Just watched Stuck In The Suburbs. Typical Disney movie. Simple plot, happy ending. Upbeat themes. Kind to children. Some moral themes that they get about right. Happy people succeeding. Good music.

To describe the same movie from a more typical adult perspective, and also the perspective of younger people who want to be/act grown-up, which is most teens: the movie had an absurd plot where some silly teen girls get a rock star's cellphone, find out his secrets, and become friends with him. The plot was obvious from way out, the villains were retarded and incompetent, and there wasn't really any point to the movie. Yay, they met a rock star, so what? Who cares about that? There was no action.

And so it is that most movies feature conflict, strife, and tension. Unhappy people and serious problems. Without these most people get bored. But they are missing something major: sure, if something bad happens to you, it's important to confront and solve it. But most of life is not like that. You don't have to first become a victim to succeed. A good life mostly consists of just what Disney movies show: people with no particular problems succeeding at something that, though generally not very "important", they enjoy. (Or at least, the problems most people have don't pervade their life, they're just subject-specific.)

What to do when you're *not* a victim is a far more interesting and common problem than how to fight. And it's a lot harder to write about, so few people even try.

Try to think of a movie where some *parents* just have a nice time. It's not so easy. Even something like City Slickers, they all had serious problems. They were basically trying to deal with mid-life crises.

Or think about how many love stories don't make it look like the couple is about to breakup forever a couple times before the end? Or think about why love stories almost always end when the couple gets together.

When you cook a steak, the blood that drips out is yummy. some people call it juice, but i think it's more enjoyable when you drop the euphemism.

Steak at $2.50 / lb. is a miracle of capitalism.

I previously wrote: lefties think the reason that capitalism creates wealth is that people are inherently greedy (which is why in socialism (aka 100% taxes) people wouldn't all want to do their share). this is how they get the idea that socialism is the right idea, but we need a little bit of capitalism to better make stuff. (ie, to better harness people's greed)

To add to that, it's no wonder many lefties think this when right-wingers still think it too!

A friend told me this realisation, that many pro-capitalism folks concede socialism's moral case, and argue on pragmatic grounds, is why Ayn Rand became a writer (to make said moral case for capitalism). Kinda makes me wanna read her.

Under socialism, aka a Command Economy, people don't control what they make. Rather, it's taken from them, and given to a few leaders for redistribution. Everyone is then given wealth as the leaders deem fit. The moral case against this goes something like: MY FUCKING GOD, WHO WOULD WANT TO GIVE ALL HIS STUFF AWAY AND LET SOMEONE ELSE RULE HIS LIFE?

Under capitalism, aka Let It Be economics, when you make something, you own it, to do with as you see fit. Whatever you create is yours, whatever someone else creates is not yours. Thus everyone is respected as individuals competent to make their own decisions with their stuff. There are no rulers. The moral case for this goes something like: D00D, YOU GET TO BE FREE!

when you buy perishable food, you sometimes won't be in the mood to eat it before it goes bad.

when you serve yourself a plate of food, you will sometimes put too little on the plate and get seconds. so too will you sometimes put on too much and throw the excess out.

when you cook, sometimes you will mess up, and the food will turn out gross.

some food you buy just won't be very good quality (like some fruit that turns out mushy or not sweet)

sometimes you won't read the labels closely enough, and will buy the wrong food by accident

sometimes you will make food for someone else, but because of miscommunication it won't be wanted.

sometimes you will start to cook some food, then change your mind about what you want to eat.

when you buy more than a bite of something new, you may not like it, and would thus throw most of it out.

the error rate on all these things goes down with skill. thus younger people, esp young children, tend to have a higher rate of throwing food out.

this is all to be expected. you shouldn't be upset in the slightest if 10% of the food you buy isn't eaten. more if you are young, or have young children, or have many children.

and none of these things qualify as "wasting" food.

insurance is the exact opposite of gambling, and vice versa

most people think the primary thing about gambling is that overall the casino takes a little of your money. this is true, but not primary.

insurance companies also take a little of your money. but that's ok. insurance is great anyway. most services charge you, so we can't judge gambling that simply.

what insurance does is take a little money from you most of the time (in most universes), but give you a bunch now and then (in a few universes) when (where) you need it most b/c disaster struck. this is great, because it allows you to have a higher minimum quality of life, which is worth the fee, and worth somewhat lowering your max quality of life.

gambling, on the other hand, takes money from you most of the time (in most universes), and gives a large pay out rarely (in a few universes). the basic effect is to make most of your life worse (most universes), but create a few spikes of huge wealth (in a few universes). this is the exact opposite effect that insurance had. this raises the maximum qualify of life you may experience, but at a cost to the minimum.

BTW this mostly applies to gambling that's either high-stakes that you only do a couple times, or to stuff with a very low chance of payout (lottery, maybe slots too, not sure). if you were placing lots of small bets at 49% odds, the effect of gambling would be very minimal, as your luck would almost always average out even within a single gambling session. (so all you'd really be doing is paying the fee to not do much of anything)

ok so disney wouldn't distribute moore's movie. said it was un-patriotic. didn't want it.

now it makes money. the lefty news seems to think disney is now mad about missing out on the cash. *ahem*

but it gets worse. they allege the movie is being censored (via an R rating) by angry disney stock owners. who, they implied, were mad for financial reasons.

in other words, the LEFT is so hell-bent on looking at things through the lens of money, that when people do something on principle, they can't see it. and say incoherent things (getting the unfair rating would have had to happen b4 the film made any money.... makes much more sense they censored it b/c they don't like it) when they explanation the right did something bad on principle works so much better (still bad, but much better).

Alcohol cannot have complex effects on human personalities. Just the same as banging your head. Why? Well, the alcohol we drink is one fairly simple molecule. It doesn't have information about human personalities, and thus couldn't target parts of one. And it's not evolved in that regard (no selection pressure).

But couldn't it just happen to be the right thing to have one specific effect?

Well, first off, now you're explaining things by "maybe the world just happens, by luck, to be just the way I thought it was."

And secondly, if it only takes something as simple as alcohol (the molecule isn't many thousands of atoms, just a few) to make people more liable to cheat on their girlfriends, then why haven't we yet designed a chemical to make people act more chaste?

Thirdly, people are very different, and store information in their brains differently. They vary so much as to confuse scientists, so what are the chances a plant happened to grow in a way to work on everyone (including past people, even).

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Genes also lack the information to complexly effect one's personality.

Genes also never got a chance to evolve this ability, because once people had personalities and there were selection pressures on them, memes, which evolve much faster, would always do it first thus removing the selection pressure.

And again, it would be quite a huge feat of luck for some gene to just happen to have the right qualities to effect the personalities of many different people.

this is amusing. It states you must be 18 to use their service, and also states they do not discriminate on the basis of age.