Category Archives: Regressive Leftism

Twitter Sued for $250 Million Over Anti-Conservative Bias

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twitter donkey bird.png

Twitter is being sued by Devin Nunes over the platform’s anti-conservative bias, and the platform’s failure to moderate content that impersonates his mother, and his cow.

If you were to read this story from traditional media outlets, you’d have to read between the lines of their scathing bias, which wouldn’t be much of anything new if you are among those that still pays attention to them. And, naturally, they’re focusing more on the false accounts that defame him, considering that this gives them opportunity to pass along the tweets that ridicule him, as Daily Mail is doing.

But if you’re up for some old-fashioned media not giving anyone to the right of Karl Marx a chance, check out what Mashable has to say about it. The following quotation in particular caught my eye:

“Sure, maybe his feelings are really hurt, but given the fact that Trump and others have brought up strengthening libel laws multiple times — the old “you can’t take what you dish out” syndrome — it could be setting up more nefarious actions to come.”

Yeah, “nefarious actions” like making sure that the corporate media isn’t getting away with libel, which it committed against the “MAGA kids” who were falsely branded as a hate mob.

I’ve had a number of social media accounts in the past. From what I remember, impersonating someone else and posting defamatory content was against the terms of service of most of them. I know that it’s grounds for a civil case, which leads us to the story being discussed, today.

As for whether there is an anti-conservative bias in social media and the tech industry, there’s pretty much no question that there is. Shadow-banning has been a weapon of choice to ensure that conservative voices aren’t heard. If you haven’t heard of shadow-banning, that’s when a person is allowed to post, but far fewer people see the poster’s content. It’s a way to silence someone without them knowing what’s going on. It’s one of the expressions of the left-wing establishment’s control over social media.

If you’re wondering what it’s like to be a conservative voice in social media, imagine that you’re playing a game of chess against a child. Imagine that in this game of chess, you’re not allowed to move your pieces to the other side of the board. Not only that, you’re not allowed to capture the opponent’s pieces. Worse yet, the child gets to change the rules of the game while the game is in progress. More disturbing still, the child is convinced that you’re a hateful, evil person who deserves to lose for disagreeing with them about anything.

You may have wisdom and know how the game is played, but the child owns the board and can set things up so that you don’t stand a chance.

One point of view on the matter is that Twitter is a private company, and if they wanted to, they could ban conservatives altogether. Whether that’s the case or not, I would expect an American-run company to conduct itself in a manner consistent with American values, including the principles of protecting free expression on a platform conductive to the free and open exchange of ideas.

In any case, I think the rest of us can appreciate that liberals are making this about an attempt to regulate social media, and that they were finally made to admit that regulating something would be a bad idea.

The next time you try comparing someone to Hitler…

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just say no

If you’ve been compared to Adolf Hitler or called a Nazi at some point, you’re pretty far from alone. The first time I was compared to Hitler, it wasn’t while discussing politics in an online forum, it was in an IRL chat about video games.

People seem eager to compare those that they disagree with to either Hitler or the Nazi party, especially the closer they are to losing an argument. But do these people really know what Adolf Hitler or the Nazis were really about?

It seems like all that most people really know about them was that they didn’t like Jews. But that in itself doesn’t make for a political ideology or philosophy, especially considering the Jews’ relative lack of influence. That’s like someone asking you what your religion is, and you answering “I’m not Zoroastrian”. There has to be more to what you believe in than you just saying that you’re not a member of a minority group.

The general consensus is that Hitler was right-wing. Those on the right usually answer that by saying that Hitler supported gun control, which isn’t a very right-wing stance to take.

But what was Hitler and his Nazi party really about?

People talk about Nazis all the time, but the topic of the Volkish party rarely comes up, even though the ideology of the Volkish was Nazism in its embryonic form. The Volkish were a folkish movement (Volkish literally means “folkish”) characterized by a rejection of urbanization and an embrace of rural and natural living. They were heavily conservationist and rejected industrialization. They were largely naturalistic in their thinking, and some of them embraced naturism, with not a few of them being nudists. Many of them were vegetarians; Hitler’s professed vegetarianism was a consequence of him belonging to the movement, though as vegans point out, Hitler didn’t really stay true to his vegetarian diet.

So yeah, the Volkish that Hitler belonged to were largely hippies. They were the most hellish hippies in history. Their beef with the Jews largely stems from the fact that Jews embraced technology, urbanization, and were meat-eaters. It also didn’t help that many of the conspiracy theories about the Jews that persist to this day were around back then, too.

The Volkish switched gears once they seized significant political control of Germany and became rebranded as the Nazi party. At that point, they seized control of the military-industrial complex and turned Germany into a socialist state.

Don’t believe me? “Nazi” is shorthand for “National Socialist German Worker’s Party”.

Next time you try to malign someone by comparing them to a maniacal dictator, check to make sure that you yourself do not ideologically align with the very same dictator.

Covington student files defamation suit against CNN

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dxuvqgzwsaet6_nThe smiling kid who may very well take down a corrupt media.

In one of the more refreshing recent news developments, one of the “MAGA kids” students is suing CNN for defamation after CNN had carelessly portrayed them as a hate mob.

As you may recall, back in January, the corporate news outlets have covered a story about a group of kids in a confrontation with a native American group, portraying them as hatefully throwing taunts at an elderly man. Since then, mainstream news outlets have backpedaled after full video of the confrontation had been posted online, which shows that the only hateful rhetoric thrown out came from “another organization”, which the corporate media seems to be too terrified to acknowledge by name.

The Black Hebrew Israelites.

As a result of CNN’s careless coverage, the Covington students that pretty much did nothing but stand there smiling have been repeatedly threatened by those naive enough to take the corporate media at face value. Therefore, the student at the center of the controversy has decided to sue CNN for $275 million for defamation.

There’s a lesson that the corporate mainstream information media needs to learn, and that’s that there are repercussions for carelessly handling information, even if you feel justified in how you’re portraying someone by reason of the narrative that you prefer to peddle. If people like the MAGA kids who have been victimized by the corporate media’s irresponsibility with their informational positions make it expensive for them to libel, that just may be what it takes for them to feel discouraged from doing so.

While we’re on the topic, there’s something that has had me concerned, and this is an opportunity to bring it up. It seems as though tech companies have an interest in making sure that the corporate media’s biggest mistakes don’t receive too much attention.

The reason why I bring this up is because I voiced my opinion on the MAGA kids incident back in January. Since posting my article, I’ve noticed a suspicious trend in the traffic to this site:

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What’s pictured is this site’s traffic. As you could see, prior to the posting of the article, the traffic to this page was widely varied, and there have been days when the traffic was substantially higher than usual. But in the days after it was published, the traffic to this site was steady, and traffic seemed to approach a sort of “cap”.

Noticing this, I decided to perform an experiment by taking the article off this site by reverting it to draft. Afterwards, the traffic to this site returned.

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Something seems suspicious.

It’s not news that tech companies have long had a left-wing bias, but I suspect that search engines are now silently throttling traffic to pages that refuse to toe the line for the left wing narrative. This has apparently been going on for a long time. Back in 2017, I made an article criticizing the SJW movement for comparing itself to the Resistance from the Star Wars films.

As noted in an edit to the article itself, I performed searches for the article to try to find it on Google, but had difficulty in finding it. A Bing search showed the article as the first result of my first attempt at finding it. Today, a DuckDuckGo search similarly brought the page right up as the first result of my first attempt at finding it.

It would seem like something suspicious is going on with Google.

David statue Magnetricity Google censored

pioneer 1 magnetricity censored by google

100 francs eugene delacroix magnetricity censored by google

Today, the librarians of the digital age don’t have to go as far as to burn books, all it takes to silence someone is to omit them from search results. Now that Google has been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, why trust them for informational purposes? It’s prime time to consider setting an alternative search engine as your default.

I’m interested in seeing whether mainstream news outlets change the way they handle information in the face of a public willing to fight back by making it expensive for them to commit libel. Perhaps the best way to stop the tide of defamation from news outlets is to ensure that they can’t afford it.

As for what we the public can do about tech companies that are making apparent attempts to censor us, perhaps the best thing we can do for the time being is use the services of their competitors.

TWAT News: The MAGA Kids and the Crime of Smiling

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DxUVqgZWsAET6_n.jpgThe smile that drove millions of leftists insane.

There are still ongoing developments surrounding the MAGA kids incident, but the dust is beginning to settle, and what’s becoming apparent is a whopper of an indictment against corporate news outlets and leftist-controlled social media.

What it comes down to is that a group of kids showed up to a confrontation already in progress, and smiled at the ridiculousness that was taking place. Afterwards, the leftist elements of social media and the corporate mainstream information media went full-tilt to smear the children, because they hate Trump and the MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats that the children were wearing.

As the institutional leftist shills would have you believe, the kids were committing a hate crime by provoking a native American during a confrontation. If you’re interested in knowing what really happened, I did manage to find a full video of the incident. If you’re not up for watching it, that’s understandable, considering that the video is over an hour and 40 minutes long. But if you’re interested in seeing the involvement of the MAGA kids, skip to 1:12:00, as the video poster suggests.

The video starts with an argument between the Black Israelites and Native Americans concerning which of the two are the true Israelites. That last sentence is a doozy, so go ahead and read it again and allow it to sink in just what we’re dealing with.

If you’re wondering who the Black Israelites are, they’re a group of professing Jews that make a point of saying that the Israelites were actually black (while ignoring all the genetic information we have concerning who belongs to Israel and Judah). While I know that not everyone in the group is like the ones in the video, some of their most passionate members are among the most insufferable people in the religious landscape.

Somehow, I get the idea that throwing taunts at people in the street is not how you’re supposed to demonstrate that you’re a model nation. The moment that I saw that Black Israel was involved and taunting people in traditional garb, I strongly suspected that the video wasn’t going to show us the best of humanity.

But things got more interesting when a group of Catholic students happened to be nearby, and they were planning on attending an anti-abortion rally while wearing MAGA hats.

The Native Americans that were present attempted to de-escalate the situation by singing while beating on drums. That’s good on them. While this was going on, the MAGA kids (as they would come be known) just looked on and smiled, even as the Native Americans went right up to them.

And, that was it. They just smiled. Could anyone blame them? It had to have occurred to them just then the sheer ridiculousness of what was taking place. There was a group of Black Israelites proudly boasting of their professed heritage. There was also a group of singing and dancing Native Americans playing instruments. And they themselves were schoolkids in MAGA hats that just happened to be there on the way to an anti-abortion rally. Even in Washington DC, one would have a hard time finding a more ridiculous scene.

But apparently, something about school kids in MAGA hats with big, beaming smiles rubbed the leftist shills in social media the wrong way, because they went full-on cray-cray trying to smear them by (what else) accusing them of committing a hate crime.

Suddenly, the blue checkmark typicals joined forces and proceeded to dox a bunch of kids in an effort to threaten their school into expelling them and ruin their career prospects for just happening to be somewhere and not harm anyone. All because they didn’t like their hats.

Among those participating in the doxing was a former contributor to Vanity Fair, Kurt Eichenwald, who stated that the kids should be denied work “in perpetuity”, and in an effort to make it easy to identify (and harass) the kids, he shared photos of them on his Twitter account.

The thing about the leftist media is that they have something to prove. They face the ongoing threat of the internet and social media driving them into obsolescence. So, they dove right in and joined in the smear campaign.

Now, why would we expect something like investigative journalism from an outdated media outlet that mainly caters to old people and kids that don’t know any better?

Nathan Phillips was one of the Native Americans in the video shown playing the drum in one kid’s face. The corporate media made sure we knew that he was a Marine Corps veteran. According to Phillips, the kids were repeatedly chanting, “Build that wall, build that wall.”

That’s interesting, because we have video of the confrontation above, and that didn’t happen. Oops. Now, it’s coming to light that Nathan Phillips has misrepresented his military service, as reported by the Washington Post.

So, a bunch of kids in MAGA hats are being smeared and threatened and libeled all over the place, and all anyone has to go on are the claims of a proven liar?

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Watching old media backpeddle in real time is quite refreshing. In fact, an article on Yahoo News courtesy of The Wrap pretty much admitted that the students did nothing but stand there and offer no disrespect. The Native Americans didn’t do any harm, either. If anything, they were attempting to defuse a situation. It’s evident that the real bad guys were the Black Israelites, who themselves were the ones throwing out the racist rhetoric.

In fact, if you want to see who the real violent and hateful people in the confrontation were, go to 11:55 in the video (link goes right there). That’s a sampling of their threats and verbal abuse. What kind of religious language is that?

I don’t own a MAGA hat. But you know something? I’m actually considering getting one.

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It’s become an expression of solidarity with those who have been slandered on social media and libeled by the press. Institutional leftism has gone full-on to try to shame a bunch of kids just for wearing these hats, and the outcome is that the hats themselves look far more attractive.

Apparently, smiling while wearing one of these hats is what it takes to get a Disney producer to threaten you with a wood chipper. A Disney producer. Complete with an image of someone being stuffed into a wood chipper. Congrats to these kids for being able to draw that out of a producer who works for a company that makes family entertainment.

I really don’t know how to follow that up. Seems like an interesting place to end the article. I know that 2019 is just getting started, but leftism is going to have to work pretty hard to outdo themselves.

New Ghostbusters Film May Indicate that the Film Industry is Coming Out of the Intersectional Muck

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The teaser for the upcoming Ghostbusters sequel doesn’t tell us a lot about the movie, other than the fact that there will be a new one. It’s pretty a much a minute of zooming up on the Hearse:

So, they’re making a new one. We also learned that it will be directed by Jason Reitman, the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original two. Here is what he has to say about it:

I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a 6-year-old visiting the set. I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans. This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ’80s happened in the ’80s, and this is set in the present day.

Fans are thrilled about this, because they’re returning to the story in the continuity of the original two films. They’re also anticipating that this means that the 2016 reboot with the all-female team of Ghostbusters will be rendered non-canon, and strictly ignored.

Not everyone is happy about what’s going on, particularly Leslie Jones, who went on a Twitter rant that somehow brought Trump into this:

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I had no idea that the President of the United States could decide what movies were made or who to cast in them. I’d have imagined that it would have been more difficult for a Republican to have pull over the film industry, considering the institution’s history as a left-wing vehicle. In fact, the entertainment industry in general has picked on Trump at every opportunity, so it’s hard to imagine that they’re being sympathetic towards him only just now.

The film industry is a business. Like any business, they make money by making products that people actually want. As the film industry found out the hard way in 2016, people don’t want a movie where the only joke told over and over again is “girls rule, boys drool”. Generally speaking, an on-the-nose political statement doesn’t go over well, but it’s mush worse when an established franchise that had little if anything to do with feminism gets turned into yet another tool on the intersectional workbench.

The film, comic, and the rest of the entertainment industry would do well to remember that they make products in order to sell them. Ham-fisted political statements don’t usually go over very well. Get woke, go broke.

get woke go broke

The upcoming Ghostbusters film might be a sign that the film industry is starting to come up out of the intersectional muck. As they do so, we shouldn’t be surprised to see the usual shills banging on pots and pans as they seek out every opportunity to be offended. But because we already know what their opinions are, why even ask them? And if their opinions drag movies down, why should they even be considered?

The answers seem obvious to the rest of us, but we’ve been waiting for the film industry to catch up and come to the obvious conclusion.

Let’s be honest about millennials.

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For a while now, it seems as though the millennial generation has been the butt of many jokes, even among social commenters who fall into the millennial category. You’ve likely heard a few of these jokes yourself; that they are entitled or want a gold star just for participating.

However, I’ve yet to actually meet in person someone from the millennial generation who lives up to the stereotypes that surround them. To put this in perspective, I’ve recently graduated from college, where I was surrounded by millennials that had ample opportunity to live up to the stereotypes in question. The fact that the school I attended was a two-year trade school may have been a factor, but it remains that I didn’t meet there even one millennial that lived up to the stereotypes. I know that I’m speaking from my own experience, but I think the sample size was way more than sufficient to say that the stereotypes about millennials were highly over-exaggerated.

I think it’s about time to make some honest observations concerning millennials.

For one thing, the very designation of “millennial” is arbitrary, and not very well-defined. From what I can tell, a person is considered to be a millennial if they’ve been born from sometime in the early 1980’s to early 1990’s. The precise timing is not agreed upon, but that’s the general idea. However, the idea that a person who is born before a precise point in time would have different values than a person who was born after that point in time would ignore the fact that a society’s trends concerning values tends to shift gradually, often in response to slow changes in culture and other conditions, such as economy.

Even though the use of the term “millennial” is vague and can apply to a potentially wide group of people, I’ll continue to use this term in this analysis, as it can still be helpful in making observations concerning generalities.

When millennials are criticized, it’s often by baby-boomers that grew up in different economic conditions, and seem to have the expectation that if an approach similar to what worked for them once-upon-a-time were to be applied today, it would consistently yield identical results. Such a position would be entirely ignorant of the changing conditions of the economic climate, and is in stark denial of the challenges that millennials have to deal with.

For one thing, you’ve probably heard it said that “a college education doesn’t count for as much as it used to.” What baby boomers assume this to mean is that there isn’t much point to pursuing a college education. After all, they were able to get their careers started without the aid of a college degree. But what this really means is that those who choose to forgo a college education stand less of a chance.

Consider how much stricter the educational requirements are to start a successful career. My grandfather was able to get his life together, and he didn’t even need a high school education to do it. My father didn’t obtain a college degree, but he didn’t need one. A person today who is getting started usually requires a college education to get things going, and they’re expected to have one. What’s more, a college degree is no guarantee of success.

If anyone has spent a significant amount of time searching for a job lately, the following might just be a lot to take in. At one point, finding a job was easy. If a person really wanted a job, all they had to do was walk down into town to a few businesses and ask for work. It wasn’t unrealistic for a person to be hired by the end of the day. A person may be expected to present some personal information, but usually not much. A person might have to fill out a job application, but it was okay for them to not be filled out completely if you didn’t have all the information, and mistakes could be easily overlooked.

This was a few decades ago, but this was a pretty accurate description of the conditions that your parents and grandparents had to find work in.

Now, compare it to today. Nowadays, if you walked into a store and asked for an application, you’d get laughed at, because nearly every employer has you apply online. They’ll seldom have a paper application to give you, and if they did, your application might end up in a filing cabinet labelled “Only if the federal government makes us”. They expect you to apply online, and they’ll think you’re weird if you insist on writing on trees.

If you have a felony conviction, it’s pretty much an automatic bar to employment. I know that the applications say otherwise, but that doesn’t mean that the application is telling you the truth. You’re expected to tell the truth on the application, but that doesn’t mean the application will do the same for you. And if you trying leaving a felony conviction off your application, the company is likely to perform a background check, so they’d find out about it and reject your application. This is a one-strike-and-you’re-out system.

Not only that, you’re expected to have a resume. The resume is to be well-formatted and filled with buzz-words that are designed to catch the attention of the automatic filters when submitted electronically. Never heard of those filters? Then most of your online resume submissions were likely never even viewed by human eyes. Online resume submissions can be expected to pass through filters that seek out buzzwords and education credentials to ensure that the people applying for a position are actually qualified, and not just wishful thinkers who pad out their attempts at career changes with “hard working” and “willing to learn”.

I know that they do this from experience. I learned assembly programming in college, which means that I can program in assembly-level language for microcontrollers. Most employers in the field of electronics seem impressed by this. However, after adding this to my resume and uploading it to a couple job search websites, I started to get invited to interviews for the position of “Assembly Worker” at factories. This certainly isn’t the same thing as assembly programming, and I decided to let the recruiters know. I ended up in an email exchange between two recruiters for the same company, and was CCed an email that contained a copy of my resume. The occurrences of the word “assembly” in the resume were highlighted, indicating that they were a hit in their automated searches.

They didn’t read my resume to determine what I could actually do. The only reason they even saw my resume is because of a buzz word that made it through their filter. The sobering truth is, it’s getting to the point that resumes need to be deliberately optimized to game the system to give the applicant the best chance of landing a job.

And if the resume is actually seen by a human being, you’ve only cleared the first hurdle. One general manager at a store I used to work at was fond of telling his employees that there were over 200 applications for every available position.

All this for what? A position that pays either minimum wage or maybe a few dollars above it. That’s America today.

When you consider this, it’s easy to see why so many millennials seem gung-ho about a socialist revolution. They’d be wrong about it, but at least it’s understandable why they feel that way. Your grandfather may be happy to proclaim the benefits of capitalism, but that’s because capitalism actually worked for him, and benefited him well. If you’ve ever wondered why older people value hard work so heavily, it’s because they were brought up in a time when hard work had far move obvious and immediate benefits. In fact, in their day, if a person was able to get any full-time job, they had stability and were considered to be pretty well-off.

This contrasts pretty heavily with today, where two guys working full time might be able to hold down a rented apartment.

Speaking of housing, it’s assumed that millennials aren’t interested in buying houses. This isn’t because they don’t want houses, it’s because houses are pretty difficult for them to attain.

The millennials reading this might be shocked, but at one point, it was reasonable for a person to be able to buy a home. It wasn’t just “maybe a few people could do it”, but “reasonable for most”. And I don’t mean renting it, I actually mean buying it. As in, you own the home, and the land around it.

What changed is the housing market. People bought up properties with the intention of reselling them for a profit. While it’s not hard to blame them for doing this, the process repeated enough times that the prices for homes have gotten very high, well outside the finances of most millennials. Finances are what determines whether someone can buy a home, and we’ve already examined what a horrendous dumpster-fire the American job market is. In summary, the means are reduced, coming by them is more difficult, and homes are more expensive.

This is the kind of environment that millennials have come into. While they may be loathe to admit it, their parents have some blame to take. The parents of millennials have largely accepted fad parenting that is, for some reason, afraid to either discipline or instill realistic expectations in their children.

Many millennials have had parents that have told them that they can be anything that they want to be. Not only that, the frequent coddling and failure to discipline has set these children up to be poorly prepared for the real world. Worse yet, they quickly become depressed and disillusioned when they fail to live up to their parents lofty expectations. It certainly doesn’t help that they’re being incessantly mocked by various pundits and media outlets for failing to gain a foothold in a world with little in the way of opportunities.

The parents of millennials got while the getting was much easier, and seem to believe that their successes are easily repeatable, enabling them to be highly judgemental when the next generation doesn’t perform just as well, overlooking that conditions are much worse.

The responsibility for the upbringing of a child falls squarely on the child’s parents. This is an axiom that has held up throughout history, as it does today. Yet, baby boomers and their parents grew up in the world of rapidly-advancing convenience, and as a result have developed the mentality that many of life’s inconveniences will be alleviated. Tragically, they seemed to have included child-rearing as being among those inconveniences that they’ve left for others to tend to.

As too many people see it, the upbringing of a child can be left to the education system. The education system, on the other hand, saw the upbringing of children as the responsibility of their parents. For a while. Increasingly, the education system has taken the stance that if they’re going to be left to teach children values, the values being taught were going to be their own. This became increasingly tragic as the education system steadily became co-opted by those with left-wing viewpoints, who view traditional values as being “old-fashioned” and tending towards obsolescence.

Eventually, the millennial generation ended up being experimented on by being fed a slurry of ridiculous ideas that are pretty much insane. At the risk of facing academic consequences, students felt an obligation to either comply or keep their mouths shut. To the credit of millennials, more and more of them seem to be coming to recognize these ideas for the madness that they are.

While it’s sad that millennials have developed the way that they have, it’s more surprising still that they’re being relentlessly mocked for developing in the manner that they were brought up, and for failing when the odds are stacked against them. It’s great that many of them are starting to come to, picking up the tatters of their lives and getting things together.

What’s more, there seems to be high hopes for what’s called “gen Z”, the also-poorly-defined generational group that comes after millennials. This largely has to do with the fact that gen Z is apparently more values-oriented than their predecessors, seeing what’s wrong with their approach and deciding to avoid the same mistakes. It’s not necessarily a “values as a counter-culture” deal, either. Gen Z really seems to have an interest in doing better than those before them. In a sense, gen Z also has the odds stacked against them, as they’re actively resisting an establishment that teaches that sexual perversion and gender confusion are normal. But this makes their perseverance all the more commendable.

If we were to take an honest look at millennials, we’d see them as being the victims of a culture that was cultivated by their predecessors. The best thing that they can do is what many of them are coming around to, and that’s to realize that they’ve been led in the wrong direction, recognize that the values that they’ve been ridiculed for were not their own to begin with, and determine to do better going forward.

And if baby boomers start to get too arrogant, just remind them that they were the generation that gave us hippies.

The Wrong Setting to Soapbox

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get woke go broke.png

As most people do, I face a number of challenges in my day-to-day life. These include succeeding at my job and also managing my finances so that I’ll have enough money to pay the rent month-to-month while still having enough to eat. If, on top of the challenges of typical life, one were to be exposed to the issues facing society as a whole through social media and corporate information outlets, it’s easy to develop a bleak outlook of the world.

Because of this, it’s understandable that a person would want to unwind with some entertainment. This escapism to idealized worlds of fantasy can be just what a person needs to help them forget, at least for a short time, the problems that that person and society as a whole faces, and in some cases permit them to retain some sanity.

It can be quite distressing when the entertainment media outlets that a person chooses can start taking up issues and causes, and in so doing, become yet another polarizing voice in a divisive political landscape. When this is the case, a person’s choice of escapism ceases to be a means of escape, and oftentimes, this leads to a person finding another source of entertainment altogether. After all, if a product that a person purchases ceases to serve its essential purpose, it can be discarded and a replacement sought out.

The observation of this phenomenon has led to the popularization of the phrase, “Get woke, go broke“.

What it means to get woke is to experience an awakening in awareness of issues and causes, usually from a left-wing perspective (those on the right tend to prefer the expression “red pill”). What it means to go broke is self-explanatory; it suggests that there’s a price to pay in using one’s position to further an agenda.

There is a wrong setting to soapbox.

The entertainment industry is one such wrong setting, and the industry itself is having a pretty hard time learning that lesson. In fact, facing correction in this regard, it would seem as though the entertainment media are digging their heels in, though it’s not really benefiting them to do so. There are many examples to pick from.

The film industry has decided to pander to intersectionality. Superficially, the idea is to provide a voice to oppressed groups such as women, minorities, and the sexually non-conforming. This has the appearance of “standing up for the little guy”, but is devious in that it is used as a means to come away with a moral victory in the event that a movie doesn’t do so well. If a movie does well, it’s a victory for oppressed minorities. If a movie fails, it’s because those who didn’t go see it are racists, misogynists, or homophobes.

It should be obvious why such an approach doesn’t work. For one thing, even if you can find someone else to blame for your movie failing, your movie still fails. Shifting the blame doesn’t change that. Worse still, turning against the public can result in the public turning against you.

Since going to Disney, Star Wars decided to take on intersectional pandering. Since this became the case, the Star Wars fandom has gotten quite scary. They’re so sick of what Star Wars is becoming, that they are actually wishing failure on the more recent Star Wars films. This includes the new Solo movie, which they declared a blackout on. Since then, the Solo movie failed at the box office, and Star Wars fans are actually celebrating this. While it seems like Kathleen Kennedy is close to being dismissed as the person in charge of Star Wars, if that’s the case, Disney is being quiet about it, perhaps because they want to deny the Star Wars fandom its victory.

The Star Wars brand and its fans have turned on each other, and it’s an ugly sight. It’s especially difficult for those who just want to enjoy Star Wars without getting into the fight.

The comic industry has pandered to intersectionality for a long time, so it shouldn’t be the least bit controversial to say that they have. What’s really interesting is that independent publishers that refuse to toe the line are gaining in popularity, and comic book shops that have long since sided with intersectionality have no idea what to do about them. In some cases, they’ve even turned away paying customers just for wanting their products. The author of a rising star comic series called “Jawbreakers” has voiced his disagreement with the mainstream narrative, and his comic is being sought out by sympathetic comic readers, even though his political opinions aren’t being expressed in his comics. Another comic gaining in popularity as a result of the consumer uprising would be Cyberfrog, which amazingly raised over $300,000.00 through crowdfunding!

The comics industry should never have ramrodded a political narrative into their products to begin with, but since they’ve decided to, it’s nice to see that consumers have strongly expressed what they really wanted by throwing huge piles of money at the alternatives. It’s sad that a divide occurred between the comics industry and its consumers, and it could have been prevented with the understanding of the principle that there is a wrong place and time to soapbox.

Thankfully, The Pokemon Company has remained politically uninvolved. That’s great for me, because Pokemon has long been one of my favorite games, and it would be sad to see the company co-opted by a rather vocal and short-sighted minority.

Not everyone in the Pokemon community is the same way, as indicated by Bulbagarden’s Twitter feed:

bulbagarden embarrasses the pokemon community.png

The events at the US-Mexico border being referred to are the arrest of people who have entered the United States illegally (instead of through proper channels), and the decision was made not to take their children to jail along with them. The corporate media, tripping over itself as usual to make Trump look like Hitler, is making this out to be Trump tearing families apart.

I decided to check out the thread on Bulbagarden forums, and the virtue signalling hits you right away on the forum header:

bulbagarden turns on their virtue signals.png

Yes, Bulbagarden wants every child that visits their forum for Pokemon discussion to know that they can embrace their sexuality. Anyone see a problem, here?

As you would expect, the OP uses hyperbolic language to describe what they perceive as happening. Whether an intentional leftist shill or some unwitting pawn in a larger game, the outcome is just the same.

What I find particularly condescending is the following statement in the Twitter post:

We would like to stress that, for us, this is not a matter of politics but of basic human rights and decency.

In saying that they don’t see it as being about politics, but about basic human rights and decency, you’re not allowed to disagree with them without being a horrible human being, and if you don’t watch yourself, they might sic Antifa on you.

antifa lol.png

If it’s not about politics, why did the forum post encourage us to contact members of the House of Representatives or the Senate? Believe it or not, people don’t see politics as just some game where the parties are likened to some stupid sports teams. We know that politics are ideologically driven, which is why it matters so much that the people who are voted into office have their heads on straight. When it comes to matters where legislation offensive to human decency is enforced, the people who can make the biggest difference the fastest are elected officials.

And when the matter came to Trump’s attention, he signed an executive order ending the Obama-era legislation that separated families. So how about thanking him?

Thankfully, the very first reply to this thread shows that someone on Bulbagarden forums is thinking:

someone at bulbagarden has his head on straight.png

There’s my point. A community about Pokemon is no place for politics. At best, it’s off-topic. At worst, it’s divisive, and could tear the community apart regardless of how convinced you are of the nobility of the cause. When it comes down to it, a Pokemon community is where a person goes to get away from the world’s problems, not where moderation abuses their positions to push their own agendas. If the community is no longer a place that serves its purpose, people will go somewhere else for a community that does.

Get woke, go broke.

If you can’t identify the real problem, don’t expect a real solution.

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love complex

I’ve decided to provide a critical analysis of an article titled “Conservatives will not stop pushing the ‘Pence rule’ as a solution to sexual harassment”. If you want to, you can read the article for yourself. This article mainly picks at the parts that I most feel like arguing against. The article may be a few months old, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still critique it.

For one thing, the title of the article is missing the last word, which, if inserted, would make it closer to correct. If the word “claims” were added to the end, it would come far closer to the heart of the matter.

The author Casey Quinlan opens her article with the following frilly statement:

As stories of powerful men masturbating in front of women, forcibly kissing and groping women, and forcing teenage girls’ heads into their crotch have gained national attention, it’s sparked widespread conversation about how to prevent sexual harassment and assault.

This opening paragraph is almost graphic enough to be a porno. It’s obvious that she’s trying to invoke some pretty strong feelings here. And what better way to spark productive conversation than to drive your audience into an emotional frenzy?

The solution seems obvious: The best way to prevent sexual harassment and sexual assault of women and girls is for men not to sexually harass and assault women and girls.

Because we’re not naive, we all know that telling someone not to do something is no guarantee that they won’t do it. After all, telling someone not to murder isn’t stopping murders from occurring. Therefore, the best we can do is criminalize the undesirable behavior and enforce the law when someone steps out of line.

And I do have some good news for you from the current year! Sexual harassment is already illegal! That means that all we need to do is enforce the law when we determine it may have been broken, and mete out punishments when (and only when) a court of law has determined guilt. Yay, progress!

But wait, there’s more. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Laws against sexual harassment were written, passed, and enforced primarily by men. If there really were some patriarchy that was out to get women (as many feminists claim), this would not have occurred. Looks like men aren’t your enemies, after all.

But conservatives appear to be less interested in finding ways to teach men how to co-exist with women, who comprise 47 percent of the U.S. labor force, than discussing how best to avoid women altogether.

In particular, conservative writers are increasingly focused on the “Mike Pence rule,” pointing out that Vice President Mike Pence does not eat dinner alone with women who are not his wife and does not go to events where alcohol is being served when his wife is not present. Pence first revealed this detail in a Washington Post article published in March.

Now, this is the heart of the matter right here: That men are starting to avoid women like Casey Quinlan, and they feel as though they are being punished. Not only that, more men are adopting the Mike Pence rule, which was obviously designed so that there’d be a witness in the event that yet another obvious false accusation arises, the likes of which we’ve been seeing on the news on a near-daily basis.

In a sense, the Mike Pence rule is a lot like the “stranger danger” that many of us were taught about as children. It’s a terrible thing to teach a child in any case, as it conditions children to distrust people they don’t know, they’ll lose the desire to meet new people, and their interpersonal skills suffer in the long run. And the type of people it was intended to protect them from are actually very rare. Yet, like “stranger danger”, the Mike Pence rule came to be because there are some messed up people out there.

A slander culture has developed that was intended to snipe the careers of men who were successful, so it stands to reason that men, particularly the more successful ones, take measures for their own protection. It’s an unfortunate side effect of the Pence rule that women sometimes feel that they’re being regarded with suspicion, but it’s amusing to see a left-wing writer complain that this is the case, considering that she’s done her fair share to manufacture the conditions of her own plight.

Casey, on the topic of a piece by writer David French, writes:

French argues that people are sometimes attracted to each other in professional settings, regardless of their marital status. He doesn’t explain why those people, regardless of their gender or marital status, can’t be expected to exercise judgement.

It’s not really surprising that Casey would (mis)use David’s article to prop up the idea that men can’t be bothered to exercise self control, but she brings up the main point in the next paragraph, even if with only a dismissive attitude. It’s as though she doesn’t want to admit what the problem really is.

French goes on to write that abiding by such a rule “protects both sides from” reputational harm, suggesting that high-profile men must always worry about women lying about them.

Do you suppose that perhaps these men’s concerns may be justified? After all, there have been copious allegations of sexual harassment against high-profile men in the last year. Just within the last month, Stormy Daniels and Michael Wolff were both found to have lied about claims of infidelity against president Donald Trump.

It’s as though we were in the middle of a false accusation epidemic.

Of course, it also doesn’t help to train people to be oversensitive to dating requests or mere pick-up lines. I suspect that Casey Quinlan would think it sexual harassment to be called “gorgeous”, though she doesn’t have to worry about very many men directing that at her.

 

As part of a 2016 survey, women told Harvard Business Review they were worried about retaliation from their harasser or the organization they work for if they reported. Women have a lot of reasons to ignore or downplay harassment, whether it happens to them or someone else because it seen as the price women have to pay for excelling in a male-dominated workplace, according to HBR.

I’m including this in my criticism because this is the worst citation I’ve seen in my life. The page she links to isn’t a study, it’s an article from Harvard Business Review, and it will be one of three article views you’re permitted on that site before having to sign up to read more. The article she referenced didn’t call harassment “the price women have to pay for excelling in a male-dominated workplace”, they called it “a cost to being attractive”. Apparently, Casey Quinlan doesn’t respect her own sources enough to avoid distorting what they’re saying.

The paragraph she referenced contained two links. One of which lead to a Huffington Post article. Did Huffington Post perform the study? No, they were merely discussing a study performed by Cosmopolitan. Yes, the same Cosmopolitan that sometimes takes a break from talking about sex to discuss celebrity gossip. So I followed the link that Huffington Post provided, and finally found the “study”. Except it wasn’t a study, it was an infographic. No information about methodology such as sample selection, variable consideration, or error control. Just a bunch of numbers on a chart which, for all we know, someone could have just made up.

The second link led to a study (yes, an actual study), but to view the study, you have to make an account or at least purchase short-term access. How unreasonable is it to assume that a college student has tons of money to throw around for citations for their research papers? If they’d have the $25 just to view this study, they’d probably put that money towards a month’s supply of ramen.

How is it that Casey Quinlan became a professional writer? When I did research papers in college, if I didn’t properly cite my sources, the professors would have given me a failing grade. They certainly wouldn’t have accepted me making them follow a maze that would maybe lead them to something of value.

If you’re going to cite a study, LINK TO THE STUDY ITSELF.

In any case, if a victim were concerned with the consequences of coming forward with a sexual harassment complaint, why does it seem easier for them to come to the spotlight of information media, rather than the anonymity of law enforcement? It’s law enforcement that would launch an investigation to determine guilt for the crime that had allegedly taken place. What would be the problem with that?

But French is not alone in his focus on the “Pence rule” in the midst of sexual harassment allegations. In October, former deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, Sebastian Gorka, tweeted the alleged instances of sexual assault and harassment that dozens of women say Harvey Weinstein committed could have been avoided if Weinstein simply didn’t meet with women one-on-one at all — referring to Pence’s rule.

From this point, Casey provides several examples of the Pence rule being taken too far. As she was cherry-picking, her ability to detect sarcasm was turned off.

sebastian.png

The subtle suggestion that Sebastian made was that those women were making things up, and if there were witnesses, they’d have had a much harder time getting away with it.

john.png

Stating the obvious in an ironic fashion. Of course, you’d have to tell an SJW that John was using his sense of humor. After all, SJWs selectively take things at face value.

timothy.png

It’s over-the-top and obvious why it’s not a practical solution. That’s an ample hint that Timothy was being sarcastic. Most of you could see that. Casey Quinlan did not.

Not only is it absurd, but it is also deeply harmful to the careers of women in the workplace. When men avoid women for fear of looking “improper” or for fear that they can’t control themselves, they deprive women of opportunities to gain sponsors in their careers and to build better working relationships with colleagues and supervisors.

Casey made it to the end of her article and still didn’t figure out that the Pence rule was crafted in response to something. Until she figures out what, she’s not likely to understand that the whole slander culture that she’s working so hard to enable is backfiring in a big way.

When you start making things up about people, don’t be surprised when they act in their own defense. Also, consider the possibility that things might end up with you not getting what you want. In any game of strategy, your opponent gets to make moves, too.

Anyhow, let’s not be too hard on writer Casey Quinlan. After all, if you offer most writers enough money, they’ll write just about anything.

Michael Wolff is a liar and a coward.

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rubber chicken

Michael Wolff, the author of Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was a guest on the Australian morning program The Today Show. However, he walked off the set during a live interview after he was asked a question about Donald Trump.

The question concerned whether Wolff was sure that Trump was having an affair behind the back of his wife while Trump is president of the United States. Here is the question, as asked by interviewer Ben Fordham:

“You said during a TV interview just last month that you are ‘absolutely sure’ that Donald Trump is currently having an affair while president behind the back of the first lady, and I repeat you said you were ‘absolutely sure.’

“Just last week however you backflipped and said I quote ‘I do not know if the president is having an affair.’ Do you owe the president and the first lady an apology, Mr. Wolff?”

It was a valid question. After all, being “absolutely sure” of something and to “not know” about it are two very different things. An irreconcilable contradiction is a sign that something is wrong.

Michael Wolff was put in a very tight spot, with the only means to save face being to find a way out. He hatched a plan: he pretended that the audio equipment was not working. Maybe if he did that, the interviewer would become discouraged, and move on to a question that Wolff was more comfortable with answering.

Too bad his plan didn’t work, as Ben just repeated the question. Running out of options to evade it, Wolff insisted that he still didn’t hear the question, then walked off the set. Afterwards, The Today Show confirmed that the audio equipment was indeed working. When asked to explain his own words, Wolff turned chicken and backed down.

The hard part about lying is remembering what you said.

So, why did Michael Wolff turn from his claim that he was “absolutely sure” that Trump was having an affair? He specified the other party as being Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations. However, Haley evidently didn’t like Wolff making up things about her behind her back, and she sharply denied Wolff’s statement.

When you go around making up lies about people, you end up making enemies. Who’d have thunk it?

Slander culture has been dealt another vicious blow, and they set themselves up for it. Perhaps soon, they’ll figure out that their approach doesn’t result in substantial gains in the long run. But I suspect that they’ll have to be shown quite a few more examples of their approach backfiring before they finally get it.

Sources:
Business Insider
The Washington “Democracy Dies in Darkness” Post

TWAT News: Student faces expulsion over math sign

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root sign.png

The symbol above is called a radical, also known as a “square root”. In mathematics, it along with the radicand represents a number which, when multiplied by itself, gives a product equal to the radicand, the radicand being the number within the radical.

What’s really radical is that police were called and an Alabama student faces expulsion because he made a joke about the radical looking like a gun.

The guy is pretty far from the only one who liked to have some fun with math by making things out to be something else. One example that I think we’re probably all familiar with is what we get when we punch the quantity “80085” into our calculators. Alternatively, one can instead punch in “58008” and look at it upside-down.

A lesser known example is the female appearance of the number one, especially when it’s stylized and placed in parentheses:

congratulations, it's a she.pngHot stuff.

Or this popular example, which takes a little calculus:

integral

This next one is popular among the more metal mathematicians:

sigma.png

Being immature with math and numbers really isn’t anything new, but this would be the first time I’ve heard of someone getting in trouble for it, with even the police getting involved.

This story is being passed around as an example of how people are becoming overly sensitive, particularly as relates to the causes of various left-wing fringe groups. Otherwise, it’s hard to imagine anyone calling the cops over a math symbol.

While most media outlets reporting on this story say that the student’s home was searched, there is a variant of this story going around which states that the student’s home wasn’t searched. It’s not a bad idea to have at least two or three sources of information on news stories, especially if at least one of those sources has an apparent political bias. Though avoiding political bias in the news is nearly impossible, a different perspective can help when otherwise, there’d be another aspect to a story you might have missed.

A student got in trouble over a math symbol. That Was Actually The News.