That means no one watched the final cut.

Lean into the regretty feels, Dan. That’s your body trying to get answers to something. youtu.be/mLjgfMj2W6k?...

Maybe if they actually did research, (were actually curious about others) and didn’t make assumptions, they could grow and learn. Instead they tell tall tales about crazy people who mistreated them and made them feel weird confusing regrety feels. Only their gfs are allowed to do that!

It’s astounding how easily and often one of these writer guys tells a story about someone acting outrageous and never thinks, “you know what, this story seems pretty unbelievable, perhaps it sucks? Maybe I should work out some of these plot holes so it makes sense.” But it would be less compelling…

They tell people things. It’s our job to listen to them, to pay attention and take notes. They don’t have to understand us because they already do. They know everything about people. People are deranged or sad and lonely or coping with traumas just like them and their funny friends and their dogs.

Reminds me of one of my favorite films, Synechdoche. There’s a moment at the end where we get a montage of moments that happened in the film where Hoffman’s character (and us) saw it one way but now we discover what he overlooked. Chronically drunk and stoned guys are like this.

Gen X tried to bring their mythical culture online. Gen Y youth after 9/11 were escaping that fake world. We had more questions than answers. In the process of formulating a new worldview, we fractured. Gen Z has been tasked with making sense from those pieces or importing the old tidy paradigm.

As an old man dies he experiences an implosion of his psyche. The millions of memories become inaccessible as dementia sets in. What bubbles to the surface are unresolved traumas and core memories. New information can’t get in. Growth stops. It’s now impossible to be anything but what you are.

And bigotry is the right word here. It’s hard to parse because it’s not just bigotry against one group, it’s misanthropy, so it’s bigotry against multiple groups but for the same reasons; they are not you.

I imagine there is a similar kind of ignorance among SF Valley bot people. They can only speculate on what the lower class thinks, assume a city that big and diverse is a powder keg. But living in NYC was a reminder that people are generally good and so is multiculturalism.

I didn’t realize how much of a gift it was to grow up in NYC until I left. You can really see the curse of lack of diversity in those who grew up in the Midwest or the South. NYC is cosmopolitan and remarkably cohesive for such a populated place. Los Angeles was conversely much more segregated.

I get really irritated when people talk about meritocracy. In this country, if you are famous, it’s because you are perfectly mediocre, a useful idiot, or safe. True artistry is so rare and seems to slip through accidentally. All the geniuses are retired or dead.

I had to give him my health insurance to afford coverage for my wife and daughter. I have to be careful out there because I am our only source of income. Good health is my only option. Somewhere out there a millionaire just wasted the equivalent of my yearly salary on something frivolous.

…or hear on a pipecast