Viral Articles and Podcasts

Plus, some enticing comments about ice dams and the heat capacity of water!

Hello everyone,

We had a cold weekend here in the great Northwoods and everybody is sick. My wife is sick because of a cold, and I’m sick because I ate two handfuls of Keto gummy bears.

I won’t provide any more details but anyone who has ever tried to eat healthy probably knows what I’m talking about…

March is a fun month. One day it can be 45 degrees, and the next it might be -10. What this means is that the snow melts, then refreezes. This is the time of year when your foundation develops cracks.

Incidentally, have you ever tried to remove an ice dam from your roof with a torch? It’s actually kind of an amazing demonstration of well... organic chemistry I guess. You might have heard terms like “heat capacity” and thought... “I don’t want to hear any more about that.”

The thing about water is that it has a high heat capacity. That means it can store a lot of heat. Good thing for us too, because that’s basically what makes the Earth inhabitable.

It also means that it takes a LOT of heat to melt ice. A statement like that is still too abstract to be of any use. Case in point, the fact that I thought I could climb onto my roof and use a propane torch to melt the ice.

Imagine my surprise when I put the flame up against the ice and it did NOTHING! Okay, okay, there are a lot of variables here... there are a lot of different torches, and consider the air temperature... so, yes, you could probably find some sort of torch that will attack ice. However, I think you’d be reluctant to use such a torch on your roof.

There’s also a reason why people who remove ice dams professionally use hot water instead of fire. Hot water has a lot more heat in it than fire.

So, in the battle of fire and ice, ice wins and it’s not even close.

This is what an education does for you. After you make a colossally stupid mistake, you’re able to reflect and recognize that you should have known better.

Anyway...

Viral articles

It’s always a surprise to me which of my articles generate attention. Last week, I wrote this one and it’s been steadily getting around 1,000 views a day. Okay, maybe that’s not “viral,” but it’s making me a lot of money so that’s close enough for me.

I’ve had articles that were shared hundreds of thousands of times (and viewed millions of times), that went on to make me NOTHING, so it’s nice to check stats on an article where every read represents a penny or two.

This is why I keep telling y’all to sign up for Medium with my referral link (that’s a great way to support me at a minimal cost to you... plus you get something for it).

Anyway, the article that’s getting all the attention is this one:

My Daughter Played Basketball Against a Transgender Girl and This Is What Happened

Personally, I think we’d all benefit if we placed a greater focus on tolerance.

Podcast

For a couple weeks, I’ve thought it would be fun to record myself reading the nasty comments I get on some of my articles. I did the first one two weeks ago, but the sound quality was terrible so I deleted it.

That might have been the end, but I tried again last week.

I’ve been learning a lot about what Americans truly believe by skimming over the responses to my articles. There are a lot of things in the United States that you are not “allowed” to say. By that I mean you can say them, but the general public has been conditioned to respond like a school, shiver, frenzy or herd of sharks (I had to look up what a group of sharks is called—in the future I’ll choose “shiver”).

One of the things that gets Americans to flip out is when you discuss the historical fact that the Civil War was about slavery. The scary thing is, a propaganda narrative called “The Lost Cause” has been taught as truth in US classrooms for decades, so it’s hard to get Americans to recognize the reality of their own history.

When you tell them, they get really mad about it.

The result is this podcast in which I read nasty comments from people who don’t want to admit that slavery had anything to do with the Civil War.

I’ll probably do another episode. I think it’s good for me to practice speaking into a microphone (I do get the occasional interview request). Plus, it’s kind of relaxing come Thursday when I’m tired from typing all week.

Please feel free to send me questions or comments you want me to address. I’ll read them and respond. It will be delightful!

I won’t do one this week though, the kids are on spring break and there’s zero chance I’ll be left alone long enough to make any sort of a recording.

On to the next thing

There’s a lot to get done today. I’m working on two book manuscripts simultaneously, but I’m hoping to do a chapter of each today. I’m pretty sure one will involve a Tyrannosaurus Rex trying to brush his teeth and failing because of his tiny little arms.

You can look forward to reading that in a hundred years or so.

In the meantime, you can look forward to whatever article I post around... Wednesday? Stay tuned, and have a great week!

Cheers!