Waiting in the long rental car line yesterday, I reached my breaking point. Since I had nothing else to do except stare at the back of the head of the person in front of me, I tweeted this:
Get to Work!
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Cancel Me
Having witnessed this jaw-dropping clip, I feel compelled to say the following:
My name is Timothy Knight. As you might guess from my surname, my ancestry is English. For all practical purposes, I have 100% British blood in my veins.
I am a white, cisgender, heteronormative male. I married a woman my own age, and I loved her from the moment I saw her when we were just kids. Now we have children of our own, who themselves are cisgender, heteronormative, and in all respects thriving and successful. I have never been separated or divorced, nor has any member of my entire extended family for as far back as records exist.
I eat meat of all kinds. I have a particular fondness for the visceral pleasure of eating pork ribs. I have three dogs, and I happily give them bones from the meat I’ve eaten for them to crunch. I also have chickens and eat their eggs daily, although I treat the chickens themselves very kindly.
I live in the suburbs in a large, expensive house. I am in the 1%, although I love working and will do so until I die. I was raised a Christian and went to a Jesuit institute of higher learning. I enjoy offensive humor, although my adoration of it is not based on its offensiveness. I do not hesitate to tell jokes that would be upsetting to some people. I have a wicked sense of humor, and I understand humor is anchored in pain.
And although my politics would be considered left wing compared to some others on my website (yes, I own my own business, which is one in a series I have through my life), my reaction to the entire “woke” movement consists mostly of my stomach doing somersaults. I find hearing about the sexual preferences, urges, and frustrations of others to be tedious, as it is none of my business or concern. I would also say incidentally that a sibling of mine is gay, and when she told this Louisiana-born cracker her truth when I was a little boy, I instantly understood and had zero negative reaction, because I know we are all God’s creatures, and love is always a good thing.
Having said all this, I think it’s time to cancel me. Surely no one should be less welcome in this world.
Every Ticket a Winner
Personally, I find listening to “Told Ya So” incredibly tedious and dull. I’m not trying to be that guy. Honest. Please take the following in the following spirit: well-drawn charts are incredible in honest, organic markets. That’s all I’m trying to prove. Not that I’m a great chartist. I’ll leave that judgment up to you.
Having given that preface, let’s begin. May it please the court……..
We begin with a well-received tweet I sent out on May 7th, prior to Elon’s famous SNL host gig. I wrote:
Liquid Assets
I’ve mentioned before my fondness for learning random new things. This has morphed from grabbing random volumes of the Encyclopedia when I was a kid to the modern-day equivalent, which is either looking at Quora or punching up topics on Wikipedia that crossed my mind.
I was flying over the Great Salt Lake a few days ago, and I decided to learn about it (my initial curiosity was regarding whether there was life in the lake or not, and there is, although mostly in the form of brine shrimp). One illustration was particularly striking to me: it showed how the present-day Salt Lake (which is huge) used to be just a small portion of a vastly larger body of water called Lake Bonneville. (You have probably heard of the fabled Bonneville salt flats where land-speed records are challenged).
Makeup and Cheeseburgers
As a kid, I would frequently grab a random volume of The World Book Encyclopedia and start reading random articles, just because I enjoyed the act of learning. Similarly, and more recently, the last thing I do every day is spend about thirty minutes reading articles from Quora. Sometimes they are scientific, and sometimes they are just silly. But I enjoy learning new things every day, regardless of topic.
In the “silly” category, there was an article talking about women’s makeup, and what an extraordinary difference there is between the un-made-up face and the professionally-done face. They offered some wedding day photos as evidence, and I must say, they are extraordinary:
