Doer of dumb sh*t

There is something to be said for people who learn from their mistakes.

Better yet, people who are able to proactively stop themselves from making them in the first place.

I am not one of those people.

My life has been a serious of disastrous stints, all of which began rather promisingly and with the best intentions. Somewhere along the way — usually almost immediately, but when it was already too late to turn back — I realized I had a made a terrible, terrible error.

Fortunately, it all makes for good stories, especially if you…

Picture this — you’re crossing the street when suddenly a Mack truck starts barreling towards you at full speed, dangerously close to hitting you and several other pedestrians. What do you do?

Most likely, you’ll either save yourself or — if you’re slightly more altruistic — everyone else in the process. Whatever your choice, one thing is certain: you’re not going to just let the truck hit you. You’re going to take decisive action in order to survive.

Climate change is the equivalent of 10,000 Mack trucks coming for all of us. …

For many people, one of the biggest hurdles to becoming a vegan is, well…other vegans.

The truth is, despite how well-meaning, passionate and excited many of us are about it, we sometimes end up doing more harm than good. While our hearts are in the right place, our messaging and methods can be a a bit…EXTRA.

We came very close to losing Spiderman.

Several years ago, Stan Lee had an idea for a new kind of superhero.

Instead of a full-grown man like every other character, he made him a teenager.

Instead of being rich, handsome and perfect, he was awkward and broke.

To top it off, he was named after something many people hated — spiders.

With great enthusiasm he pitched the idea to his publisher, who told him:

Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard.

That should have been the end of it. But just to get it out of his system, he wrote a story about the…

You remember the whole “But her emails” Hillary Clinton scandal? Of course you do. It was everywhere for most of 2016, and even before. But do you know where the story originated?

If you guessed Fox News, The New York Post or another Rupert Murdoch-owned rag you’d be wrong. It came from The New York Times. One study found that over a six-day period, they ran as many cover stories about Hillary Clinton’s emails as they did about all the policy issues combined in the days leading up to the election:

Meditation, mindfulness, and other once ‘woo-woo’ practices have long left the fringes and are now firmly ensconced in the mainstream. In fact, it’s hard to ignore them even if you wanted to. From apps like Calm to a cottage industry of coaches and gurus, your path to peace, relaxation, and enlightenment has never been easier.

All you have to do is find somewhere to sit peacefully, close your eyes, and turn off your thoughts.

Easy-peasy, right?

Not quite.

If you’re someone who has trouble sitting still or focusing for extended periods of time, either because of a short attention span…

In 2016, after Trump’s shocking and surprising victory, everyone in the media decided to lay the blame on the polls.

Four years later, when the same thing happened, they made the same argument — all the polls were wrong. Again.

In truth, the only discrepancy between the polls and how people actually voted occurred with in-person voting. If you compare them to mail-in ballots they match up perfectly.

Why? What’s the difference between a mail-in ballot and voting in person?

Mail-in ballots can’t be hacked.

The fact of the matter is that Republicans don’t play fair. They do this both overtly (gerrymandering, limiting ballot drop-offs, kneecapping the USPS, misleading robocalls) and covertly (unsecured voting machines with no paper trail). …

Do you remember what it’s like to eat out at restaurants? To hang out at bars and clubs? To work in an office? To send your kids to school? To go to concerts, sporting events, birthday parties and weddings? In short, to live your life without having to worry about a deadly disease?

For people in Taiwan, it’s not anything they need to remember; it’s always been this way. They recently celebrated 200 days without a local transmitted case of Covid-19. And even before that milestone, life never really changed all that much. …