then my rent was a paycheck. It was like $1500 bucks.

And, you know, obviously on top of that stuff, you have to eat.

Like if I didn't have the car,

if I could have, if I lived someplace where I could walk and drive, uh, ride a train and that

kind of stuff, wouldn't have, I would have been okay in that situation.

If I didn't have a lot of debt already going in, I would have been okay, but it was an excruciating, horrible situation.

And I just felt like trapped.

And then I, I guess I'm going to go into some of this stuff. Cause you

know, I, this is already 50 minutes long.

It's going to get a little longer, but this whole, I might as well be somewhat complete here.

I will go into more and more depth later, but

about a year before my job ended, boss starts getting a little weird. And prior to that,

I was working with these other two postdocs and I thought we were doing good stuff.

I thought we were doing interesting stuff.

And then he started sort of not liking what we were doing. Didn't like

that we were working together and all this kind of stuff started getting weird, started sending us

like occasionally he'd send us a really scary email, send all three of us a scary email. You're

the worst postdoc I've ever had.

I wasn't a postdoc, but you know, basically, um, you know, I've never

had, and, and just like threatening. And it sounded like you're going to get fired or, you know,

it was, it was very unnerving and it sounded horrible. And then we would exchange notes cause we

would all get these emails and it felt like it was very personal and directed and attacking.

And then all three of us were getting the same things. And then he'd be cool for like two or

three weeks and then he'd get weird again. And you know, that was very stressful. That was,

and then there was a point where he and I, uh, we did one paper together. And when we did that,

he was insisting that I come in physically to work every single day at like 8 39 AM and spend like

all day with him and we're in his office and we're just doing this stuff. And he's got me like, I,

I have a PhD in physics. I'm pretty good at, uh, evolution and genetics and a lot of other stuff.

I'm not trying to brag here. I'm just saying like, I'm, I'm good at computers.

I'm good at programming.

I'm good at a lot of things.

And he has me doing like Excel bullshit and data analysis

in Excel for him. Um, and his spreadsheets are sort of very poorly arranged and ill formed.

So I couldn't just like build stuff. I had to like go through and do a lot of, a lot of kind of like

fine adjustment of like, Oh, this is where this column is. And this was, it was so annoying.

It was so fucking annoying.

And I was spending so much fucking time on that. And it was just like so

stressful. And then I was just feeling exhausted all the time. And I couldn't, I couldn't think

about fucking anything other than this shit. And, uh, you know, like once or twice, I made a,

like a tiny mistake and the spreadsheets. And I spent like the weekend on fucking it and doing

stuff over and like make, and then this motherfucker, uh, made huge mistakes that sent

me off on wild goose chases for weeks and weeks and weeks. And then finally, like I have recordings

of, Oh, I really kind of fucked that up.

Yeah, you did.

You fucked that up.

You, you really screwed that up.

Um, and it irritates me.

I'm not like, everybody makes mistakes too.

Everybody makes fucking mistakes.

Um, but you know, if you're going to treat me like, and I was like, I'm not

somebody who is generally, I can take, like if somebody is yelling at me, I, it rubs off me,

runs off me like water on a duck's back. You know, it doesn't really bother me that much. Um, and in

fact, I might, I might start laughing at a certain point. Cause it just like, there's something weird.

If I feel physically threatened, it's different. But if you're just yelling at me and I know it's

not fair and it's just bullshit, it doesn't, doesn't affect me.

But somehow some of the stuff that he was saying was getting to me, it was like, um, passive aggressive. And it

was, it was just like subtle and it got to me. And I was, I had my confidence shaken.

Like this was last fall, fall 2024. And I felt, you know, I would say I had PTSD like legitimately

from this guy. And, and then, uh, my mom falls down and breaks her hip and I go out to LA for

a week to help her out. And he got fucking weird.

Yeah. And I sent him a thing. I was

like, you know, I, my mom and I'm sorry, my mom takes precedence over whatever bullshit

you're doing. Um, you know, I'm going to be there for a week. I, yeah. Or I think I even

said, I didn't know how long it was going to be. And then I come back and I, uh, I didn't

even know how the fuck this, this happened, but I, I have, uh, uh, irregular keratoconus.

So I have, my corneas are a little misshapen, uh, probably from LASIK that I got when I was

like 21 and you know, they were fine for a long time. And then at a certain point they

weren't fine anymore and they got weird. And I, I have scleral lenses that, or I had

scleral lenses that would help that, but the scleral lenses would take a long time.

Like I would get them updated in, uh, like June and it would take like three months to get

them dialed in every time, uh, which was fine. You know, it was annoying, but it was fine.

And I go into the, the guy and I, uh, first like a few months before this, I started noticing,

um, like little, I don't even know, like little just flares or something. Uh, the, the kind

of thing that you would get if you had a detached retina, but apparently just had a PVD, uh, posterior

vitreous detachment and, or at least that was what he said.

So, you know, basically the vitreous humor in your eye has this gel, this collagen gel in it, and it has some structure

in it and they can, you know, shrink and detach from like peel off of your retina at a certain

point. Very common. And so I thought that was what I had. And then I started getting like

some weird, like occasionally, um, arcs.

Like I would see just an arc in my vision, an arc of light, um, in my periphery.

And it was weird that I didn't make that much of a deal of it.

I didn't think it was that much. I talked to the guy though, one day I was like, you know,

could you just like check my retina out and see how things are? And then he's like, Oh,

you have, uh, I can't remember which one is less severe. He thought that I had, um,

is it a detachment or a tear? Whatever is the least severe of the two. He thought that sent

me to a retinal specialist. I go in and he's like, Oh, you have the other one. That's very

serious. We need to do emergency surgery. And by the way, you're going to get a vitrectomy,

which means they basically like scoop out all of them. Sorry, this is going to be a little graphic.

Scoop out all the gel of your eye. And, uh, you know, when you do this, you're going to have a

tamponade. Like if we're going to cryo cauterize the retina back to the, you know, like put it back

in place, cryo cauterize it. And then you're going to have this tamponade.

So it's like this

gas bubble in your eye. And it's going to be there for like two months. And you're going to

have to be like the first week, um, 50, 55 minutes out of every hour. You have to be face down.

And which is fucking annoying, by the way, I don't recommend this to anyone if you can avoid it.

And then after that, after a week or two, it like, you could be upright for a little while,

but you should still be face down. You should still be supinated, um, for most of the time.

And you really don't want to be standing up for, for very long while this is going. Cause you want

to make sure your retina like glues back on essentially. And so I had this and for like two

months, I'm not able to, to go into work. And the dude got really fucking weird again, like just

like layers of weird, uh, for the longest time I could, I could work remotely. And then he didn't

want me to work remotely.

In fact, he put me, didn't actually call it that, but I know he talked

to HR and he put me on basically what would be, I think called a performance plan anywhere else.

And, you know, it was like, he was trying to make a case to fire me, which is weird. Cause ASU

is in Arizona, which is a, um, what do they call it? A right to work giant air quotes state.

Um, which means you can, you know, you could be fired at will anytime. And also the way these

academic appointments work, um, you're, you're on a nine month academic contract, they call it.

Um, and then every year you have to get renewed. And if you don't get renewed, you're basically

fired by default, you know? So it, it's, it's a kind of fucked up thing. Like you don't have

to make a case. You could easily, easily not.

Um, and again, because of that at will thing

could have fired me anytime.

So anyway, I, I get, um, I, I'm in a union or wasn't a union

there, got an FMLA. They helped me with that. Um, I got, you know, like a month and a half

off where I didn't have to go into work and got a little tiny bit of money, like two thirds

of my salary, um, during that time. So it was okay. It was okay. It was not great. Not

a great situation when you're not making enough money, but he got fucking weird and just kept

getting weirder and weirder. And then that's over. And in like January, I come back and

he's like, every single day you have to be within the confines of the CME from 9am or

between the hours of 9am and 5pm. And he was like, at first it was like, you can't go out

to lunch.

You can't do fucking shit.

If you want to do lunch, you have to make it nine to

six or eight to five or whatever. And then you got a little bit less like ridiculous about

it. And then it was like, you know, Oh, you can, okay. You can go on two 15 minute

walks a day. And it was just so fun. Like, I mean, it was to the point where I asked him

if I can go to the bathroom. I like, what is your position on this? And I was not exactly

joking. I was kind of serious about it. I was kind of like, there was a, it was a little

tongue in cheek, but he's like, well, I'm very liberal with the, um, the bathroom policy.

You can, as long as it's not unreasonable, you can use the restroom as much as you need

within reason. I was like, you know, Jesus fuck dude. And it's so fucking like I, my,

my entire life, I have, I guess I have had a couple of jobs where you do have to go physically

in, but for the most part, I don't, I've not done that. And I certainly have not had a job

in the previous, you know, like since 2013, where I even had an office to go into. And certainly

that one that I had to go into, like even before then as a graduate student, like, you know,

you could work in the office, but you didn't have to, you had to go in for meetings and stuff,

but you, you had some flexibility.

It's one of the reasons I like academia.

That's one of the reasons that it was kind of appealing to me because you don't have like the structured nine to five

thing you could do. And the thing is also like the stuff that you do, um, most of what I get paid

for or did was thinking. And you don't think on a schedule, like you don't, to some extent,

obviously you can kind of turn it on and off, but for the most part, it was like, um, you know,

I'm, I'm sitting, walking around and I'm thinking about shit. And then occasionally, you know, and

that would be, sometimes it would start at 6 PM and I would just get into a group of a groove or get

into like a flow state and I'd be up until like three working on shit. And then some days you

don't, you know, you don't get much done and it fluctuates. You can't really, it's hard to control,

right? It doesn't work on a schedule, but he got really fucking weird about it. And there,

there was this underlying implicit threat, semi-explicit threat that if I didn't do this,

I was not going to, like, I was going to get fired. And I'm sitting here like I need, um,

A, I need to continue the, the treatment for my, uh, detached retina, foreign and detached retina.

B, after you get a vitrectomy, it basically is guaranteed to cause a cataract, which is,

seems pretty fucked up to me.

It seems like there's maybe something that they're doing wrong,

but that's just what happens. And you have to wait like six months or some amount of time after

you get the, after you get the surgery before you can get the cataract treated. And I needed my

fucking health insurance because the United States is a fucking dystopian hellscape and the health

insurance is hell insurance.

You know, health insurance is part of your employment. And so I'm

sitting there and I'm like, fuck, if I, if I get fired, um, am I going to be able to fucking see,

am I going to have like permanently just a cataract in that eye? Um, am I going to, you know,

like it was a very stressful period of time. And it was amazing also during that last,

like from the January until the contract terminated at the end of June, um, it was ridiculously

uncomfortable and unproductive, like probably the least, the, the single least productive period of

my life. And also like that nine to five shit.

Um, I, I lived in Gilbert, Arizona, right? So without traffic, it would be about a half hour to get from there to ASU with traffic. And I would be

going in for 9am and leaving at 5pm. So I was guaranteed to hit traffic and with traffic it would

be like 50 minutes to an hour, sometimes more than an hour to travel each way. And so it's like,

in addition to the nine to five, you have this time in the beginning, time in the end that you're

eating in, you know, so it's like eight plus two hours, like 10 hours. And then also it just like

exhausted me. And it was unproductive in the sense that it kept me from actually doing the work that

I was getting paid to do, which is frustrating as shit.

Uh, and it was also unproductive in the sense

that, you know, like I, I independent of work, I have hobbies and other stuff like this that I do.

And I was not able to do anything. I was, I went from, you know, like getting all my shit done.

Um, and by the way, I could also do like five to 10 TikTok videos a day. And I could also record,

uh, tangents episode once a week or whatever. Um, and, and, and I went from that to basically,

I can't do fucking shit other than work. And even my work is inadequate and is kind of frustratingly

horrible. So yeah, that was kind of what killed this.

Um, in addition to also,

um, Gil, again, the guy that I mentioned before, I don't know if he's going to listen to this one.

I'm going to try to put it in the same feed.

Maybe he will catch it. I don't know.

He used to be a big listener. Um, but that dude, um, called me a, like a nine. He said, you're like a nine 11 truther

because I was sitting there and I'm watching, um, kids get blown up and burned alive in a tent while

their mom is screaming. And I'm, I'm, I'm reading like Harats and, uh, times of Israel. And I'm,

I'm seeing like the shit that Netanyahu is talking about and not just him, the whole, um, Knezit and all.

So if you look at polling, um, Israel, like they're something like two thirds of their population

wants, um, ethnic cleansing. They want genocide of the Palestinian people.

It's, it's a fucked up situation and people like to focus on Netanyahu, but you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's a giant

chunk, not only with the government, but of the populace, um, that are in, you know, pretty fucking

bad positions here. And so, and then you look at also like the IDF that's the entire population

goes to IDF with the exception of a small, small number of conscientious, conscientious objectors

who go to prison. Um, yeah, it's, it's like, it's a depressing fucked up situation. And I'm sitting

there like saying shit that, that Netanyahu was saying and echoing stuff like that. And because

I'm saying that kind of stuff and it was fucking horrible, I'm a 9-11 truther and he got fucking

weird. And this was like, we used to be, again, I, I considered him to be probably my best friend.

He might not have considered me to be a best friend. I would guess not, but I certainly thought

he was, um, for me and you know, like for, for probably like approaching two decades, pretty

much every day we would talk, you know, occasionally we maybe wouldn't, but you know, most days we'd be

exchanging text messages, um, no matter where I was in the world, no matter where he was, no matter what

we're doing.

Um, and then every time we're in the town together, at least once a week, maybe on the,

you know, some stuff comes up and then you miss a week or something, but pretty much once a week,

we'd have lunch together. We'd hang out together. And it was, I, I, I liked it. I liked it a lot.

I liked him a lot.

I respected him.

And then he got fucking weird again. And, uh, I don't know.

He said, you know, like you're like a 9-11 truther and blah, blah, blah. And then, uh, on the 31st

of December, I don't even know what year that was, 2023. It's, it's been, it's coming up on 700 days

since October 7th. Um, but that December or that, that New Year's Eve, he's like, eh, well,

you just don't talk to me anymore. And, or for, for a while. And we haven't talked since I've sent

him some messages a couple of times, sent him a couple of emails and he just has not talked to me

since. And at this point, I don't really want to talk to him.

I'm not like, if he came back and he's

like, you know, I'm so sorry. Um, obviously you were right. You're not, you're not a lot. 9-11

truther. Uh, there's a fucking genocide going on and there's nobody in the world. It kills me

because there's nobody in the world who doesn't study the Shoah as much, who studies the Shoah a lot

more than the Israelis.

There's nobody in the world who has less of an excuse.

There's nobody in a world

who like never again should mean never again more to than the Israelis.

And it's, it's, it's just so fucked up. It's so fucked up.

It kills me. It kills me. It kills me.

And you hear these people talking

about like calling Palestinians vermin, like using the same fucking language.

The same, it sounds like

it came out of the fucking Holocaust, the same language, the same everything. And then they talk

about like, um, literally talking about like final solutions and exterminating people and all this

fucking shit. And it's horrible. It's fucking horrible. And you know, like the, the official

death count is upwards of 50 K now. I think the Lancet a long time ago was saying, you know, it was a few

hundred K and it was probably like that. And now it's gotta be, I would be shocked if it's not like

600 K plus at this point. And you think about it, the, the, the Palestinian population in Gaza

in Gaza was something like 2.2 million, I think before October 7th. And even then, of course,

they've lived under apartheid for a long fucking time. Um, but you know, they've had the mowing the

lawn for a long fucking time. They've had all this other shit for a long fucking time.

But you know, the, the population now is probably like, I'm guessing like 1.5, 1.6. And I, you just

think about how many people have been killed and you have people there literally saying like, Oh,

every, for every Israeli killed on October 7th, we need to kill 50 Palestinians. And then of course

you think about it, it's like, well, if that's true and obviously collective punishment and

disproportionality are illegal under international law, but nevermind that now it doesn't actually

matter, obviously. But if that's true, you've done it.

You're, you know, you can celebrate,

you got 50 K official death count plus, uh, and a thousand people generously on October 7th.

And it's like, yeah, that's, that's fucking great guys.

You, you, you've mass murdered so

many fucking kids. You've, you, you're done.

You're fucking done.

And you think, I don't know.

I just think about like how fucking awful this is. I think also like about how awful this gets

back to the Democrat thing. And this is going to, I'm going to wrap this up.

I need to, it's, it's like 745, 1944, 23, 24, um, as I'm recording this, but it's getting late. Um, I need to eat

something is basically what I'm saying, but the democratic national convention, like first off,

they forced Harris into the nomination. And, and even before that, it was going to be like,

they're going to force Biden in there and genocide Joe. Like, and I don't say that lightly,

uh, before 2020 incidentally, he was already, uh, Jim Crow Joe.

He was already crime bill Joe.

He was already the guy that fucked over Anita Hill and gave us Clarence Thomas Joe.

Uh, he became eugenics Joe with, you know, like Trump, Trump said during the pandemic that, uh, and it's still

during the pandemic incidentally, but during the pandemic portion of his term, Trump was like,

well, if we just stop testing, it'll magically go away. Uh, and a couple hundred thousand

Americans died or USians, I should say. Um, and then Biden came in and he had plenty of time in

advance and all this stuff. And he ended up killing a million plus, like just straight up killing,

like did not do fucking shit. They, they did this as an official policy letter rip. And this is a virus

that if you understood the barest bits about it would know that it's not even something where letter

rip as a policy would work because you can get reinfected by the same fucking thing over and over

and over again, because it's, it's a single-stranded RNA virus.

It evolves extremely fast. And when you

have unregulated spread of this shit, you're going to have so many different variants out there that

you're going to get it over and over again. And it's even without it being immunovasive and a bunch

of other stuff. So it was like, letter rip as a policy makes sense for something. And I'm not saying

it's ever a good idea, but it makes sense for something.

If it's like a, uh, slowly evolving

DNA virus that you can elicit protective immunity against. And so once you've got it, you're not going

to get it, you're not getting it again. You could let it burn through the population, kill 2% of the

population, which incidentally killing 2% of the population is not a good thing. You know, you think

about like, um, an influenza, people would say like, Oh, it's just a, it's just the flu.

It's just influenza every year kills between 20,000 and like 60,000 USians. Um, that's, that's, that's flu.

Um, in the kind of steady state now that we're in or semi-steady state, um, COVID is killing

hundreds of thousands of people every year in the U S alone. And it is also extraordinarily easy

to prevent, um, with respirators and with improved ventilation, um, improved vaccination rates and all

this kind of stuff. And you just think about like how much trouble, how much damage Biden has done.

Biden stopped testing, stopped reporting. It sounds like it can, this sounds like a legitimate

conspiracy theory, but if you look at like the fucking CDC under him, um, not only did he do the

testing thing that Trump suggested, but didn't actually do himself. Uh, but he changed. Well,

um, um, Walansky, I think is her name, the CDC director under him for the one that for the bulk

of the time. Uh, she changed the coloring on maps because, you know, red maps looked too bad.

They changed the metrics from what was close to prevalence to, I think they called it community

levels. And then they, they had, they went through like two or three different metric changes.

They went through a bunch of coloring changes.

It's, it's fucking ridiculous. I, I someday I'm

going to put together a site or something. I should put something up on my website that

just shows you the stages that they went through and it is beyond Orwellian. And then also like

going from the prevalence, which is showing like how, uh, prevalent it is actually like in

circulation to these community levels, things, which were basically like some made up metrics

that was like, Oh, well, what we're going to do is look at the hospitalization numbers

and blah, blah, blah, which is going to be a lagging number.

It means that, you know, like prevalence is based on testing, which tells you today or a few days ago, this is where we

are. Um, hospitalization takes a couple of weeks.

So you're getting data. That's like a

couple of weeks old does not, it's not actionable.

It's not usable.

It doesn't really help you that much.

It does help from a public health standpoint, kind of, although still like with

that kind of stuff, if you have the prevalence data, you can infer where you're going to need

to shore up, uh, the hospitals. And of course, this is such a example of capitalism at play

where like excess capacity is seen as waste under your capitalism. And so hospitals, one of the

reasons so many people died was that we didn't have excess capacity and we, you know, overwhelmed

the capacity we did have. And so people who could have otherwise survived didn't, uh, it's

just, the whole fucking thing is so horrible. And, and still, again, we're having hundreds

of thousands of people die every year, you know, like easily two, three times the flu, uh,

two, two, three times a bad flu season just is the norm. Now that's great.

That's fucking great.

Uh, anyway, rambling on. I am now, uh, since my job ended, uh, this is going to

be the wrap up, but yeah, kind of telling you where I am and where I'm going. Uh, my job

ended at the end of June and I took a month and lived with my mom and sister in LA.

Um, sold my car, which again has been a fucking bane to my existence for so long.

It has sucked like it, that was the difference between being comfortable and being able to like cover everything

and not being able to, you know, like making less money than I, than it took to survive.

Uh, and I couldn't get rid of it - I was just stuck with it. And even, even if I could have,

even if it wasn't underwater, I couldn't, I still couldn't fucking get rid of it because

I had to go into work every day. And in the U S where I was, um, it was like literally

two and a half hours plus each way. Uh, if I was going to take buses and the train to

get to and from work and it was already an hour each way with a car. And so, you know,

if I sold the car, what am I going to fucking do? I'm, you know, it was a horrible, horrible

situation.

Um, it was very traumatic, like truly the, the last like year has been extremely,

yeah, I guess really the last couple of years too. And, and obviously like nothing compared

to the people on the ground and, and fell a scene, but it's been difficult, you know?

And, and I've seen so much, I've seen so many people that I liked and respected, um, just

like talking about joy and voting for continuing the genocide, um, you know, like in voting for

somebody who, I don't know. I, and again, this gets back to, I have never voted for a Republican

and don't have any expectations of them not being awful.

They're openly awful. Um, but the Democrats

you'd think are better. Right. And, you know, Harris is sitting there and like for two days,

I was excited. I was ready. Cause it's like, dang fuck, it's not going to be Biden. And then

she and her husband and her spokespeople and a bunch of people are just continually every couple

of days saying like, well, she's pledging her undying, unconditional support for Israel,

no matter what, going to keep giving them weapons, going to keep giving them aid and all this stuff.

Going to keep the genocide going. I couldn't fucking vote for her. I'm sorry. I couldn't,

I don't regret it.

I regret that Trump won, but it is good that she lost. And it's not just that.

It's like, even if you took that out, I'm very pro-immigration. She was anti-immigrant.

I am very pro, you know, like doing something about the current situation in the world. Cause

the environment, our environment is fucked, right? The climate catastrophe is fucked. It is

killing us. And this is just starting. And she's talking about how, like literally in her debate

with him, arguing with him over who's the bigger fracker, talking about how she wants to have the

most lethal fighting force in the world under her, like, you know, between her legs. That's what she

wants. That's what she needs. Yeah. It's like, you just go on and on and on.

Um, I'm like, I care

about trans people. I'm sorry. I'm weird that way. And the Democrats completely abandoned them. Like

she, in an interview was like, well, would you, um, they asked, you know, like, well, would you

protect trans people? And she's like, well, I would follow the law. What does that, what does that

mean? I would follow the law. I'll tell you what that means. The law being like decided at the state

level means that there are some States which are anti-trans and have anti-trans laws. So you

following the law means you are anti-trans. Like you're not going to go to bat for them. This is

one of, one of many reasons why Gavin Newsom is a fucking terrible person. He's super anti-trans,

ditto Buttigieg, piece of shit. Um, Newsom, you know, now the fucking Democrats,

um, the brunch libs, the shit libs are out there like, Oh, Newsom's so awesome. Cause he's,

he's making some kind of like Trump esque tweets and then talking about how we're going to, um,

gerrymander California. Like gerrymandering is not a good thing. I'm sorry. It's not a good

thing.

It is funny that the Democrats are not fighting, you know, like they're literally going

up against tanks with stones. That's, it tells you how serious they are, but it's not a good

thing. And Newsom doing that is not really a good thing. And Newsom making like mean tweets

is not really a big deal.

It's kind of silly.

It's not doing anything to Trump.

It doesn't actually impact anything. And then, you know, like tearing down homeless people's encampments

and taking, like you could see in the pictures of that, he enjoyed it. He didn't just do it,

which was fucking horrible. He enjoyed it. He took pleasure in it. Um, fuck this guy. He's a piece

of shit. He's a fucking piece of shit. And the thing about him is like the people that are just not

paying attention. They don't care. Um, they're just like eating up his bullshit. It's just, it's really

been disappointing.

It's really been disappointing to see people say like, you know, Oh, you should

just turn off Tik TOK and then you can just let the genocide happen, not even pay attention to it,

which you can do. You can close your eyes to that. I know it's true. Um, my eyes are, my eyes are open,

you know, I, my whole life again, like the stuff that I'm seeing now that I have been seeing the last

couple of years.

One of the things that I realized is that is not new. Like shit was happening here.

That was terrible. Um, and here being Vietnam shit from decades and decades and decades, my entire

life shit was happening someplace in the world where people are getting blown up, burned to death,

starved to death, all kinds of horrible stuff, largely at the behest of the U S and the U S military.

And, you know, I'm, I'm sorry. You can close your eyes to that. I'm, I'm fucking not. And it's a shame

that any of us close our eyes to it.

It's not acceptable. It's not decent. So anyway, with that,

um, this is my hello world, um, re inaugural episode, I guess we would call it. Um, I'm going to go get

something to eat and I will definitely be talking to you again soon.

I don't know how long it's going to

take to get this up because I'm building the pipeline to, to put these up and make it a little

bit easier to do. I'm trying to automate some things. Uh, but I've got like two thirds of it

done, but you know, who knows how much the extra or the last third is going to take. Um, I, and I

have a bunch of other stuff I'm trying to work on. Um, I've been traveling around the world a little

bit, well, not around the world, I guess around Asia, I should say, uh, flew into Japan.

I started talking about, this is the problem with the tangents. Cause I, you know, go off on a tangent

and I don't reattach, um, stayed in LA for a bit, went to Japan for a few days, went to South Korea

for a week or so, uh, went to China.

I spent, uh, like China. I went to Beijing. I went to Chengdu,

Chengdu. I'm terrible with the name. I'm sorry. I can feel it's butchered and I can't fix it.

And then I went to Shenzhen and it fucks me up because there's the Shen Zhen area and you,

nevermind. Don't worry about it. I went there. Um, and then I came here and, uh, I'm finishing up my

like 10 days, 14 days here the next couple of days. And I'm going to Thailand and back to Japan.

And then I'll be there for like a month and then I will be back in the U S and then I will be out of

money.

You know, like I, the situation that I'm in, I have tried to get a job for a long time.

I have not been able to, uh, it's been really kind of difficult and I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

And I was in a situation where it was like, Oh, I can sit here and still have my car and still have

my apartment in Arizona and all that. And just be there, like getting ready to run out of money

for a few months.. or I could travel a little bit for a few months.

And I decided to do that. And I'm

trying to, um, I'm trying to get some things sorted out. I'm trying to figure out some stuff.

I'm really trying to figure out like ways to get into a sustainable position. And, and also like,

I know a bunch of things about myself that I have, some of them I knew and some of them are

just things that I guess none of them were like revelations exactly, but definitely like, I know,

um, having to go physically, if I had a job where I had to go physically into work,

I'd be fucking miserable.

Even if it was a job that I otherwise loved. Um, if I had a job,

like the thing is, I'm somebody who works pretty hard and I like, I like working a lot,

but I want to do, it's not that I want to do just the stuff that I want to do, but I do want to like

be self-directed and I want to choose what I'm working on to at least a decent extent and having

some, some other dude who I don't like or respect telling me what to do is not for me. It's not for

me. I don't think it's for anybody. I don't think it's good for anybody. Uh, but anyway, working on

that, trying to figure out something sustainable, trying to figure out like, I, I really like that.

I cannot tell you how fucking thrilled I am not to be in the U S right now. Like I feel so much

better. And this is not of the countries that I've been to. This is not my favorite. I like places

where it's like a walkable city and there's public transit and they don't quite have that here yet.

And they're walkable cities they have here, but public transit is not yet fully here. The high

speed rail is not yet fully here.

There's no Shinkansen or, uh, fast trains, although there will

be, they're working on it. Uh, the twenties, thirties, I think they'll, they'll have a North South

high speed rail, which will turn the train hotel that I took that took like 18 hours to go from,

um, um, I didn't even remember where I went. Um, the name to Hanoi or am I backwards there?

I don't even, it's so sad. I like, I'm so terrible with names. I don't remember. I don't,

I don't remember. I'm trying to, I'm trying to think. Yeah. The name to Hanoi. And I'm, I,

I know that I'm botching those names. I'm sorry. Um, that train took so long. That'll be like a six

hour, maybe even like a less than six hour travel or trip.

I took a six hour trip incidentally in

China from, um, from Beijing to Chengdu. And that was awesome. It was like fucking amazing.

It irritates me that the U S is nowhere near anything like that. Um, having like high speed,

every, every city that I've been to other than in this country, um, every city has had like high

speed rail of some sort. And even if they didn't have the high speed rail, they at least had

a Metro.

They have good bus networks. They have, you know, like you can get around without a

fucking car. And you think about just how much nicer that is. And then also like, I mean, it's

not just that like the food is cheaper everywhere else that you go in the world. It's better. You

know, I, I mean, I, the first time I went to Europe and that was a long time ago now,

like over a decade ago, um, probably a decade and a half. The first time I went, you know,

you go to like a convenience store and things have gotten worse in the U S they've gotten more

expensive and shittier, but you go to a convenience store and you get an orange or something.

And, you know, just like a corner stop, a corner shop place where like, it would be terrible. Like

you wouldn't even think about getting one and the U S or if you did, it would be just like wood. It

would be not good. And the fucking orange would be like the best orange, better than something you

go to a farmer's market in the U S and get. And it was like, what the fuck? What the fuck? I wish

more people would travel. I wish more people would get that experience. I wish more people would get

pissed off at how fucked up the shit in the United States is. We are so fucked over. It's not just

that our country is, um, is really this dystopian hellscape that is causing so much harm in the world.

It's so bad for us. It's so bad for us.

Like the experience that you get living there, it's dangerous.

It's, you know, like miserable. It's isolating. The food is expensive and it tastes like shit.

And it's all bad for you. It's like, it just like, it's ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous.

And we just consider that normal. You have medical bankruptcy is a normal part of life there. Like

people fundraising to pay for their cancer treatment is normal there. It's, it's so disgusting and wrong.

And you know, like, I don't know. It's just like, lose my mind thinking about it. And the people there

think that it's the best country in the world. And we have the best healthcare system in the world and

bullshit. Bullfucking shit.

You're, it's a dystopian hellscape there. It is a shithole.

Um, and the standard of living is shitty.

The experience that you have in life is shitty.

You, you work like people work two, three jobs and they can't fucking pay the rent. They can't pay

to eat. Um, and they can't, they certainly like, if one thing goes wrong, they're completely destroyed

financially.

Um, anyway, I don't want to, I will talk about all that kind of stuff more later,

but just gives you a little taste of some of the stuff that I'll talk about. Hopefully it's

interesting to you. Um, but this is my, this is my show.

I hope, uh, I hope you enjoy it.

I hope that

you'll follow me, um, through my discussion. And one of the things that, one of the reasons that I'm

doing this incidentally also is that I got tired of, um, not just TikTok, every fucking social media

network, every platform, um, you don't have control over what you put out. You don't have

control over the distribution of it. Uh, you don't have control over like what they take down

or what people do. Um, and it's, it's, it's just awful. Like, it's just annoying. I don't like the

TikTok lets people mass report you if they don't like what you're talking about and then suppress the

shit out of your views. It's terrible. Um, I don't expect a lot of people to listen to this,

but at least it'll be on my site. And if you want to listen to it, it's not going to get suppressed.

It's not going to get, you know, um, but anyway, this is, and not that I'm saying things that are

like that controversial or that, you know, like, Ooh, scary Scott.

You know, it's, it's just ridiculous.

It's fucking ridiculous that this is a thing that I have to face. Like, I just want to fucking talk,

uh, about random shit. That's pretty much all this is going to be. It'd be nice to just be able to do

it and not have somebody like just quietly without any, any due process or any transparency at all,

uh, get in the way. I don't want that. I'm tired of it and I'm done with it. So I hope you like this.

I hope I continue making them. I hope, um, yeah, I hope it's interesting.

Thank you very much. And, uh, as always, 再见.

Thank you.

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By Scott Menor, PhD