In which I settle on rambling about water on Mars.

Our society shies away from saying that a man was raped, and I don't know why. I mean, we do the same thing with children. We say kids are "abused," which is a pretty fucking broad term that covers all manner of shit, including rape.

Men can be raped. Kids can be raped. It's an ugly word. But it's an honest one.

I got to the bottom and realized how long this post is, so I want to put my thoughts on the show in brief here, so you don't have to go into the discussion if you don't want to. My Hero Academia is a wonderful show. I can't think of another TV series that has made me laugh and cry almost every single episode of its run - currently at 48 episodes but hopefully many more to come.

Purpose. That really is the core of what separates good laws from bad ones. Rules are rules, and I think we can all agree there are a few (or more than a few) laws that we disagree with for one reason or another. But can we say that they are unjust? That they are bad laws?

Now, it can be useful to look at the reasoning behind these positional shifts. For example, I'm fairly sure that the modern (circa 2018) Republican is more supportive of talks with North Korea than their ancient forebears (circa 2016) because God-Emperor Trump said it was a good idea instead of Black President Obamantichrist.

We live in an era where our President is simultaneously pushing away allies that we have spent in some cases more than a century building relationships with while embracing some of the more despotic, insular, and aggressive nations on the planet. Meanwhile, roughly half of the country cheers while the other half has panic attacks.

I am glad to see the ever-increasing number of people that agree that our civilization needs to change the way we address mental health issues. There is still a stigma attached to the whole thing, even though we understand that mental health is really just the physical health of your brain.

Even this grim story has a bright side, though. And I hope that if you are reading this, you made it this far. Because the moral is, just like in yesterday's post, things aren't as bad as they seem. Keep struggling for what you believe in - that struggle is what makes the human race better, year after year. But while you do, remember that the whole world actually isn't against you, no matter how it might seem.

See, humans do this really cool thing. It started hundreds of thousands of years ago. It's called "making stuff." We started to make all sorts of... well, stuff, and that stuff helped us survive, live longer, and figure out how to make more stuff. The thing is, each new thing that was invented caused a period of adjustment. That was maybe one thing too many in that sentence. Again, oh well.

The US President declared this morning that he has the absolute power to pardon himself, but that he would never use that ability because he had done nothing wrong. This assertion should surprise no one.  Trump has never been one to accept limits on himself, either as a private citizen or as President.

And Ms. Young's assertions to the contrary, this is how "feminism can liberate men too from patriarchal confines." Feminism isn't an attack on masculinity. It provides us with new ways to look at how men experience the world, and allows us to realize that traditional societal interpretations of how men ought to behave are in many ways the source of angst for a lot of angry young guys out there.