Author Archives: Raizen

Anita Sarkeesian abandons Kickstarter project, Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games

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If you’re an SJW, today might be a good day to crawl into your safe space, because Anita Sarkeesian has abandoned her Kickstarter project, Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games.

Of course, she’s selling it as “moving on to something else”, but the rest of us know what’s going on. Her project has been thoroughly exposed as a sham, and she’s decided to lick her wounds and try something else.

Anita has raised $158,922.00 on the project’s Kickstarter page. Whether she has any plans to refund any of the 6,968 backers of this project is unknown.

I’ve constructed the following graphic to help illustrate the progress that the project has made since it was first launched three-and-a-half years ago on May 17, 2012:

Anita's video agenda progress.png

Anita attended California State University, Northridge (which has a surprisingly high 52.9% rate of acceptance) where she majored in communications, which involved analyzing media for narrative. So when Anita takes in over a hundred thousand dollars to play thousands of dollars in video games, she’s doing what she went to school for. She’s not the only YouTube personality who comments on the content of video games, but I think she managed to do pretty well for herself in making as much money as she has.

The purpose of Anita’s series was to demonstrate that there is sexism in video games. Many video games do portray women in some pretty unrealistic and even outlandish ways, and in some cases heavily sexualizes them. Nobody really needed a social critic to point any of this out. The thing is, practically no one cares. Everyone who plays video games knows that they’re an expression of somebody’s fantasies.

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Anita complains anyway, because as she sees it, video games normalize certain stereotypes. As Anita sees it, someone is needed to speak out against stereotypes against women because gamers are impressionable, unable to distinguish fantasy from reality. Of course, Anita is wrong.

One reason I prefer to stay away from radical feminists is because they tend to be extremely negative, sometimes assuming that complete strangers are criminals, particularly men. Most people don’t need to be told that almost no men actually have a desire to rape. Most of us recognize rape for the act of violence that it is. Of the men that actually have done it, most of them regret the act instantly. Even laws written primarily by men place rape on the same level as murder in terms of seriousness. Such laws have been around for a very long time, even in times believed by feminists to be the height of patriarchy. To the rest of us, this is obvious. To radical feminists, however, each man is potential rape waiting to happen. I have a hard time stomaching that kind of negativity.

I’m in favor of freedom of expression, even if what is being expressed is something I don’t personally agree with. I’m certain that Anita has heard of the game, Grand Theft Auto. It’s a bombastic game in which the protagonist is rewarded for committing outrageous crimes. However, the popularity of the game didn’t result in a surge in automobile thefts. This is because people know better, and aren’t so easily influenced by the expression of someone else’s fantasies, even if they enjoy the gameplay mechanics and play the game for hours a day. And even if someone steals a car because they learned to do it from a video game, it’s the car thief that’s held accountable, not the video game. The people who made the video game were exercising their protected freedom of expression.

So, what’s Anita working on next? She started a new crowdfunding project concerning the role of women in history. One can hope that the project won’t be nearly as divisive, unconstructive, and misleading as the one that she just gave up on (though this is Anita Sarkeesian we’re talking about, here). The initial fundraising goal of her new project is $200,000. That’s interesting considering that her previous project had a goal of only $6000. If she asked for thousands of dollars to play a bunch of video games, why is she asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to do research that one can do with the simple assistance of Google?

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Believe it or not, women didn’t get their rights because a bunch a firebrands were shrill enough. Women got equal rights with men because men decided that society would benefit from it. What this means is that the feminist movement in it’s current form isn’t just divisive and as a result counterproductive. What it means is that feminism, in it’s current form, has been unnecessary all along.

Update (4-10-2016): Anita has made a video update, but she made it available for backers only. I found out about it because I was curious as to whether the project has raised more money or gained new backers since it was announced that Anita was moving on to something else. It wouldn’t have surprised me if it did, but as it turns out, that wasn’t the case. The video that was posted was not on one of the topics in Anita’s outline for her campaign, so in that regard, the video didn’t do anything to give her backers what they paid for.

It’s obvious that the reason she posts videos for backers only is because she’s far more sensitive to criticism than she lets on. Criticism (which Anita mistakes for “harassment”) is a normal and natural part of the experience of  publishing content on the internet, and is to be expected when what is produced is of inferior quality. Anita is taking measures to hide her content from her critics because she can’t take it anywhere close to how well she dishes it out (though she’s not very good at that, either).

Lessons in Kitchen Table Economics

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There are a lot of misconceptions about poor people going around. Among these are the idea that the poor are not allowed to have some basic things, such as internet access, which certain out-of-touch persons view as being a luxury, rather than the modern-day necessity that it is.

I think that a simple, short course in low-income logistics would be what it takes to make people come to an understanding of just the kind of challenges that poor people have to deal with. Even ordinary people in America live like kings, so it’s easy for them to have an emotional disconnection with those that aren’t very well off, perhaps due to simple ignorance concerning those challenges.

Ordinary Americans have much to learn from the poor among them. Having been poor for some time, I’m in a position to enlighten them as to the challenges that poor people face. Because of this, I’ve decided to make this entry a short course in Kitchen Table Economics.

Poor people don’t just have humiliating jobs, they also have very little money. Very little. Because of how little money poor people have, they typically become very smart with their money. They pretty much have to be. For poor people, the consequences of a moment of foolishness are much, much higher.

There may be variations in the experience of the poor person, but the experience is generally reflected well in the math that I’m about to share. If there are differences in your expenses, Microsoft Excel can help you.

To get started, many poor people work low-qualification jobs in the food-service, retail, or grocery industries. Because the qualifications for these jobs are so low, there is no shortage of unemployed people qualified to work these jobs. If companies could get away with paying less than minimum wage, they would do it, considering that this would be a more profitable choice for them. Currently, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, as it has been since 2009.

The following graphic shows how much a person would make working minimum wage for a year, full-time. Seldom does a minimum wage employee work full-time, however. Many companies strategically assign their employees just short of the number of hours per week that it would take to classify them as full-time, to avoid the legal obligation of providing benefits.

KE1 paycheck math.png

Typical deductions made to the paycheck are an estimate, but it’s not unusual for a person to take home around 72% of their paycheck. Therefore, the take home pay for a week would come to $208.80. The yearly and monthly salaries are calculated based on this, because this is the money that poor people can actually do something with. So, based on this, a full-time employee making minimum wage makes only $10,857.60 per year. Politicians have no idea how anyone could live off of that kind of money, and too many people assume that if they do, it must be their fault somehow. By the end of this lesson, you’ll have a much better understanding of how poor people pull it off.

Now that we have a good idea of what a poor person’s monthly salary looks like, let’s take a look at what they would do with it:

KE2 monthly expenses.png

For the breakdown of monthly expenses:

  • The rent would be for a typical one-bedroom apartment in an urban or somewhat suburban area. Perhaps not ideal or in an ideal neighborhood, but deemed good enough for poor people and perhaps nice enough to include expenses such as heat, water, sewer and trash in the rent. One might not want to raise their kids in a neighborhood like that, but for this example, the poor person would be single.
  • The electric bill would be an estimate, and could vary wildly depending on time of year. In the spring and autumn, the electric bill could be as gentle as $20-30 per month, but can be as harsh as $130 in winter or summer months, when one would struggle for a 68 degree temperature.
  • The phone expense would assume that a smart phone is not being used. Instead, it would be something like a Trac-Phone which would charge about $20 for three months of service with limited minutes. The $7.50 per month figure would be an estimate for a similar service.
  • The internet bill would assume a typical high speed service which could greatly vary in price. Contrary to the sentiments of the out-of-touch (such as David Menzies, who in his echo chamber still believes that internet access is a luxury), an internet connection is a necessity in the modern world. Many would-be employers don’t even accept paper applications or résumés anymore, and when interested in setting up interviews, they typically inform applicants via email. It’s not practical for a person to walk miles to the nearest library on a daily basis for the chance that a person might get an email to set up an interview for the next day, especially considering that libraries are struggling to remain open.
  • The bus pass was included because of the sheer difficulty that poor people face in obtaining, maintaining, and fueling an automobile. Unless your work is close by or you don’t mind walking miles to get there (on top of the additional daily miles that David Menzies would have you walk to check emails at the library), a bus pass would serve you well.

After all this, a person is left with over $200 each month. So, what’s the problem? We’re not done yet. There are also weekly expenses, such as food and laundry.

KE3 weekly expenses.png

“Hold on,” you might be thinking, “so little for food?” Life as a poor person is difficult, so concessions are often made to make ends meet. A poor person seldom eats out, typically doing so for special occasions or for a treat. As mentioned already, the person in this example would be a single person, so he’d be spending money to feed himself.

For poor people, the quality of the food they eat is typically pretty low. It’s possible to eat some healthy food for cheap, such as bananas, eggs, and oatmeal. But those choices are limited, and outside of that, there’d be plenty of sodium-heavy, low-nutrient food that would be useful for little besides staving off the sensation of hunger. After a while of eating such things, it’s possible to feel the effects of malnutrition in spite of not really feeling hungry.

I included the expense of laundry, because by this point, a difference can be made by stretching pocket change. At a typical laundromat, a single use of a washer is around $1.25, while a single use of the drier is around $1.00. This is assuming that you have only one load to do. If you have more than one load of laundry, you’re going to have less of that pocket change to stretch out until the next time you get paid.

After all this, you’d have about $16.04 left over in a week. For those who are not poor, that’s about an hour’s salary. It wouldn’t seem like something that a person would even bother attempting to save up. But assuming that a person tried:

KE4 theoretical savings.png

Hooray! A poor person could afford to buy the newest PlayStation! And it only takes six months of living like a virtual serf!

Not so fast. There are some highly variable expenses that can pop up from time to time that could make things much more difficult for the minimum wage worker. Clothing wasn’t mentioned. A person might move out of his parent’s place with a few changes of clothes, but if a piece of clothing were to wear out, it might be time for a trip to Goodwill or The Salvation Army or another thrift store to attempt to get a replacement on the cheap. If a poor person wears designer clothing, they likely managed to obtain it there.

Then there’s the possibility that an accident happened, and the poor person must go to the hospital. Assuming that they have medical coverage, even the cost of an emergency room copay (about $100) would be all it takes to ruin them, not to mention that they might be missing entire days of work, reducing their pay.

Another thing that could ruin a poor person is minor fines for something like jaywalking. Even if a minimum wage worker were to only receive a $50 citation, it could impact their quality of life for the short term future. If you’re looking for evidence that the system favors the rich, consider the fact that the ordinary person would be relatively unaffected by tickets for traffic violations, while if a poor person were to step out of line in even the slightest way, a similar fine when imposed on them would be all that it would take to bury them.

So far, we haven’t discussed how our poor person would get his hands on furniture. Unless he managed to get a sofa or a bed as a gift, he might have been sleeping on the floor. Or there’s dumpster diving.

With that, some myths about minimum wage living should have been demolished. Minimum wage is often referred to as “living wage”, but among those who attempt to live off of it, this is regarded as a sick joke.

The purpose of this article wasn’t to encourage some sort of class warfare. The idea was to get some much-needed perspective out there so that the general population would come to a better understanding of what life as a poor person is actually like. Not every poor person is trying to game the system to get stuff for free from the government, nor are they in every case in the position that they are in due to a lack of wisdom.

If you see someone working in grocery, retail, or fast food, and they are smiling, be nice to them. There is a strong chance that they are trying as hard as they can.

I don’t like chicken wings much, either.

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If you’ve already read my article on white chocolate, you’ve probably figured out that I don’t like it. There’s another food item I don’t like, and that’s chicken wings.

I know what some of you might be thinking; “Haw dude, but I like chicken wings!” I know. A lot of people do. At one point, that was kind of surprising to me. But it seems like each time they serve wings at the cafeteria, the lines are extra long, likely because when wings are served, students send text messages to let each other know so more people can get in line. It doesn’t help that the cafeteria staff takes their time carefully counting them so that each student that orders them gets a certain amount. I seldom get wings, so when my turn finally comes around, I quickly get my order.

So, why don’t I like chicken wings? Because there’s not much to them. Chicken wings are largely skin, bones, and heavy amounts of glaze or whatever they’re coated with. Also, there’s a little bit of meat in there somewhere. I really don’t know what it is that makes chicken wings so popular, but I suspect that it has something to do with some diabolical Edward Bernays style marketing, because chicken wings were once considered a waste product.

And if you do attempt to eat them, bring some napkins with you. Those things are a MESS. Much of whatever glaze that’s on them comes off on your hands and your face (I say “your” face because I don’t have to order something I don’t like).

Then there’s the skin. Much of the fat that’s in chicken is on the skin, which is why it’s a good idea to remove the skin that’s on chicken before attempting to eat it. Wings that are glazed have the glaze placed directly on the skin. The expectation is that you eat the skin. A person can attempt to remove it, but it’s a lot of work, and the glaze comes off, which is where the wings get much of their flavor. There’s also the work of attempting to remove the bones, but by the time a person accomplished that much work, they’re left with very little meat.

That’s the problem with chicken wings: they’re too much work for too little reward. A person can decide that they don’t care, and attempt to eat them, skin and all. But then they’re packing on the pounds from all the glaze and skin they’re eating. A person can take the hard way, and get too little for it, or take the easy way, and gain a lot of weight. Should I really have to fight my food when it’s already dead?

And even if you do bring a bunch of napkins with you, that glaze persistently sticks to your hands, meriting a quick trip to the restroom right after eating to wash your hands, getting doorknobs and anything else you touch sticky along the way. So if you get a text, you either ignore it until you’ve washed your hands, or your phone is among the things that get messy on your way to wash the sugary sauce from your hands.

So, no. I don’t like wings.

Why are some instructors frustrated?

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Earlier, I overheard a student wonder why his instructors are not more laid-back. As he saw it, there was something about his major that makes people stuck up, and he thinks that his instructors are exhibiting this attitude. The student in question is hardly a star student; he was held back already. Because of this alone, one would suspect that he was venting his own frustration with his educational progress, but wasn’t willing to accept his own fault for not taking his education and career more seriously.

I don’t know all the details with his situation, but I think that there’s an aspect to this matter that he may not have considered. This is that the instructors might not be stuck up; they might actually be frustrated. And this frustration may be justified.

Why would they be frustrated? I imagine that it may be because, year after year, they see numerous students come in to major in electronics, and then see something like half of the freshman class drop out because, among other reasons, the students don’t take their major seriously.

Think about the kind of insult it would be if, after going to school for years in something, making it their career, going to school for teaching, and finally becoming a teacher, they get in front of students to lecture and what they’re teaching is immediately competing for the attention of some games that some students play on their cell phones.

“Huh? Electronics? Oh, yeah. That’s cool. But can this lecture wait a few more minutes? My knight is almost level 87.”

This is in spite of the fact that some students were on a wait list to start on their major. When the wait list is long, each student that doesn’t care much to learn is making someone else wait at least a year. And for what? So that some twenty-somethings can play Magic: The Gathering in the lab?

Just in my own class, about half of the students didn’t make it to the second year. Several of them dropped out or failed out due to bad grades. One of which tried to cheat on tests, but failed because his grades weren’t good. Another didn’t even want to be there. What his story is, I’m not sure. Perhaps his parents signed him up. He fell asleep in classes, and quickly dropped out. There was one who quickly dropped out because the math proved to be rather esoteric for him. He actually seemed to have enthusiasm, and wanted to form a study group. Perhaps if he hung around and focused, he could have done well. Even though he was only around for about a month, the other students still laugh it up about him, even though it’s been over a year since he dropped out. There was another student that dropped out after trying hard, however. No one made fun of him.

I know that some might prefer the kind of electronics instructors that come off as laid-back. However, the instructors are there to prepare the students for the work force. The work force is even less laid-back.

To get right to the heart of the matter, there’s a reason why students have to learn some maturity before graduating on to the work force. This is because employers and colleagues don’t want to see electronics technicians who…

  • …are incompetent
  • …show up late
  • …steal from workstations
  • …play AMVs (anime music videos) on YouTube instead of working
  • …are nowhere to be found when work needs done, even though they’re on the clock
  • …play practical jokes on their fellow employees.

About that last point, there is one classmate that might be fancying himself as some kind of jokester. If so, he’s setting himself up for disaster, but that would likely take place on the job at this rate. If that’s how it’s going, the people around him might have to take care not to become a casualty of his antics, perhaps including his classmates.

Electronics technicians have a job in which a lot of people count on them. Maturity and competence can make the difference between things running smoothly and having a ton of gum balls on a factory floor. When an instructor passes a student that’s not ready to work professionally as an electronics technician, they are doing nobody any favors.

There’s nothing about pursuing a career in electronics that inherently makes people snotty. It’s one of many ways in which a person can improve themselves, and become more employable. There aren’t many employers out there that are looking for the kind of employees that just want to chill and hang. They want employees that take their jobs seriously. And teachers want students that take what they’re learning seriously.

I hate white chocolate.

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As I see it, white chocolate isn’t even real chocolate. To make it, the cocoa powder is removed and replaced with milk solids. It’s about the same as making chocolate, except what makes it real chocolate is taken out. In spite of this, it’s still called “chocolate” on its packaging. It seems so much like a waste product that’s marketed to the public in an effort to cut the costs associated with simply discarding it.

White chocolate tastes like chalk mixed with milk. It’s like chalk was blended together with milk and some cocoa butter, and sold as white chocolate. Don’t think that sounds very appetizing? Me neither.

I started hating white chocolate since I was a kid. I remember going to an event where chocolate was given out to children. Like many kids, I didn’t turn down an opportunity to get some chocolate without having to earn it. While most of the kids were getting real chocolate, I was one of the few that got white chocolate, instead. It looked off to me, but I tried it. When I did, that sealed the deal. From then on, I hated white chocolate.

I remember there being a television sitcom in which someone went on about how she liked white chocolate. I can’t remember which sitcom it was, and I don’t care much for looking into it. I do remember that it was a show that I found annoying. The woman called white chocolate something like “the gold of chocolate”. She was wrong. Gold is desirable. White chocolate is not. The episode came off like an effort to market a product that wasn’t selling very well.

In spite of this, there was actually a chocolate bar that I liked even though it had white chocolate as one of its ingredients. It’s called Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme. It had little chocolate cookie bits in it. Why didn’t I hate it? Maybe because it was basically a chocolate bar. Cocoa powder was removed to make white chocolate, then later cookie bits were added which contained cocoa powder. Why did they remove the cocoa powder to begin with? A real chocolate bar with cookie bits would have been sweet. Maybe they were trying to find something creative do to with a surplus of white chocolate that’s not selling, and their idea was to add cocoa powder back into it. That’s actually pretty smart.

Hershey's Cookies 'n' Creme

How to get me to like white chocolate: by adding the cocoa powder back into it.

By itself, though, white chocolate is pretty miserable. I see more of a point to decaf coffee. At least it tastes like coffee, which is good for those who like the taste of coffee. But if I want caffeine, then I want caffeine. As I see it, anyone who attempts to pass decaf off as regular coffee is committing fraud.

Militia Member Calls TYT Out On Their Disingenuousness

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TYT refuted

Many of you are probably aware that there is a YouTube channel by the name of The Young Turks (TYT for short). My first problem with them (besides that they named themselves for the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide and are Armenian Genocide deniers) is that they are so far left wing that they fall off the side of the plane.

Their YouTube channel has been quite popular, which isn’t surprising considering that there are plenty of angsty 15-year-olds out there to pander to who are naive as to how the world works. Me, I’ve ignored them for a while. However, one of their videos caught my attention. It’s titled, “Read The WHOLE Second Amendment” (please be sure that you have AdBlock Plus on before clicking that link). In it, the host invites viewers to read the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights.

I’m for Americans reading the entirety of the U.S. Bill of Rights. In fact, here is a link to do so. It’s not that long. It would only take a few minutes to read.

The host’s argument is that gun rights advocates only read the second part of the Second Amendment, which, when read in its entirety, is as follows:

Article the fourth… A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The host makes the case that the right to bear arms only applies to members of the militia, and not to citizens in general, and states that the modern-day equivalent of the militia is the police force, ignoring that there is such a thing as a preface separated by a comma that does not modify the intent of the message.

Like any liberal or otherwise far-left position, the host’s case is an appeal to ignorance. I’ll tell you why: According to the U.S. Code, I’m considered a member of the militia. In fact, you might be too. I left the following in the comment section explaining why:

comment

I made a copy of my comment to share here due to a tendency of liberal fringe groups to eschew protected free expression and instead delete anything they can they don’t agree with (for more information on this, look up “censorship”). That liberal fringe groups engage in censorship in what is supposed to be a free and open marketplace of ideas (the internet) tells you what you need to know about them. History tells us that if censoring all other viewpoints is what’s necessary for a political ideology to thrive, it’s usually because the ideology in question can’t actually withstand intellectual challenge.

The host reads the entirety of the Second Amendment, which isn’t a bad thing, but then he proceeds to engage in word games as to what defines a militia. Whether or not he’s aware of it, the U.S. Code, which is the permanent law of the Federal Government of the United States, clearly states that all males, ages 17 to 45, who are ordinary citizens of the United States, are considered members of the militia.

Here is how it reads:

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are—

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
Source: Legal Information Institute, law.cornell.edu

 

So, how about that? The host makes the case that the right to bear arms only applies to militia members, when American law defines ordinary citizens as militia members! The host made a pretty self-defeating case, didn’t he? What’s more, the law extends to those who so much as state the intention to become a United States citizen!

This means that the permanent law of the United States, according to U.S. Code, protects someone’s right to bear arms from the moment they state the intention of becoming a U.S. citizen forward!

There are those who would probably think that this is just some quaint relic of a law from the colonial period, perhaps a practical idea at some point, but impractical in today’s modern era. There is a problem with such an assertion: the law was last edited in the 1950s. This means that this law was intended for modern application.

One more liberal argument refuted. Not that that means that we’ll hear the last of it. Liberals and left-wing fringe groups love to prey on ignorance, so they’ll likely try to peddle the argument that TYT made, or some modification thereof.

Still, something about their argument is pretty chilling: the insistence that only police own guns. Are liberals even aware that they are working to create an environment in which dissent can be easily suppressed by force by a powerful federal agency? If such a thing were to come about, it would likely last well beyond the popularity of the liberal ideology in its current state, and come to be employed by an opposing political ideology that would have an equal or greater intolerance for dissent. That’s the kind of thing that the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Bill of Rights was written with the intention of preventing.

“I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.” – George Mason

Classic Pokemon games coming to 3DS eshop

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Wouldn’t it be really cool if Nintendo added the original Pokemon games to the 3DS eshop? It’s what people have been asking for since about the time the 3DS was released. If this video from the official Pokemon YouTube channel is an indication…

…that’s just what they’re going to do.

I think this is some pretty cool news. I have some fond memories of the original Pokemon games, and one of these games would help to relive some old memories of treks in the Kanto region.

Hearing about this takes me back to the late nineties. I remember going to school and having shows like Home Improvement and Goof Troop to watch on TV. And Quack Pack. And Doug. So yeah, I was happy that I had a Game Boy for entertainment.

So we’re not missing out on the important feature of trading, it’s going to be possible through local wireless! Another neat thing about this announcement is the timing. At about this time, many of the original Pokemon games have depleted the internal battery that was used to store save data.

At one point, game saves were stored using battery backup, likely because the game cartridges used some sort of SRAM, which is a kind of volatile memory that loses its contents when power is no longer supplied to it. In such cases, an internal battery would have been used to keep power supplied to the SRAM even when the player wasn’t playing and the cartridge wasn’t in the system. If the battery ran out of charge, however, the player lost their save data, which was especially tragic for players that had pokemon that they liked. Recently, a Japanese man made the news after having left his Super Famicom on for 20 years because he did not want to lose his Umihara Kawase save data.

The good news is that because the 3DS games are saved using non-volatile memory, game saves would not be lost due to a depleted internal battery.

When playing the original games again, one might think about how the Pokemon series has come a long way. Some of the noticeable quirks of the original games include:

  • Back then, TMs could only be used once.
  • When a pokemon forgot a move, it usually didn’t have a way to relearn it.
  • The Psychic type was pretty much at the top of the game.
  • Missingno. was easy to find. It would be surprising if it weren’t removed.
  • Mew was considered unobtainable, but that didn’t mean that some players didn’t look for it anyway. However, a glitch was discovered that made it obtainable. Whether it remains in the game is to be seen.
  • The option to play as a girl wasn’t available.
  • Pokemon didn’t have abilities
  • They also couldn’t hold items
  • You couldn’t breed pokemon, for all of Brock’s talking about it. This means that if you picked a Squirtle and also wanted a Charmander, finding someone to trade it to you was really hard.
  • They might fix some of the bugs, but the original Pokemon games were so buggy, that it might have been how some players were introduced to hexadecimal.

And there’s more. None of that means that Pokemon Red, Blue, Green or Yellow are bad games. However, some players are likely to better appreciate the features available to them in newer games by playing a version of Pokemon where those features are absent.

However, some new features may be implemented. Perhaps some sort of move relearner will be implemented. Perhaps TMs will be reusable. Maybe the female main character from FireRed and LeafGreen will be selectable in a low-resolution form (that would actually be pretty cool).

Or maybe (this would be a big one) there would be a feature that would make these games trade compatible with 6th gen games, with newer pokemon appearing in the games with sprites in an older graphical style. If a person sets their expectations high, they might be setting themselves up for disappointment. Still, it’s fun to think about how a pokemon like Chespin or Goomy would look in Red/Green style.

Now that classic Pokemon games are announced for the eshop, there are other possibilities. Personally, I’d like to see the Gold, Silver and Crystal games added to the eshop. Perhaps, in time, that’ll happen. There’s also the possibility of the GBA versions, Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald, though they’d probably be on the Wii U eshop, considering that many GBA remakes have been appearing on that platform.

Oh yeah, here’s a cool feature that many of us who played the classic Pokemon games didn’t get to experience: playing them on a handheld with a backlit display screen. The original Game Boy (and even the GameBoy Color) didn’t have a backlit screen, so many of us had to play somewhere bright to see what was going on onscreen. Also, on the original, there was the challenge of getting the adjustable contrast just right.

Another feature that will help is the presence of a rechargeable lithium ion battery in the 3DS. When Pokemon Red and Blue were released in the United States, there was a temporary shortage of AA batteries, which were needed to power the original Game Boys.

Green_JP_boxart

I’m likely to get one of these games. One question would be, “which one?” I think that the Yellow version will probably be the most popular. If the Green version is released on the American eshop, I’d probably get that one. However, the Green version wasn’t released in the States, so that might not happen. Maybe I’ll get the Red version. I like the Red version’s exclusive pokemon.

Also, there’s the question of which starter to go with. I’d probably pick Bulbasaur.

Venomous snake killed by bite inflicted by toddler

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scared king cobra

That title isn’t a typo. According to Fox News Latino, a toddler killed a snake by biting it.

The child’s mother allowed him to play in the yard. When the child was strangely quiet, the mother decided to check on him. When she found her child, the child had a venomous snake in his mouth, which was still alive and trying to escape.

Examination by physicians has determined that there was no venom in the body of the toddler, who was deemed to be in good health. The snake, however, succumbed to its injury.

Is this child in some way related to Chuck Norris? When I see a snake lying on the ground coiled up and minding its business (of laying still or whatever it is snakes do), I admit that I don’t think of it as something I’d want to try to take a big bite of. I wonder whether this child has a normal sense of fear. Even harmless snakes are kind-of scary looking. But this kid, he sees this snake in his yard and thinks something like “I’m gonna bite it.” And he does.

I remember hearing about an ex-marine who was attacked by a mountain lion, and he fended it off with a chainsaw. As awesome as that sounds, he had the assistance of a chainsaw. The toddler who bit a snake, however, killed it using his mouth.

This child might just be starting his career in fighting off animals that grown adults would normally be terrified of. Maybe as an adult he’ll punch walruses and suplex tigers. Not that it would necessarily be called-for, but because he’d be bored and they’d need a reminder not to step out of line.

My opinion of Gamergate

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Vivian James by Yahlantykan on DeviantArt

Surprisingly, I’ve gone this long without issuing an opinion of Gamergate and the controversy surrounding it. Depending on who you ask, it’s either a misogynistic movement of lonely men who don’t want women playing video games, or it’s a movement standing against corruption in game journalism and fighting back against the self-appointed social justice warriors (SJWs) that are mischaracterizing their movement.

If you believe the former, you believe the media’s official narrative about Gamergaters. If you believe the latter, you believe what Gamergaters are saying about themselves.

However one views the Gamergate movement, there is no denying how it got started: A woman by the name of Zoe Quinn released a so-so text-based game about depression, and it was given a glowing review on a gaming website. Later, Zoe Quinn’s ex-boyfriend revealed that she was cheating on him, and that the game received undue attention because she was in an affair with the game journalist that reviewed it. As one might expect, people were outraged, and the Gamergate movement was born.

Incidentally, here is a link to a WikiHow article on how to make your own text-based adventure game.

Zoe Quinn became a target of harassment and ridicule, which is to be expected, considering what she did. But rather than accept that what was happening to her was a consequence of her own poor decision-making, she instead played the victim, claiming to be attacked by misogynists. She made her appeal to both cultural critic Anita Sarkeesian and the press, and they both ate it up.

I’m going to say straight-up that I don’t believe that Gamergate is a movement of misogynists. What I’ve seen from gamers in my long history of seeing them is just the opposite; they like seeing women in video games, and they favor the image of the female protagonist in games that is strong, independent, resourceful, and intelligent (does the name Samus Aran ring a bell?). But that doesn’t mean that Gamergaters aren’t going to be mischaracterized.

Gamergaters have challenged a corrupt press, and the results have been predictable. The press has long been in a position in which they have the trust of people and control of information, enabling them to sway public opinion in favor of positions and worldviews that are in line with those of journalism at large. It’s something that conservatism has long complained of as the liberal-controlled media has long perpetuated stereotypes of those of those of conservative persuasion.

A case in point is the recent exposure of Planned Parenthood’s operation of selling baby parts in violation of federal law. In some cases, the subjects of harvesting were infants that were extracted alive. One would imagine that, if even a little bit of video evidence of this got out, there would be an outrage, and the people behind the crime would all be held accountable. However, there has been volumes of undercover video released, and it seems like the general population is largely unaware of what happened. This is because there has been a media blackout of the video releases, except for a short time when Planned Parenthood peddled its official narrative that the videos were doctored.

Now, gamers are starting to see what it’s like to be libeled by a huge, rich, privileged media machine. To add to their problem, coming against them is another, far less sophisticated group that also cares little about facts: radical feminism.

After they became involved, a surprising group came along to oppose them: liberals themselves. After so long of being the beneficiaries of a media that presented their narratives, they started to speak up against what they see as wrong with radical feminism’s tactics, possibly because it was their entertainment that was being challenged.

As tempting as it may be for conservatives to view the battle between feminists and moderate liberals as a liberal problem, it’s an opportunity that conservatives seem to be largely passing up to point out that they too have been victims of similar targeting and stereotyping, and now that liberals are on the receiving end of it at the hands of one of their own fringe groups, perhaps they’ll be in a better position to understand that there’s something wrong with it.

Similarly, non-gamers seem to view Gamergate as a gamer problem. However, it’s another symptom of the corruption of the press that has long been preying on the masses. It’s interesting that it has been gamers that have taken a position in the battle against corruption in the media, and more surprising still is their passion to continue, long after many people would have just given up.

But that’s not so surprising considering that many of them have been influenced by an art form that allows them to vicariously experience the battles of heroes, and encourages them to keep trying until they win.