Random Thoughts, Part 13: Our Random 2021

 

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My previous entry in my Random Thoughts series was in November 2020, so with this post my Random Thoughts series rolls into 2021! There are still plenty of random thoughts to be had in this new and strange year. I've got stuff on philosophy (of course), but also recipes, medical stuff, Taco Bell, conspiracy theories, and Coming to America.

And as I started doing in 2020, I'll include some recent memes that amused me just to keep things more random.

269. I’m sick of hot takes. Have we tried cool gives? 

270. Two opinions that sound moderate to normal people, but are guaranteed to make most nerds’ blood boil. Season 8 of Game of Thrones was okay. Joss Whedon shows are okay.

 

271, Nothing says “efficiency of the US private medical system” like getting a paper check in the mail because I was overcharged for a co-pay on a doctor visit that took place 14 months ago.

 

272. My new policy about arguing with Star Wars fans: don’t. AKA, “Let the wookiee win.”

 

273. It’s nice to hear that Disney is giving Star Wars fans ten new things to hate in the next few years.

 

274. I think all recipes are written by people with dishwashers.

 

275. What if philosophy is not about knowing things, but instead learning to be okay with not knowing things?

 

276. I sometimes find some philosophers’ confidence that they can find the answers to be a bit adorably wacky. I thought we gave up on answers when we became philosophers! Maybe I had the wrong answer.

 

277. Sometimes I see academics discussing academic stuff on social media late on a Saturday night, and I don’t get involved because I’m not that kind of academic, but I do wonder why I’m on social media to see it.

 

278. If it weren’t for the Straw Man fallacy, most of the internet would not exist.

 

279. I’ll never be a real Southerner, but I’m enough of a Southerner to be relieved when people up North do stupid shit that gets national attention.

 

280. I enjoy making syllabi and planning the semester. I also enjoy seeing my careful plans thwarted by the semester later.

 

281. The problem with speaking in constant hyperbole or being offensive for the LOLZ or whatever is that at some point you and your audience lose the ability to tell when you’re kidding and when you’re not. There are only so many steps between ironic mischievous schoolboy antics and sincere white supremacist terrorism.

 

282. It’s odd that the stock market is a weird casino for rich people that the rest of us are supposed to believe is "rational" and "the foundation of our economy.”

 

 283. One thing I find difficult about encounters with the American medical-industrial complex is that many medical professionals and related employees seem to assume patients have full understanding of the intricacies of medical bureaucracy, organizational structures, and the Kafkaesque labyrinth and eldritch horror of health insurance. I suppose academia is like this for college students, too, which is why I try to be understanding.

 

284. 20% of pandemic teaching is reassuring students that I was serious when I said they could turn stuff in late.

 

285. The Zoom chat feature has reinscribed the time-honored practice of passing notes in class, but it makes it possible to pass the same note to everybody at the same time.

 

286. It’s weird that fandom has gotten to a place where liking things in your fandom is a controversial opinion.

 

287. Keeping one’s philosophical diet mono-cultural is just bad philosophy. Whether you think philosophy is a search for truth, an exploration of conceptual space, a critique of culture, understanding the history of ideas, or whatever, none of these goals are served well by intentionally limiting your intellectual diet to one section of the vast buffet of world philosophy.

 

288. The main reasons for not learning about philosophies from multiple traditions are laziness and xenophobia, neither of which befit a philosophical mind.

 

289. The fact that I can get Arby’s and Taco Bell delivered to me whenever I want without speaking with another human being is maybe evidence that the combination of the internet and capitalism is bad for us.

 

290. A thing that makes me feel curmudgeonly: When I click on a headline but it links to a video I have to watch instead of a text article I get to read.

 

291. My levels of interest in watching new versions of MTV’s The Real World (non-existent) or Coming to America (very high) have remained remarkably consistent since the early 90’s.

 

292. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they make the world make too much sense. Reality, on the other hand, is messy and rarely makes sense.

293. Everyone thinks everyone else is in the grip of irrational conspiracy theories. What if everyone is right?

 

294. Life is too short not to have random thoughts.