Full Piece

father!

THE PITT (2025-)

i say this in all seriousness, a great way to resist the broad cultural shift of devaluing curiosity and critical thinking is to play my favorite game, Hey What Is That Thing

you play it while walking around with friends and if you see something and don't know what it is or wonder why its there, you stop and point and say Hey What Is That Thing. and everyone speculates about it. googling it is allowed but preferably after spending several minutes guessing or asking a passerby about it

weird structures, ambiguous signs, unfamiliar car modifications, anything that you can't immediately understand its function. eight times out of ten, someone in the group actually knows, and now you know!

a few examples from me and my friends the past few weeks: "why is there a piece of plywood sticking out of that pond in a way that looks intentional?" (its a ramp so squirrels that fall in to the pond can climb out) • "my boss keeps insisting i take a vacation of nine days or more, thats so specific" (you work at a bank, banks make employees take vacation in long chunks so if youre stealing or committing fraud, itll be more obvious) • "why does this brick wall have random wooden blocks in it" (theres actually several reasons why this could be but we asked and it was so you could nail stuff to the wall) • "most of these old factories we drive past have tinted windows, was that just for style?" (fun fact the factory owners realized that blue light keeps people awake, much like screen light does now, so they tinted the windows blue to keep workers alert and make them work longer hours)

been playing this game for a long time and ive learned (and taught) a fuckton about zoning laws, local history, utilities (did you know you can just go to your local water treatment plant and ask for a tour and if they have a spare intern theyll just give you a tour!!!) and a whole lot of fun trivia. and now suddenly you're paying more attention when youre walking around, thinking about the reasons behind every design choice in the place you live that used to just be background noise. and it fuckin rules.

I made some blobs for yall

I wonder how many people out there buy Teslas because they think they’re a luxury car brand just like any other luxury brand, unaware of the daily slander their vehicles face from a great portion of the population

Can you imagine buying a car like “wow, an electric vehicle, so cool, and it’s got Features and Stuff, and I think the company is famous or something” while people who see your car boo it and it’s bloodline whenever it passes

(I know you’d probably really have to be living under a rock for that kind of thing, but I’ve met people like that, and it’s baffling, but possible)

((Maybe less baffling if you’re not in America, but I wouldn’t know))

you don't "hate kids," you hate being forced into a caretaking role.

you don't "hate kids," you hate censorship passed off as family values.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the constrictiveness of the nuclear family.

you don't "hate kids," you're just not used to occupying fully age diverse spaces so you're not used to the noise or the many different kinds of needs.

you don't "hate kids," most public spaces just aren't built for kids, and so the few kids you see are always uncomfortable and distressed.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the intense social rules assigned to kids and anyone who interacts with kids.

You don't "hate kids," you hate how society reproduces its most restrictive elements and how kids are powerless to resist it.

lord the peasants are so loud today

I have been too obsessed with Banana Fish recently

wow I love to sit crosslegged without moving for several hours straight!

I get that some of you have your brains wired in a way that compells you to do this, but I hate it when people go "um actually the truth is more complicated than that" when I try to make general statements that sum up the concept in a simplified manner. I was not unaware that those details were there, I chose to omit them because their presence does not alter the general principle and their absence streamlines the expression to be more efficient.

Like yes, technically speaking "you can do anything except avoid the consequences of your actions" is not the most correct statement. Of course you can avoid the consequences of your actions, and the consequences of avoiding the consequences, et cetera et cetera, until the consequences of the consequences of the consequences become a domino effect that ends you up getting killed with a hammer. So although the outcome is the same, you are technically speaking correct about the entire mechanism being more complicated than how I worded it.

Sure, I can tell you to stop doing that, but I can't make you stop doing that. But there is a possibility that I own a hammer.