Tag Archives: FBS

January 5, 2021

What About 2021?

It’s a New Year, so it’s time for that Janus backward and forward State of the Blog Post. (I did plenty looking back in the previous post, so today I’m looking mostly in the other direction.)

As I’ve mentioned, I framed 2020 as a year for changes. Many of them got sidelined (or outright derailed) but the year did result in some decisions that matter here. I find I’ve gone beyond my rope when it comes to what I’m going to begin always referring to as “fantasy bullshit” (FBS).

That’s not to say fantasy bullshit is all bad (some is fun; some might even be necessary), but I am going to start calling it what it is.

19 Comments | tags: 2021, blog, blogger, blogging, fantasy BS, FBS, Happy New Year, Janus, realism | posted in Life, Opinion, Rant

December 20, 2020

Our BS Culture

By Wyrd Smythe

I’ve known about Aldus Huxley’s soma as long as I’ve been a serious reader of science fiction, but it wasn’t until I finally read his 1932 novel, Brave New World, that I had a full picture of it. There is a direct avatar in the modern drug Xanax (and perhaps more so in marijuana), but it’s the metaphorical versions of soma that caught my eye these past decades.

The point of soma is that it is an external coping mechanism — a tool for promoting one’s own happiness with and in life. It can be the sledgehammer of a drug (or the gunshot of a lobotomy, to be extreme), but I see many metaphorical versions of it in our culture now.

When I look around, I see a seriously soma-soaked society.

17 Comments | tags: Brave New World, fantasy BS, FBS, Planet X, Psi Phi, reality, soma | posted in Rant, Society

December 19, 2020

Our Own Words

By Wyrd Smythe

In Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty famously declares that words mean what he wants them to mean. I’ve known people to declare the same thing — that, for whatever reason, they can use their own meanings for words. (To be clear, Lewis Carroll was mocking the idea.)

While ideas matter more than the words used to express them, it’s a lot more challenging to communicate and discuss those ideas without a shared vocabulary. A common language that is rich and detailed makes the expression of ideas all the more precise and accurate.

This is why con artists prefer convoluted language: it’s a mask.

49 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, facts, fantasy BS, FBS, Humpty Dumpty, language, Lewis Carroll, post-reality, reality, word play, words | posted in Rant, Society