Stumbling Mostly Upwards

"The hat is customizable," he said, struggling with the velcro patch on the front. "If I need it, I have an ICE one too. I pick based off the business i walk into."

"Customizable is an important hat descriptor," I said. "what can I get you?"

"You wouldn't believe how offended people get these days," he said. "And I'm supposed to do something about it if you're offended? You chose to be offended!"

"We all have hundreds of thousands of decisions everyday," I said. I thickened my accent. "That's what my stepdad always said. But I can make one easier - we have a delicious Ethiopian roast available."

"Like if I told you you have a bull ring," he said, "because bulls have rings in their noses. Is that offensive?"

I laughed. "I've heard that before."

"It's a joke, but people get offended. Maybe you're offended."

I looked at him. I smiled. "You aren't trying to offend me though, right?"

Of course he was. I was being friendly and the friendlier I was, the faster he switched topics. He was saying anything inflammatory he could think of to see if I'd take the bait. After about 20 minutes of my redirecting and deescalating, he settled into a more normal interaction. He took up too much of my time showing me a product I'd feigned mild interest in to get him to stop talking about getting accused of inappropriate behavior at work. When we finally disengaged, he spent 10 minutes trying to catch my eye again. When he failed, he left.

There's this new breed of customer who insists on trying to incite political conversation through their clothing and, when that doesnt work, their snide little comments. If I owned my own business, maybe I would have given the guy the fight he wanted. But I work for a corporation and I love paying my bills so I deescalated.

Next slide. “Brandon Sanderson is a member of the LDS”. The muttering has changed tone

“It’s not a very big amount of money though.” Someone in the audience pipes up. “His cut is only a small fraction of the cost of the book, and then-“ my next slide shows an income breakdown, it is titled ‘a small fraction of $10,000,000 is still a big number’

The argument I suspect OP was trying to make is, "this author does bad things with his money so don't consume his books." And, y'know, I can see that going either way, I do think it's a minor enough amount of money that it doesn't bother me, but whatever, you do you, and who knows maybe Sanderson actually does make $10million with his books.*

*I will not believe this without substantial sourcing, that would be highly unusual for any author, and Sanderson himself suggests otherwise.

But regardless of what OP intended, the actual result of this argument if adopted would be a dramatic increase in piracy, as people consume but don't pay for his books.

This one falls under the "people should just" heading: if your plan is that "people should just do x," it's a bad plan, because they won't just do x. And I really don't love arguments that promote book piracy, no matter how well-intentioned.

Also, LDS as a religion has what might politely be referred to as Major Fucking Flaws, yes. Agreed! But there are several other equally-shitty religions out there and you can't avoid paying all the people who engage in them. And I do mean can't; there's just straight up too many. Especially if you count Catholicism.

Like, I get it! This seems very similar to other boycott situations, such as Hobby Lobby or the Evil Chicken! But there's a fundamental scale difference between consuming the work a single author, even a successful one, who uses some of his proceeds to tithe versus the owners of Chick-fil-a, who dedicated a significant amount of money toward state-level activism.

But as a fan of hockey from 1994 to 2018ish, a LOT of hockey players have that flat unemotional look.

This is one of the most emotionally conservative sport off the ice. Even on the ice, the players are very aware of the thousands of eyes on them.

Hockey is also a world where you're rewarded for being humble and bland, from a VERY early age. Players with huge egos are often punished for just being themselves. See: PK Subban. I'm still salty over what the Habs did to him. Compared to the acceptable ego of Patrick Roy, I could punch someone.

I'm gonna pick on Eric Lindros here. This was between his rookie and sophomore year. Compare this to how Shane is:

This was AFTER he already caused a major scandal by refusing to report to the team who drafted him, the Quebec Nordiques. It caused a major trade and may have been part of why the Nordiques folded and moved to Denver to become the Colorado Avalanche.

Eric is a good one to research for your Shane fics. We're lucky he's still alive. He's lucky he remembers his own name. He's one of the reasons I hate the NHL commissioner with a passion about CTE and how players are treated. How the entire league and hockey fans treated him. I made Lindros jokes too. I gotta live with that.

Coming back, I can see how people can see Shane as autistic. As Chibi said to me, the circle between hockey players and autism is probably a large venn diagram.

But Shane also just reads as career hockey player to me. Another reference, even closer to Shane. Paul Kariya:

Eliot: “Yeah? Well, Drake’s equation shows that orbiting around the hundred billion stars in our galaxy there’s up to ten thousand planets with technological civilization. [smiles at Hardison who gives him a surprised look] You never know when you might have to fight an alien.”

–John Rogers to Dean Devlin, DVD commentary for “The Last Dam Job” 

The cover story for the Stargate Program was that it was doing deep space telemetry for NORAD. Please imagine Hardison trying to wrap his brain around Eliot spending what, four years?, doing deep space telemetry. And Eliot just shrugs because

“I can’t have a hobby, Hardison, is that what your saying? That’s just stereotyping, man, that’s wrong.” He keeps it up until they’re actually in the gate room and then he slaps Hardison on the back and grins.

During the stop, Lorenzo had 3 coworkers with him in his truck who have all been taken into ICE custody.

His family described Lorenzo as a hardworking family man who didn’t deserve to be killed. All he wanted was to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people. His eldest son recognized his father by his cries and pleas when trying to identify who the victim was.

The Salgado Araujo family has set up a gofundme to help with funeral and legal costs, and to help keep their family supported since Lorenzo was the sole provider.

“people are allowed to dislike things”