Lately, I’ve been feeling a little nostalgic. Therefore, I decided to look up places where I used to live on Google Maps’ streetview. Then, out of curiosity, I decided to look up an apartment community that I used to live at.
As I did, I was hit with the community’s rent, which nearly doubled since my time there, just over a decade ago.
It was unbelievable. So, I looked up rent for other places in the area, and the trend was consistent.
It’s only been a few years since I last checked. And just within the last few years, rent has skyrocketed to the point of nearly doubling.
I can tell you why this so deeply affects me. Back when I last lived in that community, I worked a full-time retail job, but somehow lived on what little I made. On most months, I barely scraped by. Most of the time, I was concerned about my finances, because there was nothing I could do to save a significant amount. If anything went even slightly wrong, my financial situation would have been a disaster.
Right now, I’m much better off. But I couldn’t try living the same way I did in the same place, if I were to make the same money. If anyone tried now, what are they supposed to do?
I’ll throw some numbers your way: On the typical month, I took home about $1100 per month. Rent got to be about $800 per month. Of the rest, most went towards other expenses like bills, leaving me with about $30 to spend on stuff to eat. For the time being, I’ll leave you to imagine the kind of food that I ate.
But if the rent were to instead be $1500 per month? Just forget about it, unless you were to share the one-bedroom apartment with one or two other guys.
Lately, I’ve been entertaining the thought of moving back near my hometown. But now? That doesn’t seem reasonable.
Thinking on what could have happened in the last few years that might have resulted in this, there’s one thing that springs readily to mind: an explosion in unchecked immigration has caused demand to soar. Companies like BlackRock have profited huge off of shitty policy that has fucked Americans over, and the current dogwater administration has done jack-all outside of enabling it.
If you’re poor and just getting by, leave a comment and let me know how you’re getting it to work out.
Honestly, I struggled to keep focus. When someone starts spouting metaphysical pseudo-spiritual psycho-babble in the same way that Chris Chan has been lately, I have a hard time staying engaged. At that point, I just assume that they don’t have anything of value to say, and my mind drifts to something I’d rather be doing. Such as playing a video game, or modifying a recipe, or even something as normally dull as watching some soap opera that my mom liked, which goes to show how long the list of things I’d rather be doing can get when I’m stretching what politeness that I have to wait for them to just finish talking so I can say, “Hey, that was something. Thanks for sharing that. Bye.”
At some point, I caught that she didn’t quite understand how to explain the gender she felt like, which sounds like she’s under-qualified to do as much as exercise simple metacognition. Because of this, I wonder whether she was really successfully stringing her sentences together, or my mind was somehow filling in the blanks in a hallucinatory manner, similar to how holes in a wall can disappear when they are covered by a blind spot.
Now, here I am pondering whether this wonder of a person can so much as operate a microwave unsupervised, or whether this task is delegated to a handler in an institution. In either case, it’s clear that she’s not wanting for something to eat.
What I did get out of the video is that some woman out there doesn’t know how to explain a gender that’s a product of her own imagination, but she’s so cocksure that she’ll assert that she still knows it better than you.
Whatever drugs she’s taking to make her happy, they seem to be working a treat.
A symbolic Hamas building is destroyed in retaliation for a brazen attack against Israel. As you can see, Hamas was dealt an “L”.
When our perspective is formed solely by our own culture, we tend to assume that certain values are universal. If you live in western civilization or the various cultures around the world that have been heavily influenced by it, you may have heard of the golden rule.
How it goes is pretty simple: treat others as you wish to be treated. There are other expressions that have a similar meaning, such as, what goes around, comes around.
It’s because of this that, even if a person has trouble remembering each of the Ten Commandments, which are considered the principal points of a Christian society, they’ll still function generally well. In fact, even in secular societies, some of the Ten Commandments might still seem to be upheld, because even the golden rule or a variant thereof seems to be respected.
After all, the Ten Commandments teach not to steal, kill, or bear false witness. Out of each of these, which would you be okay with happening to you?
One might think that these values are universal, upheld by people the world over. That seems reasonable to expect in an advanced and peaceful society that has heavily benefited from these virtues.
But that’s not the reality of the matter. The fact is, there are no universal ethics that are observed by all cultures all over the world.
In the western world, it’s taken for granted that you should not kill a person you disagree with, no matter how much you may disagree with them, as a virtue of freedom of expression.
However, freedom of expression is not a virtue of every society. There are societies today where it’s deemed okay to kill someone who is in “the outgroup”, and the way that you can tell that someone is in the outgroup is if they either say something that someone in the outgroup would say, or if you say something that would put you at odds with the ingroup.
Then there’s the topic of slavery. The British people did great in spearheading the abolishment of ownership of humans by other humans. They were so insistent that there be no slaves in Britain, that if any slaves set foot on British soil, they’d immediately become free. The Americans were not far behind with the Emancipation Proclamation.
As much as we like to think that slavery is a thing of the past, it remains in much of the world, including civilizations that are relatively modernized, such as China and India. In much of the Islamic world, slavery permeates their society. The reason being, according to their religion, it is impermissible to forbid what their prophet Mohammad allowed. And because Mohammad had slaves, slavery has been hard-wired into their religion and society.
While we might like to think that in terms of science, literature, and the arts, it’s the tendency of humanity to tend ever forward, there are cultures on this earth where all scientific and literary achievement has come to a grinding halt, because the prevailing ideology discourages the pursuit of anything outside of itself, and encourages its followers to fanaticism.
As much as certain skeptics may make light of the idea that the civilized world could become subverted by the same brand of ignorance and mysticism, efforts to bring it about have long been underway, and it’s something that they would do well to take seriously, because no society that has been ensnared by that same mystical ignorance has ever freed itself from it without external intervention.
Then there’s the topics of polygamy and pederasty. Most of the civilized world have criminalized these practices, and those who would attempt to engage in them are singled out for the worst treatment, even in the company of other criminals. Knowing this, it can be quite jarring to learn that there are still cultures, even an entire civilization, that refuses to outlaw these practices, simply because a person who they consider a prophet practiced them both.
As optimistic as people today may be about humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrials, it should be known that there is an X-factor involved. We have no guarantee that the first extraterrestrials we meet will even have the same values that we do.
Imagine for a moment that you live on an island community that has never made contact with other islands, or with the outside world. Imagine that you’ve been taught by your elders that a certain way to live is moral and right, and that’s how you’ve lived for your whole life. Then, one day, the people of your island makes contact with people on another island. Then, to the horror of your entire community, everyone on that island lives in a way that your community considers bafflingly immoral, and neither community speaks the same language.
It’s easy to see how, in this scenario, the people of your island might decide that it would be better to go to war with the other island in an effort to put an end to their immorality, and the other island might have already decided to do the same to yours. While most of the world today is hesitant to use force to resolve differences, there are people today who consider the use of force as always justified when confronting another culture with different values!
While the mask has slipped somewhat when touching on the topic of slavery above, it’s time to drop the hypotheticals and start being more specific. A couple days ago, during a holy day that the Jews observe, Hamas initiated a brazen attack on the land of Israel with thousands of rockets, some getting by Israel’s Iron Dome defense. This was concurrent with a ground invasion, in which Hamas militants attacked primarily civilian targets, killing some and taking others hostage. It is believed that foreign nationals are among the hostages.
While Saturday’s attack was brazen, it was an escalation of what has been ongoing for decades. For Hamas to fire rockets into Israeli cities, such as Sderot, has been an ongoing occurrence.
Not everyone understands the nature of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. Contrary to a popular perception, most wars throughout history were not over religion, they were over resources. Superpowers have set up rule over vassal states to ensure their own prosperity. It’s been said that in order to achieve true peace, people need to come to a true understanding. While that helps, it also helps to understand that there is a ruling class that is complicit in fanning the flames of hatred.
Hamas is not motivated by resources. To them, resources are merely a means to an end. Rather, Hamas is motivated by ideology. They have a legendary hatred for Jewish people, and this is because this hatred is hardwired into their religion. In fact, just about everything about their ideology is hardwired into it.
I understand that religion is a sensitive topic, and quite nuanced. I also know that not everyone who professes a religion is the same as its extremists. Still, there are times when it’s more productive to deal in generalities, especially considering the fact that the state of peace in the world is increasingly at stake. What’s more, from what I’ve studied about Islam’s foundational materials and their history, there is ample cause for concern.
While I know that most Muslims want the same things out of life as most anyone else, it still remains that, out of them, the extremists are the primary difference-makers on the world stage, and they are becoming harder to ignore. And the fact is, it’s their ideology that’s making men into killers.
When you understand their ideology, you’ll understand why it’s often Jews who are targeted. In the Islamic theology, there’s a veritable tier list of people who are to be targeted. It goes as follows:
Muslims: At the top, whom Muslims are not to kill.
Christians: Merely tolerated, made to pay a backbreaking jizya tax, but might be killed anyway.
Jews: Tolerated even less, same tax, but are often killed outright.
Infidels: Not tolerated, usually killed right away. Consists of atheists and any religion not mentioned above.
Ex-Muslims: Any Muslim who declares that he’s leaving his religion. These guys can often count the seconds they have left on their fingers.
You might wonder how Jews came to be so disrespected by Muslims. This had to do with the Islamic prophet, Mohammad. At some point in his life, Muhammad was exiled by his own people, the Quraysh (they found his teaching a little intolerant). After that, Mohammad joined a settlement of Jews. At one point, he hired someone to read their Scriptures to him (Mohammad was illiterate). After learning about the Jewish Messiah, Mohammad claimed to be the Jewish Messiah.
They took it as well as you might have expected.
Only this time, instead of trying to have him executed as they might have attempted centuries earlier, they instead ridiculed him. For one thing, because the Messiah is supposed to be a descendant of David, not Ishmael. But also, because Mohammad didn’t know a word of the Scriptures until they were read to him.
Mohammad then told them that they’d know that he was the Messiah, if only they’d read their Scriptures. Mohammad then forbade Muslims from reading the Jewish Scriptures, saying that they doctored them. Putting aside, of course, that Mohammad wouldn’t have even had the idea to call himself the Messiah if the Jewish Scriptures weren’t read to him.
Mohammad handled the laughter the same way that most tyrants would. Once he had an army, he came back and seized the town, imprisoned the women and children, and any man who refused to accept his religion was executed.
Understandably, Jewish comedians today are more cautious.
Most political ideologies today are like EEPROMs: sophisticated, intricate, and with the capability to be updated.
But imagine a circuit board that is little more than a cluster of jumpers and transistors. Horribly inefficient, primitive by today’s standards, with a high potential for failure, and no potential for updates. That’s a great allegory for Sharia, the law of Islamic states.
The Islamic world is different from the rest of the world, because it’s a completely different society built on a completely different foundation. They don’t have the golden rule. They don’t have the same Ten Commandments, but instead a different code with a twist of fatalistic indifference. While they’ve got their own code of righteousness, they’ve elevated ritualism to the point that it becomes suffocating.
It’s a fact that the primary function of government for most of human history has been to mediate disputes between people. The Islamic religion is so dysfunctional in how disputes are to be handled, and how forgiveness is to be administered, that anywhere that Islam becomes the dominant ideology, brutal dictatorships tend to be what surfaces, because that’s the kind of thing it would take to maintain order.
When you understand that there’s a hardwired hatred for Jewish people in the Islamic religion, it’s easy to see their obsession with destroying Israel for what it is. But there’s more to it than that. There’s a difference in values, and it’s a difference that matters.
While western civilization does have its problems, including from those who would undermine it from within, the fact is, it’s a civilization that’s worth defending from those who would threaten it.
A man’s hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities.
Sometimes, I wonder whether the people (yet to be replaced by AI) in legacy media believe what they are typing. In some cases, they have to be malicious, because there’s no other way to explain what passes from their fingertips, into their keyboards, into the ether, and from glowing display screens to the disappointed eyeballs of those who have yet to move on to more relevant information sources.
I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, but right now, I imagine you might be thinking, “Oh boy, now what did they do?”
Only writing hit pieces on a new film bringing attention to one of the worst crimes taking place today, child sex trafficking.
What’s amazing about the Twitter snippet above is that all that it gets right is that Sound of Freedom is about child-trafficking.
Every other data point was wrong. QAnon had nothing to do with it. It’s not a superhero movie. The implication of conspiracy theorism without using the term conspiracy theory is intellectually dishonest. And I prefer not to speculate as to why brainworms feature prominently in the thinking of the Rolling Stone author.
I’m noticing a trend where if a person expresses opposition to the real problem of child sex trafficking, then that person is called a part of QAnon, as if to suggest that being part of QAnon is a bad thing. I think it’s about time we handle such petty name-calling by deciding that we don’t care.
You think I’m with QAnon? Go ahead and think that. I don’t care. Think I’m pedophile-phobic? I don’t care.
Because of what Rolling Stone has to say about Sound of Freedom, a film opposing child sex trafficking, let’s see what they had to say about Cuties, a film about sexualizing minors:
Oh.
But, you know, that’s just Rolling Stone. Let’s see what Washington Democracy Dies In Darkness Post has to say about it:
The use of the term low-budget to describe Sound of Freedom is designed to get you to dismiss it out-of-hand, as though you’re supposed to think a film is not worth seeing unless it a big-name production with a budget in the hundreds of millions.
Now, I admit that I didn’t look into the star of the film, or his opinions on QAnon. That’s simply immaterial to the quality or content of the film itself, which mentions nothing about QAnon.
What I do know is that the film is based on a true story about a man who was on a sting operation to crash a pedophile island party and arrest the predators who were participating. During the film, the man embarks on a journey to reunite a family with two children who were abducted by a fake talent agency. It basically watches like a crime drama, but makes the point that child sex trafficking is a very real problem.
Impressively enough, this low-budget indie film has gone on to rival the summer blockbuster, Indiana Jones! That goes to show that there’s something about Sound of Freedom that resonates with people.
In writing it off as a QAnon film (as though that’s a problem), Washington Post risks alienating themselves from the few readers that they have left in this social media age. But at least they didn’t pull a Rolling Stone and call it a superhero movie, right?
But hold on, they had an opinion about Cuties, too. Let’s see what they had to say about that, presumably before painting their toenails black and lamenting democracy’s death in darkness:
You can tell a lot about a person by what they think is normal. Apparently a movie about sexualizing minors is “an unflinching look at what it means to be a preteen girl”. And if you have a problem with that, then the problem is that you “can’t handle it”.
Of course, if you’re of the opinion that sexualizing minors is not a biggie, then you’d probably have a problem with a movie that depicts child sex trafficking in a negative light.
I heard about Sound of Freedom, not by marketing, but by word of mouth. I was already considering seeing it when a fellow patriot offered to see it with me, so I accepted his offer.
It’s a film I recommend, but with the warning that it’s not for the faint of heart. There are no graphic depictions of abuse, but there are strong implications.
Having seen the movie, I can understand the strong desire to do something about the problem. If a person were to “go vigilante”, they might end up creating more problems than they solve, and perhaps even disrupt investigations already in progress. Perhaps the better course of action would be to contact representatives about legislation that could combat child exploitation. Also of benefit might be researching which candidates might be tougher on child exploitation prior to casting your vote in an election.
Of course, you can also tell other people about the movie, Sound of Freedom, and encourage them to see it. It would seem that word of mouth is still effective in bringing attention to media designed to heighten awareness.
When it comes to vigilantism, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Apparently now we’re supposed to conflate any opposition to child sex trafficking with QAnon, who we are supposed to think are bad guys, even though their main deal is opposing child sex trafficking. What is legacy media’s stake in this game?
Thanks for making it easy to take the moral high ground, I guess.
EDIT: Not The Bee already published an article somewhat similar in tone to this one, with a similar title. I wasn’t aware of it when I published this article, but credit to them for publishing their opinion first.
The insolvency of Silicon Valley Bank has resulted in a run on the banks, which has resulted in more insolvent banks. The Red Pill community has pointed to SVB’s prioritization of DEI initiatives as being a significant factor in the bank’s collapse, and note with a sense of irony that wokeness may have knocked over the first dominoes that may result in a collapse of the global economy.
Of course, it’s also pointed out that SVB may have been targeted by Uncle Sam for having been friendlier to the crypto market. That sounds kinda conspiracy-theoryish, but if that’s the case, I’d say that that effort backfired, considering that Bitcoin shot way, way up in response to the SVB collapse.
More banks have since collapsed due to bank runs, and I’m seeing the more Red Pill types celebrating the accelerated collapse of the woke movement. While I can get behind that, it’s a little disturbing that there are people who seem to be cheering on the destruction of the global economy. It’s enough for me for the institutions to come to the realization that the woke movement is of no benefit for them to get behind. But considering how much harder it would be for everyone if the global economy were to collapse, I wonder what benefit it would be to anyone if things came to that.
Perhaps there would be some benefit, if only to slap more people awake to the true nature of the woke movement, and if people as a whole were to ditch the crutch of the victim mentality in favor of living on one’s merits. Which they may end up doing out of necessity, if things get difficult.
My foresight is not great. If I had better foresight, I would have understood the true nature of the global economy before majoring in Electronics. Live and learn, and all that.
But still, I can see what would come about if economic difficulty were to necessitate meritocratic living. It would mean that ideas such as wokeness would be viewed in terms of its virtues, which wouldn’t be much outside of its ability to manipulate algorithms. Even now, entertainment companies are slowly coming to the realization that woke messaging negatively impacts the quality of their products, which is part of the reason why viewers are starting to turn against subscription-based streaming services. And now, we’re seeing banks collapse after investing in numerous DEI startups.
While the pendulum is already shifting against wokeness, economic uncertainty would further push the general public into meritocracy as they seek out a way of life that actually, you know, pays the bills. Projecting victimhood seldom does as much, and is becoming increasingly evident as being the sport of the interpersonally manipulative.
When matters are difficult, people turn to merit to get by. It’s when motivated by survival that people look at themselves and other people in terms of what they have to offer. That’s the most practical course in challenging times. Because men tend to have greater upper-body strength than women, and the physiology that lends them more towards physically-involved labor, men tend more towards more dangerous jobs that usually pay better than clerical jobs. This means women would tend towards management of resources and maintaining relationships, in part because their relative lack of physical endurance would mean that this would be the safer option for them, but also because women tend to have minds that are better suited to such things. While feminists wouldn’t like it, more women would return to the trad wife life, even if only out of necessity and in consideration of what they’d have to offer in consideration of their innate attributes.
Considering this, what the woke movement shouldn’t want is challenging times, as woke pet causes tend to thrive more in the prosperous conditions that allow for the luxury of societal experimentation, erroneous philosophies, and the inflexibility of thinking that would result from the rigidness that is characteristic of the woke cult.
Yet, challenging times is just what one can expect, considering that it is the natural consequence of experimenting with ideologies such as wokeness.
Fine then, I’ll do what I’ve been doing, year after year, near the end of the year. I’ll post an image that I feel describes the year pretty well.
Like the last three years, I’m just going to be lazy and share something that I found by using the internet, without bothering to shop it:
A theory that has gained popularity in recent times is the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which suggests that major conflicts occur in cycles of 80 years. When applied to the USA, one can point out that roughly 78 years separates the Revolutionary War from the Civil War, and roughly 76 years separates the Civil War from America’s involvement in World War 2. It’s been roughly 77 years since the conclusion of World War 2, so proponents of the Strauss-Howe generational theory are buzzing with the possibility that we are heading towards another major conflict.
Of course, the idea that major conflicts occur because they abide by a schedule is silly. Therefore, there must be something different to which we can attribute this apparent pattern (of course, the similarity in difference in time between these events could be mere coincidence). One possibility is that the difference in time (about 80 years) is the time it takes for most of the members of a generation old enough to remember a conflict to pass away. And without the benefit of the memory of a major conflict, younger generations won’t appreciate the urgency of preventing a similar conflict from repeating itself.
While the generation that fought in World War 2 is held in high regard, the sad fact is, most of the lessons that the western world learned in its light has been forgotten. It’s generally agreed upon that the Nazi Party was bad, but in a cynically unconstructive manner, many of today’s politically involved try as hard as they can to paint their rivals with Hitler’s virtues. In distorting what the dictator was really about, they play a huge part in unlearning the lessons of the war. There is a certain irony in that, mere decades after the Socialism of Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party, for short) was overcome, that countless pseudo-intellectuals tout the benefits of Socialism in coffee shops and college campuses, mainly because they don’t want to work. What’s more, while the same pseudo-intellectuals decry racism, they’re overlooking that Hitler’s racism was the end result of following Darwin’s ideas concerning natural selection to their consequence, an evolutionary theory that the same people accept without question.
One might wonder what would cause a major world conflict, especially in today’s age.
Today’s uninformed like to pretend that most major conflict that has occurred over the course of history has been over ideology, with atheists in particular believing religion to be the prime driver behind conflicts. However, most people who have ever lived that weren’t Muslim wouldn’t care whether someone far off were to bow, kneel, and scrape before some graven image N times a day, so long as they themselves got to live in peace. The fact is, most wars that have ever been fought have been fought over resources.
In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, this winter could prove to be a tad difficult, particularly for Europe. For one thing, Ukraine and Russia are energy rich (with Ukraine’s energy sector having been of particular interest for the Biden administration). In light of tariffs on Russian oil and disruptions in Ukraine’s energy supply, Europe may find itself on a strict energy allocation for the next few months.
What’s more, Ukraine has been one of the world’s top exporters of wheat, and the top producer of wheat for Europe, aside from France and Russia, the latter being the world’s number 1 wheat exporter.
To illustrate, the following chart from Wikipedia shows countries listed by export of wheat:
Wheat is kind of a big deal, as wheat is used to make foods that are substantial in calories, and calories are one of the major sources of energy that humans use to live. If a substantial source of calories, such as wheat, comes to be in short supply, more people could end up going hungry. And when people go hungry, unrest is an anticipated result.
According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, when a major conflict does erupt, it usually involves the most powerful weapons that are available at the time. Based on this reasoning, we might think that we might be looking at the prospect of nuclear war. During World War 2, atomic weapons were being developed, and a couple of them were deployed.
But are nuclear weapons really the most powerful weapons available? Or has the communication age changed the nature of warfare, to the point that information has become a more powerful weapon?
In times past, wars could be won by kinetically attacking the civilian population, which would then lose interest in war, and no longer want to support the war effort. Thus, it was of paramount importance that the armed forces defend the civilian population. Today, there’s no need to deploy a nuclear weapon, as to weaken a country is as easy as producing a steady stream of bullshit that is designed to systematically destroy people’s minds.
The fact is, we live in an age of fifth-generation warfare, which revolves around the use of cyberattacks, misinformation, and psyops. While Alex Jones has become the right’s butt-monkey, he did have a point when he pointed out that there is a war for your mind. State actors understand pretty well that a demoralized population is less likely to get behind its government, and would tend more towards subversive movements, which could unsettle standing dominant economic powers.
Considering all this, I think that 2023 might be an interesting year. If you live in a big city, and have the means to get out of it, it might be a good idea to do so.
It seems like with every new major media release, someone from the questionable sexuality community will come forward with speculation (often stated as fact and foregone conclusion) that a character depicted represents their favorite flavor of sexuality.
As Bounding Into Comics points out, this time around, the speculator is Liam Pomfret, the founder of Bulbagarden, who posits his theory that the newly-revealed gym leader in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Iono, is non-binary and transgender.
Here is the promo video featuring Iono:
Upon what is Liam basing his theory? The initially ambiguous use of pronouns, and her choice of hair dye:
Image from Bounding Into Comics
One would expect the use of such flimsy inferences from an undiagnosed schizophrenic who believes that their TV is communicating secret messages specifically for them, not a Doctor of Philosophy. Our education system is fucked, isn’t it?
Because he was tripping over himself to find trans representation in a Japanese game marketed towards anyone in the family, he looked at the soft blue and pink hair (kinda looks lavender to me) and immediately thought of the trans kid flag, rather than the recurring red/blue coloration of Pokémon’s flagship games, Scarlet and Violet included.
Less than 24 hours later, Nintendo dropped supplemental promotional material concerning Iono. It’s the kind of thing that looks like it would have been released simultaneously with the promotional video that originally featured Iono, so maybe it was hastily thrown together after the fact.
The promo specifies Iono as having the feminine pronoun of “her”. Iono is female. Because we’ve already established that speculation is fun, maybe Nintendo threw this out there because they knew what Liam Pomfret was saying, and were all like “Nope. We’re not having that.”
If “Bulbagarden” sounds familiar, then you’ve been following along back when I pointed out how inappropriate it was that they used their Pokémon fan platform to soapbox about an immigration policy that they blamed on Trump (the problem was actually Obama’s fault, and Trump resolved the matter through an executive order).
This was Bulbagarden’s forum header at the time:
Fucking creepy.
And a fantastic opportunity to warn parents out there that there are some predatory actors in fan communities who use their positions in their respective communities to pressure younger members. Oftentimes, their activities involve performing “favors” over video chat. Of course, there are many ways that bad people can take advantage of children online.
That PSA aside, it can also be pointed out that there is a certain obsession with pointing to Japan’s status as a relatively advanced, orderly, and peaceful society. Oftentimes, someone on the radical left will attempt to glom onto a form of Japanese media, in a sad attempt to make the case that the Japanese are actually just like them.
What these attempts overlook is how Japan as a society got to be as advanced as it is. Japan is a heavily structured and stratified society that favors family, career, merit, and respect. To further reduce that, Japan is conservative. In fact, it’s one of the most conservative societies in the world.
Sometimes, a weeaboo pops up who thinks of Japan as being their kind of society, probably because they got ideas as to what it’s like from anime and manga. The fact is, Japan is a society of norms. If you move to Japan, you’re expected to conform to the norms. If you don’t want to, then you don’t belong in Japan. It’s as simple as that.
Red light districts aside, Japan is an advanced, peaceful, and orderly society. If your thinking is different from theirs, that might have a lot to do with it.
Iono is pretty far from the first character from Japanese media to have gotten this kind of attention. It wasn’t long ago that Shiver from Splatoon 3 came under scrutiny as possibly non-binary, but it turned out she was female. Nanachi from Made In Abyss is a frequent target of this, because author Akihito Tsukushi prefers to leave Nanachi’s sex as unknown. Or, more famously, there’s Bridget from Guilty Gear, who is male.
That’s not to say that there are no “non-binary” characters in Japanese media. However, such characters are seldom portrayed as sympathetic. But why would they, when there is something obviously wrong with their thinking?
Iono is merely a character in a work of fiction. She’s just made up, therefore nothing about her has any bearing on the reality of any matter. It doesn’t matter whether she represents anything, except maybe in the deluded thinking of those who lack the ability to parse reality without the assistance of a fictional construct. If this describes you, then you need to seek help. And get over yourself, while you’re at it.
One of the talking-points that comes up in politics is diversity. Particularly, racial diversity (though, as my smarter readers are aware of, there is more to diversity than looking different). In this area, the left (particularly Democrats) love to boast that they’re the pro-diversity party, even going as far as to pretend that their rivals are opposed to diversity, as though they themselves were always diverse, all along.
However, that’s a misconception. But it’s a misconception that they’ll feed into, knowing that it benefits them.
The fact is, both sides of the American political climate are for diversity. The difference between them is in how diversity is achieved.
First, the right (usually represented by the likes of Republicans and Libertarians). The American political right believes that diversity should come about naturally, and to this end, a person’s race should not be considered in their endeavors.
Ideally, an employer should consider a candidate based on their merits. If this were the case, people of different races will be present in a large enough business by virtue of the fact that no race is being purposely excluded. Likewise, a college considering an applicant should consider the potential student based on the likelihood that they’d succeed in the environment, without regard to the applicant’s race. Under these conditions, diversity on campuses wouldn’t just be likely, they’d be expected.
Practices that discriminate based on race, such as racial steering and block-busting would be illegal, as they would exclude qualified candidates and applicants based on race.
The left, as exemplified largely by Democrats, has a different approach when it comes to diversity. Their difference in approach provides an excellent illustration in how their political philosophy as a whole differs from their opponents.
The left’s approach when it comes to diversity involves achieving diversity through top-down intervention.
Rather than allowing diversity to occur naturally, the left prefers to pressure employers and institutions to achieve diversity with quotas. As the left would have it, the representation of each individual race in each setting must be consistent with their own ideal of how each race should be represented. Whether this is through equal representation of each race, or consistent with each race’s representation in the general population, the left isn’t always clear.
When you understand the left’s tendency towards top-down controls, even on the societal level, you’ll have an easier time understanding why social engineers tend towards the left.
When you consider the left’s tendencies towards top-down societal controls, the implications should give you the chills, especially if you’re of the opinion that each individual should have the freedom and autonomy to determine for themselves how they live their lives.
And I would think that most people would prefer to make choices for themselves, such as which car to buy, without having the selection limited by a governing body they does not understand the nuances of an individual’s decisions. And, for that matter, an individual should have freedom of choice as to who their spouse would be, without having their selection limited based on race, provided their selection consents. And the couple should be free to produce the number of offspring that they choose, without external manipulation or intervention.
In fact, any form of external manipulation or intervention in any of these choices should absolutely not be tolerated.
However, the left is of a different mind. They are generally more favorable of the idea of top-down control on the part of the government, even as far as engineering society into the shape of their preference. This is in stark contrast with the right, which favors limited government, by principle.
The right tends more towards libertarianism, while the left tends more towards authoritarianism. As one examines their respective policy positions, this becomes evident. The moniker of liberal really doesn’t fit the left very well.
If we were to examine the American political right in good faith, it would be apparent that they desire diversity. Not only that, they have a far superior way of achieving it, which involves a stronger society, by reason of important roles going to the best qualified, rather than to diversity hires.
The left might try to paint this as a pretext for racial discrimination, but there wasn’t much expectation of an argument in good faith from those lacking moral absolutes. While that may sound like a cheap shot, it holds up with the observation that a larger representation of leftists are of the idea that human government is the highest level of authority, and that there’s no truth but power. But that’s an issue for another essay.
There’s something that’s been on my mind for a while, and I think this can serve as a warning to those in their twenties who have the idea of spending the next 40 years of their life working for some other man.
A long while ago, I started working a new job. It seemed like typical work, but before too long into it, my supervisor started suggesting certain procedures. You probably already know that a “suggestion” from a supervisor usually comes down to “do as you’re told, or there’s gonna be trouble”, but there’s something more to that particular instance: the procedures that he was suggesting did nothing to make my job more productive, they actually did just the opposite.
It didn’t take long to figure out that for the supervisor it was a matter of pride, or that the person I was replacing didn’t put up with the guy’s shenanigans (my co-workers told me as much).
Because we’ve grown up watching a lot of television, we’ve had it drilled into our impressionable little heads that it’s the hard workers who are the winners, and that if we keep at it, management will eventually take notice, and we’ll achieve that sweet payoff. Of course, as we grow more cynical over the course of our exposure to the real world, we eventually realize that our collective work ethics are being harvested to make other people rich.
In the workplace wilderness, those who actually produce value are prey animals. Their natural predators are those who produce bloat.
Bloat predators usually don’t do much of anything. But when they smell blood, then they’re off to get a piece of the action. This happens when there’s a problem somewhere.
Those who produce value can usually get by without the help of a bloat predator. Often, solving a problem is as simple as making an adjustment to a value or two in a process. However, the bloat predator is out to justify his existence, so he’ll continue to hack away at the issue long after the matter has been solved to the satisfaction of the rest of production. A problem solved by simple adjustments can be expanded into extensive record-keeping, periodic procedures, purchases of new gadgets (that aren’t guaranteed to work), redundant measurements, and on and on.
While the productive prey can attempt to confront a bloat predator, the matter usually won’t go well for the productive, as the typical bloat predator would just label them as problematic, and end up having their way because they tend to be more connected (they know which nuggets to blow).
Over the course of my work life, I’ve encountered bloat. There’s not much that one can do about it. When it gets excessive, it might be time to start looking around, as the company you’re working for might soon be going nipples-up. If you’ve got a side-hustle, it might not be a bad idea to put more energy into that, even if just for mental health. But if you can somehow manage to become self-employed, that might be ideal. In that case, you can decide for yourself how much bloat would interfere with productivity (ideally, it wouldn’t).
But in most workplaces, unproductive people who produce bloat are a fact of life. And for those who produce value, they are a vexation.
A common position of the Malthusian is that overpopulation is resulting in an overconsumption of resources, which may result in humanity endangering itself. Professing this motivation, the Malthusian feels justified in making actions that prohibit procreation among human beings, in an effort to keep human numbers in check. To this end, they encourage people to live single.
However, it’s easy to see that people living single actually consume more resources than if a male-female couple were to share the same dwelling space.
This should be simple to comprehend when you look at the resources consumed by couples, as opposed to what they’d consume if they were to live independently.
In terms of dwelling space, two people living single would require more space overall, as they would live in different homes, each with different sinks, refrigerators, air conditioners, and bathroom facilities. On the other hand, a couple would share all these facilities. Couples would easily use up half as much living space.
Next, let’s consider utilities. In the summer time, when people are uncomfortably hot, two people living single would air condition two different living spaces, whereas a cohabiting man and woman would only need to air condition one living space. Thus, the consumption of electricity would easily be halved when couples live together, and the electrical grid would be far less stressed.
Then, there’s winter time, when people get uncomfortably cold. A person with a one-bedroom flat in the northeast United States can easily spend as much as $200 a month keeping their place warm in the winter. However, a couple wouldn’t face the same hardship, as they’d share the utility expense, and their situation would be better still for the warmth the couple would provide one another.
When it comes to transportation, matters are less clear. I’ve seen couples that manage by sharing one automobile, but this isn’t always desirable for every situation. However, when people live by themselves, they each require their own transportation, which in many cases means many single people needing their own cars. This gets more significant as the result is the consumption of more fossil fuels, as well as ethanol, which is largely derived from corn. This is more significant as concerns agriculture and landmass when you consider that most corn grown in the United States is not for consumption as food, but for conversion to fuel.
As one considers all this, it’s plain to see who makes a killing off of Malthusianism: Real estate interests, utility companies, and oil barons.
If more people are living independently of other human beings, that means more people spending more on products and services than if they were to share these things with other human beings. Real estate companies profit when more people are buying homes and apartments for themselves than if they were to cohabit. Utility companies maximize the number of spending customers when each potential customer is spending for themselves, rather than sharing the benefit with another person. Oil barons profit huge when demand is increased, and this happens when more people are fueling more cars, rather than sharing cars with partners.
From this, we see that the product of Malthusianism is reduced living space, resources being depleted, and the environment being destroyed. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what many of their own sincere believers may have wanted. But for the ones that really benefit from the ideology, it means dying rich while fucking over the entire world for successive generations.
All while pretending that the opposite is happening.
Magnetricity 