Good to see you again on this brief hiatus from my eternal hiatus. I am pleased that our windows of presence here have collided again.

Unfortunately I see that division being part of the mission here and have my doubts finding solutions and settling differences has ever been the goal.

I'm not sure if it's intentional or simply coincidental, but a few years ago, a "conspiracy theorist" was that funny eccentric uncle you loved to bits. You built a potato gun together one summer. You remember how his basement was stocked to the ceiling with ammo boxes, glass jars containing badly home-canned goods in various states of decomposition, and boxes of MREs from the military surplus store.

Now, Uncle Larry's a god-damned terrorist who you deleted on Facebook and your sides of the family aren't talking to each other. What happened? I'm not sure exactly, but I know there's a lot of powerful people who are ostensibly extremely happy that simply questioning the officially-sanctioned Truth^TM is becoming a socially excommunicable offence. Does their dirty work for them, doesn't it?

Hey! If the powers that be were doing this on purpose to create immunity from dissent, that would be a conspiracy, right? Even entertaining the idea would make me a—shit.

Truth be told, conspiracy theorists have always been some of my favourite people to talk to. I like the way their minds work. I've always said that "the world is more interesting with magic in it." Sometimes I lose energy to believe in magic or to grant it an audience. Don't we all sometimes lose the energy to be the best versions of ourselves? But deep in my heart, I admire the spark of curiosity and imagination that drives people to question society's known knowns and build these fantasies. I love it. It makes people interesting. It makes life interesting.

It's just too bad that sometimes it all goes wrong and a bunch of people die hooked up to ventilators, wishing they hadn't literally memed themselves to death.