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Alright I just saw a post where someone said that low empathy actually happens when we can't relate to other people's experiences; therefore don't know how they feel.

Now, low empathy is different for everyone. But honestly, I'm low empathy because being able to relate to a situation doesn't change anything for me.

I broke my foot a while ago, it needed surgery. Terrible experience, 0/10, would not recommend. And if I see someone with a broken foot now, do you know how my emotions change? - Not at all. If I'm happy I stay happy. I'll maybe think "Oh, been there", but that's it.

If someone cries because of something I also experienced at some point, and I also cried when I experienced it, do you know what happens? My mood doesn't change at all. Maybe I'll have a sudden urge to help them because I remember how I felt myself. But if I was happy I'll stay happy, their mood doesn't affect my mood.

My mood isn't influenced "from the outside", only from within. I can see someone being mistreated and get very angry. But that's from within, that's because I don't want people to be mistreated. Not because their distress distressed me.

I'm low empathy because, even if I know exactly how you feel because I had an experience like yours myself, that situation won't have an impact on my mood and emotions.

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One of the major dividing lines of our age is between those who think it's worthwhile to cooperate and work with other people, accepting their flaws and limitations, to build something larger than ourselves, and those who think everything is fundamentally hopeless and that other people are corrupt, degenerate, and suspect. And the latter is not conducive to having any kind of culture at all.

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He just wishes it was Shawn. -Rider 

And that he can have sex with her. -Willl 

Just sleep with Shawn. Shawn should just take one for the team, have sex with Cory. Get it over with. And then he could come out and everybody's happy and Cory could actually respect his partner. -Rider 

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I think adults should stop demanding obedience from children and should start focusing on requesting respect. That’s what will actually serve them in the adult world and help them make good decisions mindfully.

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The case for a Canadian wealth tax

I'm in the home stretch of my 24-city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in LONDON (July 1) with TRASHFUTURE'S RILEY QUINN and then a big finish in MANCHESTER on July 2.

A major problem with letting billionaires decide how your country is run is that they will back whichever psycho promises the lowest taxes and least regulation, no matter how completely batshit and unfit that person is:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/nations-are-people

Billionaires have farcical, almost unimaginable resources. These let them take over whole political parties, even "left" parties, with the result that all real electoral options disappear. Voting for the other party gets you a different set of aesthetics, but the same existential threats to the human race and the planet:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/22/starmer-backs-us-strike-on-iran-and-calls-for-tehran-to-return-to-negotiations

After generations of increasingly oligarch-friendly policies and billionaire entryism into the Democratic Party, America may well be cooked, a total write-off for generations to come. The path to saving the world and our species arguably lies through strengthening other countries to resist American psychos and protect the planet from the consequences of their brainwormed leadership.

Writing for Jacobin, Alex Hemingway sets out a plan for imposing a wealth-tax on Canada's oligarchs, one that incorporates lessons from previous attempts at such a tax:

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/wealth-tax-canada-inequality-austerity/

Even on the left, the idea of a wealth-tax is controversial – not because leftists are sympathetic to billionaires, but because they are skeptical that a wealth tax can be carried out. It's a practical, not an ideological objection:

https://pileusmmt.libsyn.com/196-the-problem-with-wealth-taxes-with-steven-hail-part-1

After all, under capitalism, wealth always grows faster than the economy at large, meaning that over time, the rich will get steadily richer, and inequality will widen and widen:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

Ideally, we would counter the trend of wealth piling up into dynastic fortunes with continuous redistribution and predistribution: taxing capital gains at the same rate (or a higher rate) than income, so that income from labor isn't treated worse than income from ownership; steeply graded progressive taxes, with top rates in of 70-99%, high inheritance taxes, and so on. We had a system like that, from the end of WWII (when the rich were poorer than they'd been in centuries, with their influence in tatters) until the Reagan era (when the rich had rebuilt their fortunes and were able to seize the reins of power). In the 45 years since the rise of the new oligarchy, we've lived through accelerating wealth accumulation, and as the rich got richer, they used their wealth to dismantle any barrier to creating new aristocratic dynasties.

So here we are, trapped in the new oligarchy. It's too late to rely on income taxes, not if we're going to euthanize enough rentiers to free out politics from their toxic influence and save the human race any of several foreseeable mass-extinction events. Making the ultra-rich poor again is going to require new tactics.

In Canada, the 1% owns 29% of the country's wealth. The 87 richest families in Canada control as much wealth as the bottom 12 million Canadians combined. This is better than the US (where the 1% own 35% of the country), but not by much:

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Born%20to%20Win.pdf

Can we make a wealth tax work? Here's Hemingway's program for making it work in Canada:

Make it apply to all kinds of wealth equally. No carve-outs for real-estate, which makes it very easy to shift wealth among asset-classes to duck the tax;

Aim it at the super-rich alone. Avoid even the upper middle-class, who lack the liquid assets to pay the tax and could get wrecked if they have to liquidate their holdings at the same time as everyone else, which will depress asset prices;

Use third-party assessments of asset values. Don't take billionaires' word for how much their assets are worth! Canada's got an advantage here, thanks to the Canada Revenue Agency's requirement for financial institutions to report their account holders' income, including capital gains. Canada's also recently created "beneficial owner" registries that record the true owners of assets;

Use lifestyle audits: anyone caught engaging in tax-evasion will face severe penalties, as will the enablers at financial services firms that help them.

One frequent objection to high taxes is that it encourages capital flight – rich people hopping to another territory to avoid taxation. That's a reasonable fear, given how pants-wettingly terrified the rich are of paying tax. Hemingway points out that a wealth tax is different from an income tax – income taxes are levied on the outcome of productive activities, while wealth taxes target accumulated wealth. High income taxes can starve a country of the capital it needs for a productive economy, but that's not the case with wealth taxes.

Hemingway points to the OECD's Common Reporting Standard, through which more than 100 countries have agreed to share financial information, which will help Canada catch billionaires as they funnel their wealth offshore. Meanwhile, if the rich try to move with their money, we can hit them with an exit tax, like the 40% that Elizabeth Warren has proposed.

It's an article of faith that the rich will move offshore at the first hint of a wealth tax, but the research shows that rich people often have reasons to stay that trump their taxophobia. The economic effect of rich people Going Galt is pretty darned small:

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/centres/cage/publications/workingpapers/2022/taxation_and_migration_by_the_super_rich/

The modern prophet of oligarchy and its origins is the French economist Thomas Piketty. In a recent Le Monde column, Piketty examines the failure of a French wealth tax proposal that would have shaved a modest 2% off the fortunes of the 1,800 French people with more than €100 million:

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2025/06/17/the-senate-beside-the-story/

The proposal passed the National Assembly, only to die in the Senate, an institution with a long history of pro-oligarchic activism (the Senate killed every French income tax passed by the Assembly from 1896-1914). The Assembly's wealth tax addressed the problem of tax exiles, levying the wealth tax for 5 years after an oligarch relocated. For Piketty, this didn't go far enough: he wants a pro-rated tax based on the number of years an oligarch spent in France in their lifetime: if you were educated and cared for at French expense from birth and went on to become a billionaire, then a modest share of your wealth would forever be owed to the country that made it possible. Piketty says that a wealth tax could be paid in shares instead of cash, with the stock going into a trust for workers, who would get board seats as well.

He points out that decarbonization is going to require large sacrifices from all of us, but that these will be impossible to demand with a straight face so long as the super-rich are paying taxes that are trivial relative to their assets and income.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/21/billionaires-eh/#galen-weston-is-a-rat

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it pisses me off SO bad how transphobes have so effectively used sports to launder transphobia and misogyny to people. like does nobody remember like ~5-10 years ago when it was a MAJOR feminist talking point to argue for desegregating sports and going by skill level instead of gender separation??? and now, because so many cis people hate trans people so violently and think we should be excluded from all aspects of public life, you’ve got a whole bunch of women who call themselves feminists laundering misogynistic talking points about how “women are just inherently weaker and worse at athletics than men :(( it’s just biology and women are inherently inferior :(( this is definitely not misogyny that’s unsupported by science, women are just weaker and worse at things :((“ like girl open your ears and listen to what you’re saying!!

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DON’T LET THE MEDIA FLIP THE NARRATIVE‼️

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Because I love you❤️

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Aziraphale and Religion and his Bibles

It has come to my attention that some people call Aziraphale Christian and/or religious, and I have seen posts alluding to him collecting bibles out of some sort of ... piety.

Now, I get that not everyone read the book, so here are two of my favourite passages (emphasis mine):

Aziraphale collected books. If he were totally honest with himself he would have to have admitted that his bookshop was simply somewhere to store them. He was not unusual in this. In order to maintain his cover as a typical second-hand book seller, he used every means short of actual physical violence to prevent customers from making a purchase. Unpleasant damp smells, glowering looks, erratic opening hours - he was incredibly good at it. He had been collecting for a long time, and, like all collectors, he specialized. He had more than sixty books of predictions concerning developments in the last handful of centuries of the second millennium. He had a penchant for Wilde first editions. And he had a complete set of the Infamous Bibles, individually named from error's in typesetting. These Bibles included the Unrzghteous Bible, so called from a printer's error which caused it to proclaim, in I Corinthians, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?"; and the Wicked Bible, printed by Barker and Lucas in 1632, in which the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment:, making it "Thou shaft commit Adultery." There were the Discharge bible, the Treacle Bible, the Standing Fishes Bible, the Charing Cross Bible and the rest. Aziraphale had them all. Even the very rarest, a Bible published in 1651 by the London publishing firm of Bilton and Scaggs. It had been the first of their three great publishing disasters. The book was commonly known as the Buggre Alle This Bible.

This to me - sounds like Aziraphale collected these bibles because it was a funny and interesting and specialised thing to do.

Not because he thought it was some holy sort of book he had to guard.

"When the Rapture comes, brothers and sisters, all the True Believers will be swept up in the air-it don't mind what you're doin', you could be in the bath, you could be at work, you could be drivin' your car, or just sittin' at home readin' your Bible. Suddenly you'll be up there in the air, in perfect and incorruptible bodies. And you'll be up in the air, lookin' down at the world as the years of destruction arrive. Only the faithful will be saved, only those of you who have been born again will avoid the pain and the death and the horror and the burnin'. Then will come the great war between Heaven and Hell, and Heaven will destroy the forces of Hell, and God shall wipe away the tears of the sufferin', and there shall be no more death, or sorrow, or cryin', or pain, and he shall rayon in glory for ever and ever-" He stopped, suddenly. "Well, nice try," he said, in a completely different voice, "only it won't be like that at all. Not really. I mean, you're right about the fire and war, all that. But that Rapture stuff well, if you could see them all in Heaven-serried ranks of them as far as the mind can follow and beyond, league after league of us, flaming swords, all that, well, what I'm trying to say is who has time to go round picking people out and popping them up in the air to sneer at the people dying of radiation sickness on the parched and burning earth below them? If that's your idea of a morally acceptable time, I might add. And as for that stuff about Heaven inevitably winning . . . Well, to be honest, if it were that cut and dried, there wouldn't be a Celestial War in the first place, would there? It's propaganda. Pure and simple. We've got no more than a fifty percent chance of coming out on top. You might just as well send money to a Satanist hotline to cover your bets, although to be frank when the fire falls and the seas of blood rise you lot are all going to be civilian casualties either way. Between our war and your war, they're going to kill everyone and let God sort it out-right? Anyway, sorry to stand here wittering, I've just a quick question where am I?" Marvin O. Bagman was gradually going purple. "It's the devil! Lord protect me! The devil is speakin' through me!" he erupted, and interrupted himself, "Oh no, quite the opposite in fact. I'm an angel. Ah. This has to be America, doesn't it? So sorry, can't stay . . . " There was a pause. Marvin tried to open his mouth, but nothing happened. Whatever was in his head looked around. He looked at the studio crew, those who weren't phoning the police, or sobbing in corners. He looked at the grey-faced cameramen. "Gosh, " he said, "am I on television?"

Please note - Aziraphale is a bit of bastard. He's definitely not catholic or Christian or any kind of religious. He's an angel, and he's not an angel because of his piety or something. That's what he was made as. By GOD. This God made the Universe and told them all She has a plan for it, ineffable as it maybe be, they were told Earth was to be around for 6000 years. Give or take.

Aziraphale doesn't believe in God. He knows She exists. And clearly (as per above) he doesn't think the way Christianity understood things are exactly - correct.

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Happy Pride month!

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No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

✧Read Namesake✧ ✧Read Crow Time✧ ✧Store✧ ✧Patreon✧

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Crowley hasn’t spoken in twenty minutes. Aziraphale is very impressed with how intently he’s listening!

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ANHEDONIA REMEDIES!

GET YOUR ANHEDONIA REMEDIES HERE!

if you are lost in the rut, i am begging you to read this essay by Sasha Chapin suggesting what, essentially, my take, are potential jump-starts back into living life in real time. like actually experiencing experiences

do it now! don’t lose months, years, or decades! there is a life beyond doomscrolling, and it’s finite (sorry. sorry. i know okay)

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So there are several species of frogs that have evolved to be so small that their vestibular balance system doesn't work well and I'm sorry but it's the funniest thing to watch them try to jump.