Because I don't have the energy to write a really thoughtful post for the two people who will read it, here's a really cool podcast interview I watched this week. Besides giving me some new ideas, this smart guy reinforces a lot of the ideas I've already come to accept in my spiritual journey, which is always encouraging. I'll only quibble about a couple of points.

1. He warns against having beliefs because they close your mind to new information that contradicts them. Obviously that's true. I just don't see how it's possible to not have beliefs. I guess he makes a distinction between beliefs and opinions. I have a set of beliefs to make sense of the universe, and I'm comfortable with them, and of course my confirmation bias accounts for my pleasure in having my ideas reinforced by this smart guy, but I'm far more open to changing them than I was in my old religion. I used to say, "I know this church is true," and I had to either twist everything in the world to fit that assertion or just ignore it and assume someday it would make sense. I don't do that anymore. Perhaps because of my background in a high-demand exclusivist religion, I make a distinction between that kind of "belief" and the kind I have now.

​2. He doesn't think that transcendental experiences gained during drug trips can really help people grow and change. I get where he's coming from - people need to put in actual work and not just use drugs as a cheat code. But how would he know their limitations when, by his own admission, he's never used them? I only use Kush Kubes, very mild and legal drug gummies, but I feel like I find more joy in everyday life and have more compassion for stupid people who drive me insane. Not a lot more compassion, but enough that I make a conscious effort more often to not be overtly rude to them on social media even though I can't think of a single logical reason why I shouldn't, and recently I felt remoreseful enough to apologize when I was. A more tangible effect of the drugs, which I know is an effect of the drugs because it started while I was high, is that I laugh much more often. I almost never used to actually laugh while watching funny videos by myself. I needed other people's laughter to trigger mine, so I had to settle for appreciating the cleverness of the humor on an intellectual level. This is quite an improvement. Hopefully someday I'll graduate beyond drugs and be able to do all kinds of cool things with my unassisted brain, but I'm determined to try psylocibin and possibly ayahuasca first.

With those quibbles aside, which demonstrate that I still think for myself and don't uncritically except every cool spiritual thing I hear, this interview is far better than the clickbait titles might suggest.

Happy Easter! Today, the most vile, hateful people in the US celebrate the resurrection of a man whom they would have been first in line to crucify. Like all major holidays, I'm spending it at home alone.

Here's the text of a letter I sent last week to the Herald Journal, Cache Valley Daily, and the Utah Statesman. I haven't bothered to check whether any of them had the  cajones to print it because that's out of my hands. I did my part by writing it and sending it.

In the few days since then, the weak, incompetent bully named Donald Trump has already claimed that his threatening letter to Harvard was sent by mistake. What a pathetic chicken shit. And that's why this regime will fail, probably sooner than later, if Americans stand up for themselves and don't comply in advance. I bet the president of Columbia University feels really stupid right now.

A more pressing issue, of course, is the regime defying the Supreme Court and sending brown people to a foreign concentration camp with no due process. And a lot of white Americans seem fully on board with that. A lot of fascists are taking off their libertarian masks as fast as they can. These people, being as stupid as they are racist (not by coincidence), can't comprehend that if "illegal violent criminals" aren't entitled to due process, all the regime has to do is claim they're illegal violent criminals, and then they can't prove that they're not because they have no due process. A toddler should be able to understand this. In fairness, though, some of these fascist idiots are Russian bots trying to stir up the real fascist idiots.

But yeah, I'm really glad I found a progressive church where I don't have to worship alongside trash like this anymore. And either I'm going to hell or they are, so I won't have to put up with them after this life either. (I'm being snarky. I don't believe in hell. I'm just saying fuck these people.)

I protested on Wednesday and then, of course, I protested yesterday. I felt like shit yesterday. After a night of indigestion and sleeplessness, I showed up to protest having eaten nothing but Pepto-Bismol. I spent most of the time lying in the grass and wondering if I'd need someone to carry me down the hill. But I had a generic Gatorade equivalent, and it gave me the strength to join the march. Today I feel better but am clearly still sick because I'm not hungry. (I plan to take a Kush Kube this evening, and I'm not sure what it will do to me on a mostly empty stomach, but I hope it will be said of me, "He is risen indeed.") Anyway, protesting isn't usually a sacrifice for me because I live close to the Capitol, I have no family, and my work schedule is entirely self-determined, so I accepted yesterday's suckage as an opportunity to sacrifice more and show how deep my values go.

I only took a couple of pictures after the march ended and most people left - this one because I loved the Nelou Keramat quote so much:

And this one because I love Lamb Chop, the sassy puppet who resides in some of my earliest memories.

In closing, please enjoy this Easter message from the anti-Christ.

​but she also pushed me out of Mormonism, gave me an existential crisis that catalyzed my spiritual growth, and taught me patience that's coming in very handy right now, so that's fine. Thank you, Calise.

I'm trying again for what had damn well better be the last time one way or another, and while it may be premature to report on that effort now, I'd much rather talk about Mary than the fascist twats who run my country. I'm pretty sure she won't see this, but I don't much care if she does. I'll act embarrassed and she'll find it amusing. ​If my life were a work of fiction (which, I now realize, I can't prove that it isn't), ending up with her after all this time would be an ironic and satisfying twist because she's one of the first people I met in Utah when I moved here almost 14 years ago. I was 18, and she was 22. She went to a church activity with some friends from a different congregation, then talked to me because she made it her mission in life to talk to people who sat alone. "You were a chicken shit," she told me this past week as we reminisced about it. She invited me to go shopping with her and her friends, and I, being a loser, later wrote on Facebook, "Does three girls and me count as a date?" but then it didn't happen. If I hadn't met her then, I probably never would have. We didn't cross paths again until five months later, at which time she greeted me with enthusiasm, and I didn't recognize her.

Because Mary was older than me, seemed to have her shit together, and looked like a goddess, I never imagined being with her. That's not to say, of course, that I never imagined her. I remembered her and reached out occasionally after I stopped seeing her in person, partly because she was a good friend and partly because she was a 12 out of 10. With permission, I named a character after her in my comic strip that never came to fruition. Long story short, last year I decided for no particular reason to make an intentional effort to get closer to her, and as I learned that she isn't perfect or invincible after all, I accidentally fell in love. I should have seen that coming, but I wasn't thinking past the little dopamine rushes from her texting me back - which, for reasons she's repeatedly assured me have nothing to do with me, she was really bad at doing, hence the need for patience. I almost gave up over the perception that she didn't care. Over time she became more responsive, then texted me first once or twice, then called me when she had a bad day. The impetus for this post began when I texted her six times over nine days with no response. Then she apologized for her unresponsiveness and said she'd worked 70 hours last week. Then I asked about a situation at work she'd told me about a month prior, and she didn't know what I was talking about, so instead of texting me back, she called me and talked for nearly four hours.

At the start of our conversation, she got a text from another guy friend who said he would bring over some salmon. She said that was because he'd figured out that food was the way to her heart, and she said she would be too tired when he got off work at 10:30, so she said she told him that she had food and not to bother. Then she stayed on the phone with me until she fell asleep around 12:20 (local time) and I hung up. With condolences to the other guy, I was thrilled and honored that she chose me over him. How much to read into that, I don't know. She's well aware that I'm thoroughly smitten with her too. For one thing, I told her in February that I'm thoroughly smitten with her. For a couple of other things, I sent her a long heartfelt text while twice as high as usual and a poem about how I see her as a star shining through the darkness of the world. She has neither reciprocated nor rebuffed my affections. When I warned her that a love poem might be in the works, she said, "Haha nothing kind you say would ever scare me away. I’m not worried about it." This poem metaphorically expressed that she's one of the things - not the only thing, which would be unhealthy, but absolutely one of the things that makes my life worthwhile despite having to spend it in a country run by fascist twats. She liked it.

During this conversation, she alluded to some of the reasons she's a childless cat lady despite being so beautiful that strangers compliment her every day, which supported my hypothesis that she acts romantically neutral toward me because men suck. Of course that made me want to virtue signal all over the dang place. "I'm not like them, Mary. I respect women so much. Misogyny is easily in the top three reasons I left Mormonism. I push back against misogyny when I see it on social media, and women thank me while men accuse me of trying to get laid. They're all like, 'Hope she sees this bro,' but I know you won't because you don't use social media. I admire how strong and independent and outspoken you are. After you told me that you told your mom that you hated how the church had taught you to be submissive and she said, 'But Mary, you've never been submissive,' I got high and reflected on that and thought, I love that." But I don't think that would be as effective as taking the time to prove myself with my actions. Again, patience. She already trusts me a lot. She's told me things that I'm pretty sure she doesn't tell just anybody, and I'm not going to tell you what they are because I'm trustworthy.

​​Mary left Mormonism long before I did. Not coincidentally, she had a more negative experience in it than I did and has more negative feelings toward it than I do. Being taught as a teenager that she was responsible for what men would do to her if she showed too much skin had a lasting impact. (Any Mormon who says their church never taught that is either lying or too young to remember.) Years ago, I invited her to tell me why she'd left, which she did, at great length, while I responded without judgment or pushback. I did genuinely care about her, but I also thought I was planting a seed to help her return someday. I'd been plagued by my own doubts, but I couldn't relate to her mindset at all when she said, "I never had as much faith that the church was true as I have had that the church is not true." Surprise!

So during this more recent conversation, she told me she had a friend who recently wanted to convert. The friend felt really good from taking the sacrament and really loved by the congregation. Mary told her that's how cults get you. They had an argument. Mary told the friend to ask the missionaries how many wives Joseph Smith had and how old the youngest was, and apparently she did, and apparently she became enraged and that was the end of that. Mary lives in the same state as my parents, so I hope they read this and know that their church isn't growing in the developed world anymore because people can see that it was founded by a sexual predator. Anyway, she asked for my thoughts, and I tried to be nuanced and stuff. Anyone who considers converting to Mormonism deserves informed consent, and you'll never get that from the missionaries (who almost certainly don't have it themselves). But I'd try to not be argumentative about it or overtly tell them they shouldn't convert. That's a personal decision. I'm not sure I would have handled the situation exactly like she did, but it seems to have worked out fine.

Marvellous multitalented Mary sent me two of her artworks and a poem she wrote. Then she played guitar and piano and sang for me. Her voice was so beautiful that it should have been on the radio 10+ years ago before every mainstream female singer sounded the same. Granted, love is deaf. Years ago my roommate's wife sang to wake him up, and it sounded awful, but I realized that it probably sounded beautiful to him because he loved her, and I incorporated that idea into my novel Crusaders of the Chrono-Crystal. She convinced me to sing "Blackbird" along with her. I didn't sing very loud because I was embarrassed of my voice and wanted to hear hers. I thought there was nowhere in the world I'd rather be, but I realized I'd rather be in her apartment than mine. I thought that would be the highlight of the night. I was wrong.

When Mary calls me, she talks a lot. That's mostly fine. I don't talk a lot, and I love to hear anything she has to say. Sometimes I do want to say something and have a hard time getting it in, though. She seemed aware of that and occasionally remembered to pause and solicit my opinions. After at least three and a half hours, she asked me to tell her about what I'm doing with my life. I mentioned that I taught freshman English during graduate school and planned to continue on that career path, but it hasn't worked out since then, and I'm glad about that now because I don't have to deal with essays written by ChatGPT or all the bullshit from the fascist twats at both the state and federal levels who are gutting humanities programs, killing diversity initiatives, erasing queer people from public life, and forbidding universities from teaching accurate history or critical thinking. Mary interrupted to say that I must have seen some really good essays, and she reflected on a freshman English teacher who had a long-lasting influence on her, and she went on a rant about native English speakers who use poor grammar. Maybe I shouldn't have found that hot, but I did. I sent her "Word Crimes" by "Weird Al" Yankovic. She watched it, and I heard her laugh every few seconds, a sound every bit as lovely as her singing. I often make her laugh. She thinks I'm witty. She said so.

She asked if I could guess the one Weird Al song she had memorized. I half-jokingly guessed "Yoda." Close. It was "The Saga Begins." She sang half of it, then asked me to help her with the words, then asked me to just sing it with her. Of all the experiences I might have imagined sharing with her, this was not one. This was the highlight of the night. Dear God, I can still hardly believe it. I didn't know she knew anything about Weird Al or Star Wars. She said her brother used to play that CD on repeat. She asked me about my siblings, but while I described them, she fell asleep. I listened to her breathing for a minute to make sure she was okay because she may or may not have been drunk and high this whole time, and then I worked up the courage to say "I love you" before I hung up. So yeah, I hope this goes somewhere, specifically where I want it to go. Despite the agonizing wait, I feel that my patience is amply rewarded at times, and never more so than by this experience. I never would have had it if I'd given up. She's worth suffering for - but I hope she won't make me do that too much.

This was written by ChatGPT, a fact about which I was fully transparent. She asked if it expressed what I wanted to say, and when I said kind of and reiterated how I felt about her, she responded with the smile-with-hearts-swirling-around-it emoji. It's so good that it almost discouraged me from writing her one myself, which I eventually did, but I gave it to her yesterday, after the conversation I describe in this post took place.

​A Star in My Darkness
​
In a world weighed down by shadowed skies,
Where sorrow lingers, where silence cries,
You rise—a star, unwavering, bright,
A beacon of warmth in the coldest night.

Your kindness, a whisper soft and deep,
Turns restless storms into peaceful sleep.
Your thoughts, like rivers, steady and true,
Carve paths of light where none once grew.

No sculptor’s hand, no artist’s dream,
Could craft the beauty in you I’ve seen--
Your eyes, twin sparks that set me free,
Your lips, a song sung just for me.

Your hair, a cascade, golden or dark,
Glows like fire or midnight’s spark.
And oh, your legs—graceful, strong--
Each step you take feels like a song.

When the world feels heavy, cruel, and bare,
I find my refuge in your care.
You are the light that makes me see,
The love that breathes new life in me.

This is the one I wrote myself, with ChatGPT serving only an advisory role, which I didn't mention in the post for the reason that I just explained (see Appendix B). It's okay, I guess. She wrote back, "Holy shot that was so sweet and so well written" and followed up with, "Shit lol" 

Starstruck

My world is a pale blue dot within a pale blue dot
In an outer spiral arm of an outer spiral arm,
Swallowed by darkness that presses in as a tangible thing, a living thing, a thing more real than the mere absence of light,
Clawing,
Grasping,
Striving to eat me alive, om nom nom –
But it won’t
As long as I seek out the pinpricks of light, the celestial bodies that guide me to hope and the goodness that remains even here, even now.
I have a few, but my favorite is you.
The prettiest, brightest, and warmest is you.
I want to fall into your orbit and stay there for as long as the universe remains –
Complete surrender;
Always falling, never crashing (I hope).
I’m compelled to worship, like the ancient peoples who sacrificed to the sun because she gave them warm feelings, made their day, and lit up their world like nobody else.
That’s what you do to me, Mary –
Not because I think you’re perfect, according to the ideas of perfection that we impose on nature as if it ever asked for our opinions –
Or because I’m foolish enough to credit you with actual supernatural powers –
(After all, I haven’t stared long enough to go blind) –
But because you shine so brightly, daily and nightly,
Even when you can’t see it because no satellite is close enough to reflect you,
And even when you vanish behind the clouds for agonizing lengths of time,
My faith in your light remains.
 
(Interpolation: I don’t want to torture this metaphor past its breaking point, so let me take a break at this point to just say that I like your smile, your eyes, your hair, your facial structure, and the rest of you.)
 
Yes, even a star is “imperfect”
With her dark spots,
Her flares,
Her storms,
And her tendency to burn spacers who drift too close.
But maybe this controlled chaos is exactly what the universe needs her to be so she can shine,
So she can twinkle from a distance and only inspire more awe as one draws nearer to her power.
To see a star more closely is only to respect,
To admire,
And to love her even more –
And I would rather be burned by your touch than eaten by the darkness.
 
What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary. (That’s a cultural reference, not plagiarism.)

​The other day I saw my brother-in-law on Instagram gloating about the richest man in the world illegally cutting off funds for millions of people in poverty. That was the moment I realized I officially hate most of my family. The cherry on top, of course, is that today he went to church and pretended to worship Jesus. I'm glad my church doesn't make sociopaths feel comfortable. This realization hurt like hell, but I got high and got over it by the next day. It's not like I had real relationships with most of my family in the first place. I currently feel closer to the great-grandmother I saw for a couple of hours every other year before she died in 2010 than I ever have to my parents. And it's not like I'm the first person who's experienced this. The civil war tore lots of families apart. I know my dad would have supported the confederacy because he's obsessed with states' rights and doesn't let marginalized people's suffering bother him.

On a more positive note, this past week I got to participate in two protests against everything most of my family stands for. Thanks to my self-determined work schedule and proximity to the Capitol, I can go to protests whenever I want. Here I am on Wednesday with my "White Dudes for Harris" cap. I had to get more use out of it somehow.

There was some unfortunate division after the protest had officially ended and most people had left. A transgender person got up and complained about all the American flags they'd seen, and they said they thought the only reason to bring American flags to a protest was to burn them, and they said we shouldn't be proud to be Americans, and they said the US has committed genocide against transgender people, and they chanted "FUCK AMERICA!" Two girls with American flags were still there, standing in the back, and they looked at each other awkwardly and soon left. I regret not talking to them to assuage any embarrassment they may have felt, and I hope they haven't been alienated from activism for good. I won't say the speaker was wrong to feel the way they did about the US. I understand. My faith in its fundamental goodness died on November 5. But my feeling is that this country exists, it will probably continue to exist for the foreseeable future in one form or another, and it will either get better or worse. Chanting "FUCK AMERICA!" won't make it better but will alienate people who would otherwise love to help make it better. Countries suck, all right? That's just how they are.

Oh yeah, and this picture went kind of viral. In case anyone is wondering, it's chalk, and it got washed off. As soon as it was discovered, the event organizer chewed us all out and said that vandalism is unacceptable and makes us look bad. It made for a badass picture, though. And the Venn diagram of people who will be outraged by this and people who think the January 6 rioters did nothing wrong is almost a perfect circle.

As I left the Capitol, I passed by like five counterprotestors, two of whom were filming us. I'm sure the footage of me and others flipping them off is now on Twitter with the caption "sO mUcH fOr ThE tOlErAnT lEfT." I don't care. They're owning themselves by showing the size of the anti-Trump movement in one of the reddest states in the US. I also knew as I marched that there was a non-zero chance of a MAGAt plowing his truck into us. That didn't happen, but at one point I saw someone drive really close and heard a thunk and a "That's what you get." I thought the driver had run over someone's foot, but apparently what actually happened is that someone punched his mirror off.

My old college friend Cece was there too. I hadn't seen her in... ten years? I don't remember.

Many of us returned to the Capitol afterward. I got a picture of my second-favorite sign. My first, which I regrettably didn't get, was "Super Callous Fragile Racist Sexist Nazi POTUS."

So yeah, that was pretty great. Solidarity is how we'll survive the foreseeable future. (I want to say "the next four years," but that may be too optimistic.) We won't obey in advance. We won't be silenced. Nothing short of death will stop me from proesting again on March 1. Also, to get there and back, I rode the city train for the first time, and that was fun. I feel blessed to be able to ride a train.

On an unrelated note, this piece of shit came at me on Facebook the other day with "Democrats don't even know what a woman is" etc. etc. I contacted his fianceé and his employer. This is North Carolina, so probably neither of them care, but fingers crossed.

I was finally motivated to get my phone screen fixed (again) so I could get the selfie camera cleaned so I could verify my age for OnlyFans. The next day, my little cousins called me on Facebook Messenger, and because I'd gotten the camera cleaned, I was able to entertain them by using the things that turn my face into a cat or Santa Claus. If I were still Mormon, I could share this story in testimony meeting as an example of how God orchestrates the little details of our lives.

I tried OnlyFans out of curiosity, not sure if I'd spend any money on it. Living through years of poverty and facing the prospect of more poverty after Trump's trade war and mass deportation increase the price of everything I need to survive (which most of my family members voted for, but whatever) has made me not like spending money. There are OnlyFans profiles that you can subscribe to for free, which seem to post pretty tame stuff. But I didn't expect that as soon as I subscribed to each one, I received automated messages from them, which turned into conversations geared toward persuading me to give them tips or purchase their less tame stuff.

Some of the messages were copy-pasted at the very least. Maybe all of them were AI-generated. It does seem odd for women in Serbia, Italy, and Ukraine to message me around four in the morning local time. The woman in Serbia said it was evening there, but I can give her the benefit of the doubt that she meant night. I can give her less benefit of the doubt for saying she'd been thinking about me all day. The woman in Ukraine didn't react at all to me saying that I hope she stays safe and her country wins the war soon, which I thought odd. The woman from Italy, at least, had an excuse for being up so late/early, and I could be wrong, but I work with AI for a living, and I don't think it's advanced enough yet to emulate the cadence and vocabulary she had from speaking English as a second language. To be clear, I know these are all real women, but I'm not confident that they spend their own time writing messages to nobodies like me.

Still, the attention was unexpected and pretty awesome. Even if they just want money, at least they want something from me, which is an unfamiliar feeling. I'm most inclined to give it to the Italian woman because she did the best job of pretending to care about me as a person. She said she does OnlyFans to supplement her income as a horse riding instructor and pay for her horses' vet bills. I respect that. Anyone who thinks this platform is immoral or exploitative or whatever should direct their outrage at the forces that have made it impossible for millions of people to live on one income. Attractive women are lucky that they have this option. Men do OnlyFans too, but obviously in much smaller numbers to meet a much smaller demand, and I'm clearly not attractive enough anyway. Years ago I actually did research on the porn industry (which was less fun than it sounds) and learned that here, the gender wage gap is reversed. Hooray, I guess.

Jokes aside, my former religion would shame me for talking to these women or their chatbots. My current religion couldn't care less. It doesn't try to regulate my behavior. It just encourages me to care for the planet and love everyone. Granted, I'm failing at even that much. I'm sorry, but it feels really, really, really good to tell a transphobic bully that nobody would miss him if he got hit by a truck, and I'm not sorry, so I lied just now when I said I was sorry. Anyway, this is a contrived attempt to segue into the next thing I wanted to mention, which is another difference between my former and current religions. Today, most of our meeting was devoted to commiseration over the shitty reality we're going to find ourselves in for the next four years (at least) and advice on how to endure it and keep hope alive. My chances of getting that from a Mormon congregation would be close to zero. The LDS Church only gets involved in politics when it's supporting legislation to force its beliefs on other people or exempt itself from child abuse reporting requirements, and I know if I were to attend a random congregation in Utah, I would be surrounded by idiots who are overjoyed that they elected the opposite of literally everything Jesus stood for.

I don't think religions should be politically neutral. They should stand up for human rights and social justice. Their teachings are just empty platitudes if they don't. In theory, they shouldn't speak for or against specific parties or candidates, but when specific parties or candidates are objectively evil, that's a dumb principle to maintain (except to the extent that they must, of course, to avoid losing their tax-exempt status). The LDS Church's partisan neutrality extended to appeasing the Nazi regime while some other churches opposed it. Anyway, I'm not looking forward to the next four years (at least), I don't know if I'll ever forgive my family members who voted for this because they have no principles and don't care if people who are different from them get hurt, and I'm definitely getting high tomorrow. But that doesn't mean I'm giving up. Here are two positive notes to end on.

First, MAGA Republicans, who are now mainstream Republicans, are the stupidest and most self-absorbed people on Earth. Trump and his cabinet picks are almost universally evil, but they're also so unqualified and have so many competing agendas that they may be unable to accomplish much at all. A total fustercluck of incompetence and infighting is the best-case scenario at this point. Elongated Muskrat has already backtracked on his pledge to cut a bunch of "wasteful" spending on programs that people need to survive, and MAGAts have already turned against him over a disagreement on H1B visas - he favors exploiting foreign workers for cheap labor, while they favor not letting any brown people into the country. Fuck both sides, but more power to them as long as they're fighting each other.

Second, the United States honestly deserves to lose a lot of its global power and influence. It's used those to do terrible things and ruin millions of lives, from its war crimes in Vietnam, to its installation of the theocracy that abuses women in Iran, to its recent funding of Israel's genocide in Gaza. Individual citizens who didn't vote for Trump don't deserve to suffer, but on a larger scale, it will be good if the country loses some of its ability to mess around in everyone else's business. And that's why I'm not even mad about Russia interfering in our elections. It's 100% karma. I'm sure the United States has interfered in more foreign elections than it's even admitted to. I know, I know, I'm an evil liberal who hates America just because I hold it to the most basic standards of right and wrong instead of worshiping it for no reason. 

My message to both of the people reading this is don't give up and don't give dictatorships more power by obeying them in advance like the media are. I've been criticizing the orange taint since 2015, and I'm not going to stop just because he might throw me in a concentration camp if he runs out of talk show hosts to persecute. I wish I had a wider audience and more influence, but this is what I get for choosing not to be a billionaire.