Author Archives: Raizen

Feminist slander campaign backfires, perpetrator loses job

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When you voice your opinion on the internet, there is a possibility that someone is going to issue disagreement with you. That’s a possibility to prepare for in just about any marketplace of ideas. However, not everyone has that kind of maturity.

Recently, a YouTuber with the handle Thunderf00t expressed criticism of Anita Sarkeesian’s methods as a radical feminist. In response, fans of Anita Sarkeesian have (issued polite disagreement? No, they) threatened him.

One in particular by the handle of Laughing Witch took things a little further. She decided that the best way to handle his criticism was to invent a lie against him, and then attempt to ruin his life by telling that lie to his local newspaper, his local police department, and even to his own employer in an attempt to get him fired.

I’ve expressed before that modern feminism has serious honesty problems. However, this case takes things to a whole other level. I’ve disagreed with people on the internet before (I might even disagree with a few things Thunderf00t has said). But to this day, I haven’t decided that the best way to handle such a thing is to try to attack their job. Yet, Laughing Witch has found someone who has disagreed with the methods of radical feminism, and made up a lie about him being a Nazi and a hater of Muslims. He has also been accused of being a member of a conservative group, but that’s not an insult. Again, the lie was propagated to his local paper, his local police department, and his own employer in an attempt to destroy his livelihood and his standing in the community.

If you’re interested in a legal reason why this is a bad idea, look up the word “libel”.

Obviously, these claims aren’t even consistent. For one thing, Nazis historically didn’t hate Muslims. In fact, even Hitler expressed admiration of them. Also, the term “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist”. Conservatives are not socialists.

Of course, things like “facts” haven’t been known to make much of a difference to radical feminists. Not only did Laughing Witch slander Thunderf00t with these claims, she actually bragged about her actions on YouTube using her real name. That’s some kind of confidence.

Afterwards, radical feminists on YouTube celebrated getting Thunderf00t fired. This is in spite of the fact that Thunderf00t was not fired. This tells us what we need to know about radical feminism, it really doesn’t matter to them what’s true.

Laughing Witch bragged that she was immune to backlash because she was the vice president of the company that employed her, which was headed by her husband. She even expressed that she was pleased with her sudden influx of subscribers, probably not realizing how many of those subscribers were just interested in watching a ship sink fast.

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As it turns out, the ship sank faster than expected. Laughing Witch was actually fired from her job as Vice President of the company that employed her. Meaning, yes, this overconfident radical feminist was actually fired by her own husband. What’s more, she also removed her own YouTube channel (possibly at the request of her husband, who likely saw her online activities as being a serious liability for his company).

There are few things that I dislike more than slander. Because of this, it brightened my day to see that someone who attempted it fell into her own snare.

socrates slander

We probably haven’t heard the last of Laughing Witch. Persons such as herself usually love attention. She might appear again later with a new handle or with a Patreon account begging for donations, claiming to be the victim for all the problems that she brought upon herself.

Still, that someone would consider doing what she tried to do is pretty alarming. I think it’s a sign that radical feminism is quickly becoming more maladjusted, especially with someone like Anita Sarkeesian for them to get behind. Her fanbase has already demonstrated itself to be one of the most dangerous fanbases among YouTube personalities.

Are liberals secretly inept at tech?

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The first batch of Hillary Clinton emails since the Benghazi testimony have been released, and one of the things they tell us about Hillary is her choice of cell phones. It seems Hillary is a Blackberry user.

I admit that my cell phone of choice was a Blackberry at one point. It was a Blackberry Torch, which I liked because it provided a combination of touchscreen and keyboard interfaces. It was an okay phone. However, the Blackberry brand is well past it’s prime. Perhaps the most significant reason that the Blackberry brand has as many users as it does is because it’s historically been favored in the business world. It was a pioneer at one point, and may have even been favored for some reasons. Today, the Blackberry brand doesn’t have the same kind of relevance that it used to.

It’s tempting to pick on Hillary because of her favoritism toward the Blackberry brand, but Blackberry phones are sometimes standard issue among large corporations (I suspect that they’re a means of keeping the staff on a leash; if the company gives the employee a phone, it can enable the company to contact the employee at any time). What I found interesting is that after spending time with a newer Blackberry, Hillary went back to an older Blackberry for it’s familiarity. It’s interesting enough that, instead of adapting to something new, she went back to an older phone for it’s familiarity. But on top of that, after going back to her old phone, she found herself missing the emoticons from the newer phone.

Hillary Clinton is one of the most serious-looking women I’ve ever seen, so it’s hard to imagine that she’d have a strong attachment to emoticons. She even asked whether there was a way to add them to her older phone.

What we’re seeing so far is actually far different from the image of the privileged coastal technocrat that liberals largely picture themselves as (some also view themselves as an oppressed minority that is part of an underground movement, and they see very little problem with being both). What we’re seeing is someone who, instead of adapting to something cutting-edge, instead went back to something older for comfort. And what’s more, she likes smilies. If she were to later come out saying that she plays Candy Crush Saga, that would lend to the idea that information like this was being fed to the public to make Hillary seem more relatable.

She also asked “How does this work” about a request to “connect” on the website LinkedIn.

Say what?

LinkedIn has over 300 million users. Each of these users likely figured out how to create an account without asking for someone else’s help. If she was really asking for help on how to connect on LinkedIn, perhaps she didn’t make her Facebook and Twitter accounts by herself.

To put this into perspective, the guy behind Time Cube was able to make his own website.

What’s more, Hillary asked one of her aides what her New York Times password is.

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I get the idea that Hillary Clinton isn’t that good with tech. It seems like ineptitude with tech has increasingly become a liability for those of liberal persuasion. One example would be Lois Lerner, who played a part in a conspiracy to target conservative groups because that’s one way that a fascist can abuse power. When she was subpoenaed for her emails, it conveniently turned out that they were deleted. It’s pretty obvious that she or her cronies deleted her emails because there were things in them that could have gotten her in trouble. However, the emails were recoverable. It turns out that a supposedly-sophisticated organization like the IRS didn’t do a good job at covering its tracks.

Then there’s the scandal involving Anthony Weiner, who attempted to send a woman a picture of his genitals, but posted it to Twitter instead. I can picture a person mistakenly sending the wrong person a text message, but how does a person try to send a private message but accidentally make it public instead?!

Considering cases like these, I get the idea that liberals actually aren’t as tech savvy as they would like you to believe. Of course, the bigger problem for liberalism would be its ideology, and that they provide just the right environment for fringe groups such as radical vegetarians and feminists (the latter of which has been becoming increasingly fanatical).

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Liberalism is like a high-IQ club that’s free to join with no IQ test required, and everyone involved high-fives one another for having the same opinion. Of course, if they don’t come to the right conclusions, they haven’t actually been using their heads right, and that wouldn’t change just because they know how to use smartphones (which have been made so that they’d be simple to use for just about anyone).

The Pivoting Spork: Worst Utensil Ever?

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A while ago, I found the utensil pictured above: a spork with a pivot.

At first glance, it’s hard to imagine that this spork would be an adequate eating utensil. For one thing, it’s a spork. Sporks are inherently flawed. They attempt to be both a fork and a spoon, but they don’t quite measure up at either task.

Here is how the typical spork does at both the tasks they are designed for:

  • At being a spoon: Horribly. Sporks don’t hold much liquid, if at all, because the liquid easily spills between the prongs.
  • At being a fork: Horribly. Sporks generally have short prongs, so attempts to skewer food with them typically don’t work well.

It’s quite obvious that sporks are inherently flawed. For one of the tasks that they are designed for, the prongs are too short, and for the other, the length of the prongs becomes a liability. Because of this, it’s easy to see why we have separate utensils for carrying out the functions of a fork and a spoon.

In the case of this pivoting spork, the typical problems associated with sporks are aggravated by some serious design flaws, which become apparent with close observation:

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The prongs are dull, so this spork isn’t going to do well at skewering much. And if a person does succeed in skewering a piece of beef with these prongs, they aren’t likely to stay in place, not only due to the fact that the prongs are short, but because the prongs narrow with a wide angle. This means that just about anything skewered with this spork would quickly slide right off.

But there’s more:

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This picture might not be ideal, but does give an idea of the depth of the spork. Because of this, not only would we have the typical problem with liquid falling between the prongs, this spork is very shallow. Even if it weren’t pronged (and therefore were a spoon) it wouldn’t be holding much liquid.

As shown in the following picture, the handle is designed to fold back and snap into place:

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The pivot is a thin layer of plastic that folds to snap the handle into place. Therefore, if the pivot were to snap, you probably won’t be getting much more use out of this spork than you would be to begin with. I would have preferred that this spork’s handle did not include a pivot, considering that, for most tools, the more moving parts it would have, the more potential it would have for failure.

So, why would someone design something like this? It would seem that the idea was to both save space and to be convenient, which is probably why a person would try to combine their utensils. Here is a picture of the spork with a ruler to give an idea of it’s size:

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This thing isn’t going to take up much space. However, is this really much of an issue to begin with when it comes to spoons and forks? It’s hard to imagine a person having such a problem saving space in their travel pack that they have to take out a metal fork and spoon set to put this thing in there. A person might get the idea to make a mint tin kit of some sort that might include something like this, but they’d probably want to quickly replace this thing with another tool better suited to it’s purpose.

Looking at the picture above, it becomes apparent that the handle would only come to about seven-and-a-half centimeters long (about 3 inches), so it likely won’t rest comfortably on one’s hand as one holds it correctly. The tip of the handle might poke into the skin on the hand between the thumb and index finger, which would probably be uncomfortable. In this position, it’s easy to imagine that the pivot would snap out of place. I haven’t used this spork yet, so I don’t know for sure.

One positive thing about this spork is that it’s made of plastic. This is positive because after a person gives this thing a try and discovers that it doesn’t perform it’s task as a utensil well, there wouldn’t be much in terms of waste when it is simply thrown away. That might not be an expression of confidence in the utensil on the part of its designer, but it does show some foresight on his part. He probably knew that people would just want to throw it away.

This pivoting spork seems like something that a cheap fast-food restaurant would include with their drive-thru meals in an attempt to save money, and because they wouldn’t care very much about how their customers or employees felt. It’s easy to imagine that such a company is also attempting to save money with abrasive dollar store cleaning detergent and one-ply toilet paper. This is the kind of utensil that says “This company is pinching pennies and doesn’t care what you or our hundreds of thousands of other customers like you think. Also, we pay our staff minimum wage.”

This might be the worst utensil I have ever found. How about you? Have you found any utensils that are objectively bad at what they do?

Fat shaming and Nicole Arbour

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A recent video by Nicole Arbour on YouTube caused quite a stir for it’s topic of fat shaming. In it, the host, Nicole Arbour, called out fat people for the claims that they make about themselves and pointed out that they have a problem. As you could probably imagine, the video got a lot of criticism. So much in fact, that the video was taken down for a short while before being placed back up and comments on the video have been disabled.

While her video did have it’s problems (such as that the host was mildly annoying), on her point that there is a problem with body fat in America, she mostly nailed it. America does have a problem with body fat.

So, why is Nicole Arbour so heavily criticized for her position? Because people don’t like admitting that they have problems that are their own fault. Yeah, there are some cases where people are fat because they have legitimate disabilities that affect their growth, and there are other causes that people can hardly help. However, cases like those are rare. In the case of nearly all Americans that are overweight, they got that way because they weren’t exercising very good self-control. We live in one of the few cultures in history that has an abundance of food, and people still treat it as though it might not still be there the next day.

In fact, in America, our own police forces have a problem with overweight officers. Considering that people count on them to protect them, that’s a scary thought. A physically fit perpetrator could easily outrun them. There are also security guards, though they’re not the same thing (if that’s the kind of thing you want to do with your life, that’s your choice).

People generally don’t like having it pointed out to them that their bad state is a product of their own choices, and is therefore their own fault. Because of this, people tend toward those who tell them what they like to hear, regardless of what’s good for them. This enables them to write off as “mean people” those who are pointing out what’s wrong.

A person who tells it like it is doesn’t always have to resort to satire. However, sometimes it takes a little more than gentle pleading to get people to change for the better. Most people seem to be familiar with only one kind of encouragement. I think it would be plenty motivating to take care of myself if it meant not becoming misshapen and disfigured, and if it also meant that I could avoid being made fun of for my weight, that’s also a plus. Potential suitors do pay attention to physical characteristics, and some of them can indicate lifestyle choices which are not ideal.

As a person who has been both skinny and borderline overweight, I can tell you that it’s a lot more fun to be skinny. I enjoy having that energy and sound health. There’s also the perk of being attractive. That might take some effort to maintain (perhaps more so for some than others), but it’s worth it.

If a person is overweight, what can they do about it? They could make the choice to take better care of themselves. However, it seems easier for many of them to write off people like Nicole Arbour as those who don’t know what they’re talking about as their paunch steadily grows and sags.

The disgusting heavy-handedness of copyright law

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Copyright law is a topic that a lot of people feel sensitively about. It’s apparent that there are some strong feelings about it.

Before continuing, I think that it does benefit to first point this out: If you should have paid for music, movies, or video games, but did not, and downloaded them anyway, then you broke copyright law. “But Raizen,” you might say, “I didn’t steal them. I just made a copy. The media company still has the original.” You can call it what you want. The action that you described is illegal under US copyright law.

The point of this article isn’t to try to hammer people who download music illegally, however. I brought that up because I thought it would be productive to address that point that’s made by those who break copyright law, to help them to better understand the relevance of this article to them.

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not friends with the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA). Not by a long shot.

I have a problem with the RIAA because of their heavy-handed abuse of the law. How heavy-handed? A US court ordered a Minnesota woman to pay $220,000 after a suit by the RIAA.

That’s a pretty extraordinary claim. With a claim that high, one would think that she was the webmaster behind a huge web-ring that provided free music downloads to visitors to her web page in exchange for clogging their browsers with cookies and ads.

Nope. She downloaded 24 songs illegally. Not 240,000, only 24. Simple division time: $220000 / 24 = $9166.67.

“We are pleased with the appellate court’s decision and look forward to putting this case behind us,” said the RIAA. Of course, it would have been easy for the RIAA to put the case behind them because the RIAA is rich. They don’t have an immediate need for $220,000. As for the woman, a single mother with two children, things might be more difficult.

As if the RIAA didn’t have enough money, they also went after a former Boston University student in a $675,000 case. His case was aggravated by the fact that he redistributed the music, but the fee is still outrageous considering the fact that it was only 31 songs ($675000 / 31 = $21774.19).

I’m thinking that maybe that all that money isn’t going into fostering creativity from music artists, but is instead going right into the pockets of music execs who would then use it to buy more expensive automobiles for their children.

Talk about a punishment that doesn’t come anywhere close to fitting the crime. If I were to walk into a record store and walk out with a CD that I didn’t pay for, I doubt that the store would sue me for half a million dollars.

The product that the music industry offers isn’t worth as much as they are claiming in damages for it. That they think it is is an idea that they should get out of their heads.

Ideally, the law should be fair, not showing favoritism on the basis of wealth and class. In America, this is not the case. This is especially true when it comes to copyright law, much of which was brought about by the strength of the wealthy, who then use the legal system as an arm for themselves.

Concerning the $675,000 ruling, the RIAA stated that “We are pleased with the District Court’s decision”. That’s like a pro-wrestler patting himself on the back after sending a 12-year-old to the emergency room. The guy downloaded less than three dozen songs and uploaded them to the internet again, and wound up in more trouble than if he had uploaded videos of himself drop-kicking puppies onto YouTube.

I don’t know about you, but I find it very distasteful when the legal system is heavy-handed to the point of insanity. It’s even worse when the entertainment industry then wields the legal system as a tool for it’s own agenda.

What’s next, a $70,000 fine for jaywalking? I don’t know, but it’s hard to imagine that things are going to get better while people are tolerating the way things are going. Perhaps as people are becoming fatter and increasingly distracted, they’re becoming more passive toward the people that abuse them.

Killer blames video games for his behavior, instead of himself.

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An Idaho man who killed three has decided to blame video games for his own criminal behavior. The story is on Oregonlive.com.

His excuse is a blatant appeal to the narrative that video games cause violent behavior, which is something that we know to be untrue. But because he decided to blame them, it wouldn’t be surprising to see people who hate video games eagerly use this to make their case that video games are violent, so they can either regulate them or succeed in getting video games taken away from everybody, then having succeeded in doing that, they’d move on to regulating just about anything else that they can so the rest of us can’t enjoy some simple pleasures.

It’s obvious that the killer just blamed video games for his behavior because he, like many people, doesn’t like placing the blame for his behavior on himself, which is right where it belongs.

The man said that playing video games made killing easier for him. Is that so? Why didn’t he blame the guns and knives that he brought with him? Did they make killing easier for him? Only in the sense that that they were tools that he used to carry out his desires.

Sadism comes from within. People don’t want to kill because they own video games or guns. People want to kill because they’re messed up in the heads. The man himself said that he was depressed and suicidal, which is evidence that he had some sort of mental infirmity that wasn’t properly treated.

There’s the problem. The man had mental problems. Depression is a psychosis. However, we’re seeing America becoming more shy about admitting that certain mental problems are even problems, instead deciding to chalk deviant mentalities to being “personality quirks” or saying that they were “born that way”, as though that makes them any less harmful. Saying that a problem is not a problem doesn’t make the problem go away.

It’s time for America to wake up. Taking stuff away isn’t going to make anyone any less vicious. Unless the mental infirmity is diagnosed and treated, the harmful behavior associated with it is just going to continue.

My attempt at explaining Donald Trump’s popularlity

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Lately, Donald Trump has been enjoying some huge poll popularity. I don’t have much attachment to him as a presidential candidate, but I do find his recent ascendancy interesting. Liberals and conservatives alike have expressed puzzlement over his popularity.

If you’re a liberal, you probably don’t know why conservatives like those that they like at all. You probably view them as being short-sighted and stupid for daring to have an opinion that is different from your own (you probably also think that they’re smug and closed-minded). If this sounds like you, you probably wouldn’t understand a Republican’s popularity even if it were explained to you.

But what’s really interesting is the number of conservatives that don’t seem to get what Donald Trump is really about, and some of them wish that he’d just drop out of the race, even if he’s the best shot at getting a Republican in the White House to begin the process of reversing the damage done by a liberal ideologue that’s been in control of the executive branch of government for two consecutive terms.

Why do people like Donald Trump?

Donald Trump personifies what Washington politics is not about.
One thing that most politicians have in common is a willingness to take a safe side on an issue in an attempt to maintain a favorable image. Generally speaking, politicians take positions on issues that are in line with party norms. Moderates usually aren’t treated favorably. What’s more, their true, honest opinions are seldom expressed, instead preferring to play a game that they call “diplomacy”. Politicians, even at their most vicious, usually prefer to play nice.

People are sick of politicians that play politics. People want politicians that represent them by stating how they feel in the most direct way possible.

Ideally, politicians are representatives, which means that they represent their people. However, politicians don’t seem to care what the opinion of the people are outside of election campaigns. Politicians seem to care more about the opinions of other politicians. That’s not how you represent the people.

A politician that states his values outright and vocally criticizes the opposition, even within his own party, is like a blast of fresh air in Washington. This is something that Trump does, and we don’t have to guess what he really stands for.

He’s rich, and that doesn’t count against him.
One of the first things people think of when they think of Donald Trump is how much money he has. Usually, when a person is rich, there is a concern that they don’t connect with the average person. But when it comes to politicians, already having a huge amount of money from business on the side actually benefits them. For one thing, it means that he already has experience with managing people. In fact, Trump had a television show about it.

When a politician already has plenty of money, it would naturally be much more difficult to buy them off.

That’s a huge deal, considering that people in Congress would vote away our privacy and freedom on the internet because some telecom company treated them to a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant. Even though Congressmen have plenty of money already, many of them have their price, and in some cases, it’s disappointingly low.

Donald Trump has criticized people who don’t seem to handle it that well, and as a result, they probably won’t invite him to their champagne and Jacuzzi parties. Not that he cares.

People agree with him.
Donald Trump says that there is a lot that is wrong in America. And people believe him. But that’s not what makes him so popular. Many politicians make their careers by convincing people of what they say. What makes Trump different is that he says things that people agree with to begin with.

While politicians theoretically succeed by making people believe what they say, there is an element of convincing in this approach. Trump, however, removes the need to convince by stating what is already apparent to the American people.

And what is apparent to the American people is that the system is broken and desperately in need of repair, and that the people that have been trusted with the job are too weak-hearted to carry it out. Trump’s words have been statements to this effect, at times quite bold.

People want to see people in Washington fired.
The current administration doesn’t connect with the average, working-class American, and they don’t see how anyone could disagree with them. This is to be expected when one surrounds oneself with a bunch of suck-ups.

People want to see Washington get put to work. They also want to see politicians who prove to be ineffective lose their positions. Whether they end up at a bus station somewhere bumming for quarters is not something that the average person cares much about.

Donald Trump is the person who turned “you’re fired” into a nearly ubiquitous phrase in recent years. It’s likely that more than a few people fantasized about him in Washington handing out pink slips. And how does that sound for a solution for the current epidemic of wishful thinking and failed policy that’s become prevalent in Washington? The American people want to tell politicians in Washington to shape up and start producing results, or clean out their desks.

That was my attempt at explaining Donald Trump’s popularity. I don’t have a particularly strong attachment to him, but it seems to me that his popularity reflects a desire for something that people think Washington is missing. That may be what’s making so many politicians, both liberal and conservative, so concerned about him. Whether he wins or loses, his efforts could have the result of changing the game for the better.

Jimmy Kimmel makes fun of new YouTube service for gamers, gamers strike back

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Jimmy Kimmel might want to have a little chat with the people who write his material, because his recent routine on YouTube’s new video game channel isn’t going over well. His routine makes fun of the new service, calling it the “We Should All Be Ashamed of Ourselves for Failing as Parents” channel. That was how he began his routine. It wasn’t a strong start.

He did manage to get some laughter from his audience by saying that when he was young, he only watched other people play video games when he ran out of quarters.

His routine went downhill, however, when he brought up how much money YouTube personality PewDiePie made last year, which was in the millions of dollars. The applause started, but fell flat, perhaps because the audience thought that he crossed some line. It’s kind of surprising to me that he had a live audience for his routines. I would have assumed that his applause was canned. It has this artificial sound to it. Personally, I suspect that he has several people planted in the audience that are paid to whip them up into applause, as though they needed some cue to laugh at something they found funny.

Personally, I doubt that Jimmy Kimmel identifies with his audience. Jimmy, who is an entertainer, is probably a millionaire. If he wanted to play a video game, he’d just go out and buy any one he wants. In fact, he could probably go over to a Gamestop and buy a copy of every game on the shelf as well as the systems to play them on, and still have more than enough money for seven Jacuzzi parties in the same week.

Then there’s the rest of us. There are people living in America who can barely manage to scrape $60 together to buy a new game in a month’s time after living expenses, and if they did, they’d probably do something different with that money than buy a new video game. It’s not like everyone can afford to buy every game they want.

Bringing up PewDiePie and how much money he made was a mistake. PewDiePie makes as much money as he does because his channel is monetized, and there are a lot of people who like watching his content. If there is such strong demand for video game content on YouTube, that’s an indication that we live in an age where interactive entertainment is not taboo. So is the fact that video gaming is a multi-billion dollar industry (perhaps over 100 billion dollars).

It’s evident that Jimmy’s perspective on video games is very dated. It’s no longer the age of arcades, where home consoles are in relatively few homes. This is the age of big-budget, photo-realistic big-name games and gaming-to-go on cell phones. It might actually be very difficult to find someone who has never played a video game.

This being the case, making fun of gaming culture is a huge misstep on Jimmy Kimmel’s part. I doubt that he writes his own material, but he should have at least recognized that something was wrong with the script that was handed to him. But, he recited it anyway on his show.

As of now, the likes to dislikes ratio of the YouTube video of his routine is perhaps the most unfavorable I’ve ever seen. Currently, it has 46,876 dislikes, and 3,937 likes, many of which were probably accidental. A video would have to be especially bad to be viewed by so many people and have a higher ratio of dislikes to likes than the trailer for Metroid Prime Federation Force.

Jimmy compares watching people playing video games to watching other people eat at a restaurant. But, again, Jimmy fails to connect with his audience. Jimmy is rich, of course he can afford to eat out whenever he wants to, perhaps for every meal, if that’s what he wants. Those of us who budget their income to get by, however, have a different lifestyle. There are many people who rarely eat out, primarily doing so for special occasions. Besides, there is a television channel that people can watch to learn about restaurants and cuisine. It’s called the Food Network. Perhaps Jimmy already made fun of that. I don’t know, I don’t normally watch his routines.

I don’t know what Jimmy Kimmel’s career looks like right now. That’s not something that I’m especially concerned with. What I do know is that he made fun of something that he should not have.

Was there actually a threat to the Pokemon World Championships?

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It’s been over a week since we’ve heard news of a possible massacre which supposedly would have taken place at the Pokemon World Championships which were held in Boston this year. Since then, we’ve had time to consider the information presented to us. While I reacted strongly to the news (as did a lot of people), I’ve had some time to consider the information presented, and I actually have doubts that there was any real danger to any attendees of the PWC.

Was there any danger to PWC attendees? At this point, that’s something for investigators to figure out. However, a number of members of the Pokemon community already seem convinced of their guilt. This might actually be mistaken, and I admit that my quick reaction to the news may have been likewise mistaken. This is something that can happen when we are presented with news that sounds shocking and hits close to home. We are prone to overreacting.

In the case of the supposedly-thwarted massacre at the PWC that theoretically could have taken place, there are several mitigating factors that one can find if one were to carefully read the news stories (keeping in mind, of course, that many news outlets omit such important information altogether to present a story more fitting with the personal bias of it’s journalists).

For one thing, consider what these two men are charged with: according to BostonGlobe.com, the two men are charged with “unlawful possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and other firearm charges.” Why? Because the two men couldn’t produce a license to carry the weapons.

That’s it. No conspiracy to commit terrorism or similar charges.

If the two were really conspiring to commit a terrorist act, the lack of an appropriate charge for having done so would have been a serious omission. But there was no such charge. What this suggests is that the authorities have considered the information presented to them, and decided that there was no intent to commit a terrorist act.

Another point to consider is that the two men did not carry the guns into the convention center with them. Here is a question: If two people had the intention of carrying out a mass shooting, wouldn’t they want to take their guns with them? Of course they would. But they didn’t. And what this suggests is that the story of the two being gun aficionados who wanted to visit a shooting range after the tournament is actually plausible. It’s supported by the fact that, when attempting to gain entry to the event, they left their guns in the car.

Next point is the nature of the firearms and how the ammunition was packaged. Of the two guns pictured in BostonGlobe.com’s story, one is a shotgun, the other is a rifle, and the ammunition was not stored in bags. The weapons in question would have been more fitting for a hunting trip than for an urban assault. Such guns would quickly run out of ammunition, presenting an opportunity for people to stop them as the weapons were reloaded. And because the ammunition wasn’t stored in bags, there was no indication of any intent to carry the ammunition on their persons in a theoretical shooting. This evidence suggests that the two really did have the intention of visiting a shooting range after the tournament.

Considering this, fellow Pokemon fans, we shouldn’t be so quick to string these two men up by their toes. Careful consideration of the evidence suggests that they may not have had any malicious intent, after all.

Another point to think about is the fact that these two men really seemed to be Pokemon fans. Think about it: These two weren’t just passive Pokemon players, they received invitations to Worlds. That’s something that not every Pokemon fan can claim to have done. So it’s not like these were two guys that were some Pokemon-haters who were out to discourage Pokemon fans from enjoying their favorite game (with a mass-shooting, of all things). Furthermore, the two belonged to a Pokemon fan group on Facebook. Considering these things, do these two seem like the kind of people who would want to have a shootout at an organized Pokemon event? I don’t think so.

“But what of the evidence to the contrary?” What evidence would that be? Some might point out that the name of their Facebook group was “Mayhem Pokemon Crew”. And? It’s yet another Facebook fan group with an edgy-sounding name. There are a lot of gaming groups with edgy names like that. They are usually so named, not because there is a desire among it’s members for wrong-doing, but just to give their group a sort of appeal.

“But what about the joke about ‘killing the competition’?” It would seem that the two made a really bad joke, and they underestimated people’s capacities to take it seriously. And that they took it seriously wasn’t necessarily a bad thing; making such jokes with weapons makes people seriously consider the safety of people near them. But by the looks of it, it really was just a joke, even if a bad one.

It seems like the Pokemon community generally wants to see these two men locked away, and the liberal media doesn’t seem to care much to discourage them considering that, in turn, this story is being reworked by people with an agenda that involves rewriting the constitution of our republic to take away the right to possess weapons.

The court of people’s minds have already assigned guilt where there might not actually be any.

Considering the information that’s been presented to me so far concerning the two men accused by so many of plotting a massacre at the Pokemon World Championships, I am not convinced that the two actually had any intention of carrying out a shooting at the event.

It would appear as though the only charges that the two men face concern their possession of firearms without a permit, and other firearms charges. This is a matter that is in the hands of the justice system. As for us Pokemon fans, it might actually be mistaken to assign guilt, considering that the evidence points to the two men not being a danger to the Worlds event.

We might find out more about the supposed would-be shooting soon. Until then, it would seem that the two men might be innocent of what so many are accusing them of. I know that people are jittery concerning the recent increase in mass shootings, but it might be that, in this case, there’s no guilt.

As the old saying goes, “It’s better for twelve guilty men to go free than one innocent man be condemned.” That’s something to think about.

UPDATE (9/2/2015): The two would-be shooters have been denied bail. Because of this, the two will be held for about 4 months, the time it would take before their trial would take place.

It would seem that the Facebook conversation between the two wasn’t the only time that the two had joked about guns. There is an ongoing investigation into whether there was a potential mass-casualty situation. That’s something that still seems unsure, but that doesn’t mean that those viewing the case from the outside looking in aren’t already convinced of their guilt. It really doesn’t look good for the two right now, however. That these two have engaged in threatening gun jokes before means that there is at least something wrong with their sense of humor. What’s more, there is also an ongoing investigation into whether one of the two engaged in cyberbullying. If that turns out to be the case, that would make the two look even worse. That’s one of those things that the public hears about and gets sick of pretty quick. That would contribute much more to the desire to make an example out of the two.

The way things are looking, the two have an established history of making threatening gun jokes on the internet, and the matter culminated in the two being found to have brought near an event the same guns that they posted a picture of while making a joke threatening the safety of the event attendees. It really doesn’t look good for these two. Based on the information provided, it’s not surprising that the two were denied bail.

At this point, however, the most serious charges against them concern their possession of firearms and ammunition without permits. They still don’t officially face charges for conspiring to commit a mass murder. At this point, however, it’s hard to tell just what their motives were. That “they seem crazy” is not sufficient to convict someone for conspiring to commit a mass murder, there needs to be substantial evidence for that. However, the history of the two’s online interactions seem sufficient to deny them bail.

The two had a lawyer, who insisted that the two didn’t have any intent to cause harm. However, intent is a hard thing for people to measure. What the two joked about (if they were joking) was a pretty serious matter concerning the safety of a number of people. So it’s not a surprise that the two failed a dangerousness hearing.

What becomes of the two is up for the justice system to decide. For those wondering why I made a post that appeared to defend these two: It wasn’t my intention to defend what either of these two did that may have been wrong. Personally, I find the mentality of those who are out for blood a little distasteful, and I pointed out that there are mitigating factors to this case. Whether the two were guilty of plotting to carry out a mass-murder is something that I still don’t know, considering the information currently available to me (and to just about everyone else). A lot of people seem to have their minds made up, and much of that seems to come from emotional reaction, facilitated in part due to how the information was presented to them, rather than by carefully considering the information available. I’m sure that most people, if they were to appear on the news one day with a serious charge made against them that they were innocent of, would strongly desire that people would carefully consider the case rather than assume the worst about them. But it seems that the court of public opinion isn’t that kind. There are people who have been accused of sexually abusing children that have been cleared of the charges, but their reputations are still ruined. This is because of that “assume the worst” mentality. It might seem like “playing it safe” to some people, but assuming the worst of everyone you meet it taking it too far.

America has a problem, not with guns (which have been around for centuries), but with rotten attitudes, some of which can lead to mass shootings (which have only recently become a trend). America is going to continue having that problem as long as they obsess over padding all the walls and taking away the sharp objects, but not treating the mental disease that makes people want to go on killing sprees.

Animal abusers swiftly punished (but harvesters of human organs still run free)

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In the comments sections discussing the controversial videos that expose Planned Parenthood’s illegal selling of fetal organs, I remember reading about how the media is sparsely reporting the story and the political left is looking the other way, but if there were a video showing animal abuse, there would be immediate consequences.

As it so happens, a videotape by a group called Mercy for Animals has exposed blatant animal abuse at the hands of a farm in Tennessee. Immediately afterwards, Tyson Foods, who in turn supplies chicken to McDonald’s, terminated it’s contract with the farm.

So, there you go. Animals are abused, it’s caught on one video, and it gets immediate media coverage, and action is taken against the perpetrators immediately. However, when it’s human lives that are harvested for organs, and there are a number of videos, some of them hours long, showing evidence of the crimes that have been going on for years, it’s treated with a media blackout, and president Obama voices his support for the perpetrators without having watched any of the video evidence.

There seems to be a disease that is damaging American minds. The double-standard that the media is showing favoring livestock grown for food over their own human specie is just one symptom of it. There have also been more mass shootings in recent times. What this shows is an increasingly callous disregard for human lives.

One would-be incident was the possibly averted shooting that would have taken place at the Pokemon World Championships. There is a possibility that the two would-be gunmen were only joking. Even so, it’s become an occasion for some to use the incident to further their own agenda. There are a lot of people out there that have a problem with video games, and want to impose more futile regulations on them. And, of course, there are those who are out to take guns away from everybody.

Both guns and video games have been around for a long time, but mass shootings are a very recent epidemic. Even if you were to pad every wall and take all the sharp objects away from everybody, if the infirmity of mind that leads to mass killings remains untreated, they’re just going to keep happening.

The blatant disregard for human life is a growing epidemic in America, and the harvesting of human organs by Planned Parenthood is yet another symptom of it. As disgusting as this is, it’s even worse yet when you realize that the president of the United States himself is enabling it. If that’s where things are now, where do they go next?