Nicholas Troester

Woke 2 is gonna hit like Earl Thomas

Fellow bitter southerners,

North Carolina, Kentucky, and Virginia all elected Democratic Governors. Georgia in 2020 wasn’t a fluke. South Carolina, Florida, Texas, All y’all of the y’allternative persuasion. Keep being loud. Keep getting into good trouble. Protect black folks and trans people. Vote

Fruit-flavored candy continues to vastly outperform chocolate of any kind.

Adults-to-kids this year is easily 4:1

…and reading Beowulf

“Are you just, like, casually reading Beowulf?!” —out here handing out candy to trick or treaters and making friends

Pretty sure the final version of my dissertation has an “[insert citation here]” that no one noticed.

Shablicky-blows

So good it made me go back and listen to it for the first time since 2000. I like it a lot better now.

I was very good at debate in high school, but unlike a lot of people who were good at debate, I recognized this as a serious moral failing I needed to suppress.

His original shtick was correct, and he went on to prove why it was correct, if you’re going to disgrace yourself the least you can do is leave a very obvious object lesson behind you.

…who then went on to be discovered as an *un*reformed womanizer and gross sex pest, and last I heard was attempting to relaunch himself on the alt-right. Whenever I feel mildly inconvenienced as a white dude, I remember that guy, and shut up about it.

Because people are talking about that one problematic internet white dude, I was reminded of another, who masqueraded as a reformed womanizer and feminist whose shtick was “if you are a white heterosexual man, people are correct to be suspicious of you, bc other dudes have already ruined it for you”

(Also fr: it was just different when I started dating my now wife. I hated when people said that when I was single, but it’s true. Many other things in life might be hard, but there should be something easy in this.)

It is constant, lifelong work to actually understand yourself and respond to someone else, especially because you both change over time, too. But that’s a relationship, buddy: that’s what you’re signing up for anyway.

But to date successfully as a leftish guy is to recognize that you need to deprogram yourself from unhelpful things you’ve learned and that you’re dealing with another human who may be able a different place in her own version of that process.

(The guy who married my wife and I once said to me that the thing marriage makes clearer than anything else is that all people are sinful; there’s no room to hide. Do you really want to intentionally add other flaws and imperfections to the ones you already have?)

But I was notoriously bad at dating, and dipped my toe into a lot of the right-wing cesspool looking for answers, but that won’t get you any kind of relationship you want. It’s 24/7 playing a role, with the constant danger that the role will become who you are.

My left-leaning advice for men wanting to befriend women is just that: listen attentively, have fun, don’t try to hit on them or gauge their interest in you as a romantic partner. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, it’ll be fine either way.

I was raised to be a second-wave feminist, so making friends with women has been easy: they are people. Talk with (not to) them, listen to their answers, look for areas of mutual interest. Everybody should enjoy themselves; if someone doesn’t, it’s not a character judgment, you just didn’t click.

God help me, some thoughts on the way to a blog post: I am a very boring middle-age cis white man with moderate to left political opinions. Since I was 16, the vast majority of my friends have been women; I have had periods where all my friends are women and none men, never the reverse.

<whispers very quietly> I occasionally allow my kids to get away with lies I know to be lies because it’s a skill they need to learn eventually.

(I also sometimes remind them I know they are lying, they’re not that good at it yet.)

Fears that falling birth rates in US could lead to population collapse are based on faulty assumptions While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated.

My coauthors @lesja.bsky.social @karenguzzo.bsky.social & I have a new piece in @theconversation.com , which offers insights into why most demographers do NOT think there is a current fertility crisis and the panic about population decline is unwarranted.
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theconversation.com/fears-that-f...

Lehrer's performance is sampled in the track "Dope Peddler" by U.S. rapper 2 Chainz on his 2012 album Based on a T.R.U. Story, (2) In 2013, Lehrer said he was "very proud" to have his 60-year-old song sampled. His response to the request to use the song was "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?" [21

Just realized I haven’t seen anyone post the Tom Lehrer-2 Chainz letter yet today.

“I need to be in this for the long haul, and I will need a deep well to draw from, better get started”

I decided my response to the world being as it is was to lean into being an appreciator of beauty and creativity, it’s served me well thus far.

It’s “wait in the car pickup line for the kids” season again, and my current books of choice are Dracula and Buddenbrooks.

I’m doing my part to make the world of the future a weirder place. Are you?

Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great movies.

“Well, actually”: Monsoon Wedding is a better movie than Mississippi Masala.

Counter-protestor told me “no kings but Jesus.” I’m like idk what YOU mean by that but you’re gd right sister