Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall

Advice Unsolicited | Offense Is Definitely a Choice

First things first. It is and has always been a choice to take offense or not.

ALWAYS.

Your aunt has chosen to not be offended by a word that has become weapon used. You have chosen to be offended. Likewise, your aunt has chosen to be offended by being lectured and you choose to be offended that she is offended by your lecturing.

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Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall

How Free is Our Speech and Who Decides?

These days political thought is indistinguishable from religious rhetoric. So many looking to assert the moral ground upon which we all must stand or be banished. The mistake made is to embrace the idea that the digital space is real life or even matters that much.

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Poetry, Fiction Guest User Poetry, Fiction Guest User

Night Out, 2025

Is it Friday? A day hazing over fast into the good long while of night. Both are so happy to have had themselves. To have been connected.

This was an age after the rooftop days were over. Removed and exposed from the vantage of twenty-or-more stories.

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Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall

How Zero Tolerance Policies in the 1990s Caused Our Modern Puritanism

Isabella would be roughly thirty-six years old now and would classify as a Millennial. Her kids are the pro typical Gen Z crowd. Both she and her kids seem to operate still with this zero tolerance policy in mind. They have become the hall monitors for their collegiate experience, the snitches of social media, and the ‘Karens’ of every Walmart and Starbucks in America.

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David Himmel, Post-It Wall Notes David Himmel David Himmel, Post-It Wall Notes David Himmel

Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of February 14, 2021

Poor white people love people like Trump because they’re two sides of the same coin. They both live completely sheltered lives and both believe the lie of American Exceptionalism. The wealthier side of the coin believes that they were born into that exceptionalism because they deserved it and the poorer side believes that one day, they, too will be exceptional.

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Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall

Advice Unsolicited | The Cost of Virtue

There’s a story in the Bible—I’m paraphrasing it here—where a woman goes to prayer every day and prays loudly and obviously. She makes such a noise in her show of virtue and piety that another woman goes to Jesus and asks if making that much of a show is going to get the signaler’s prays answered more quickly. “She has already received her reward, so fuck no. Here's a loaf of bread and a fish. Now scram.”

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Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall Don Hall

History is a Puzzle Box of Rashomon

That’s all history is, after all. A slew of stories we tell over and over to indoctrinate a sense of national pride. It grows more perilous when those revising the stories weren’t present. The source of the tales becomes less reliable and the reframe more suspect.

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