It’s hard not to notice an uptick in the number of feminists who are attempting the dating game, but it’s not going very well for them. It’s not a surprise when you consider that they are a fad ideology that actively tampers with the gender dynamic.

While conservatives have been mischaracterized as old-fashioned and unscientific, their approach to courtship is actually strongly scientific, in that they’ve made observations, formed hypotheses, and rigorously tested them in a manner reminiscent of the scientific method. When it comes to courtship, they were really early to the science, as their approach has been battle-tested through the ages and determined to be axioma, found fit and is beyond dispute.

On the other hand, left-wing idealists, while eager to champion their ideas, are bringing ideas that are relatively untested and therefore by their nature risky. Their attempt-first-ask-later approach is reckless, and is nowhere close to as scientific as they are given credit for. What’s more, what of their ideas for which significant data exists determines that their flagship relationship approaches are adokimon, having been tested and found to be debased and unfit for the intended purpose.

Yet, they still continue to foist their ideas on the body politick. The continual failures of their approaches coupled with their fanatical insistence upon them gives fuel to the idea that the far-left is in league with an insidious population-control movement which uses mass misinformation to further it’s agenda. The irony behind such an endeavor is that it’s primary victims are leftists and the gullible, thus breeding out such groups, and autolyzing the movement itself. Among the victims of the theoretical movement would be feminists.

Because feminists have been indoctrinated into a worldview that treats the male-female relationship as adversarial in nature, it should be no surprise that they aren’t faring well in relationships that require compromise with both the opposite sex and their own expectations. Couple this with the fact that the concept of love has long been mysticized to the point that people find themselves doubting that it’s the “real thing” when they experience it, and the cards are really stacked against feminists when they finally get around to putting their fad ideologies to the test.

Some people are their own worst enemies. The hang-ups that they’ve taken on were usually foisted upon them by someone else, and internalized to the point of being self-reinforcing, making it much less likely that they’ll properly identify them as the cause of their problems.

The fact is, there are generalities that apply to women which can have a significant impact on their dating lives. Related to this is the fact that as women become more successful, they tend to notice fewer men who they find suitable for themselves. This is because women are naturally hypergamous, meaning that they tend to marry upwards on the social scale. Successful women can overcome loneliness by compromising with their inhibition and accepting men who aren’t as successful as they, but in so doing, they might find it difficult to resist their own natures.

What renders leftist movements self-defeating is that they teach men to be weak-willed and accommodating to the point of self-deprecation, and women to be aggressive and dominating to the point of being hard to approach, thereby making the two unlikely to find one-another appealing. The sad consequence is that politically-compatible leftist couples start families with decreased frequency, and if they were to date outside their own political sphere, there wouldn’t be much expectation for their success.

Simply put, feminists are bad at dating, and their own political ideology and philosophical notions are the cause of their own plight. If they had the introspection necessary to properly identify the cause of their own problem, they wouldn’t likely remain feminists. But if they were to continue on their course, it might become the hill that their dating lives would end on.

Suppose you’re presented with two pictures, one after the other. The first picture is of a young boy, sitting and smiling. His hair is neatly-parted, and his clothes are clean.

You might see him and think, “What a well-behaved child!” and think positively on what you see.

Then you see a picture of another boy, his face smeared with ice cream. He’s laughing, and his clothes are similarly smeared with ice cream.

You might see him and think, “What a misbehaved child!” and come away thinking negatively on the sight.

However, perception isn’t everything.

The reason why the one boy had ice cream smeared on his face is because he had ice cream. The boy who was neat and clean was smiling because he was told to, because someone had to take his picture. The boy with the ice cream didn’t have to be told to smile because he had reason to.

I don’t know about you, but between the two I’d rather be the boy with the ice cream. He’s enjoying a simple pleasure in life rather than being made to put on a charade for someone else’s amusement.

The boys in the comparison above can be likened to many real-world people in a variety of circumstances. Do either of them remind you of anyone you know?

Since the release of Animal Crossing: New Horizons on Nintendo Switch, one character in particular has gathered a disproportionate amount of attention, with some players declaring him the rarest character in the game. This character is Raymond, a cat villager.

What’s the deal with Raymond?

Raymond is a gray-colored cat in office attire. An office cat motif is amusing to begin with, but players have pointed out that he’s the only cat in the game with a “smug” personality, which is odd given how independent and aloof housecats can be in real life. This combination of traits already makes Raymond an appealing character.

But there’s something more that makes him stand out. Raymond has heterochromia, a rare condition in which both his eyes are different colors. Heterochromia is considered appealing in certain creative communities, particularly those influenced by Japanese media. Many in such communities who make their own original characters give their characters heterochromia because it’s one way to make a character seem more special.

If players were to visit Raymond’s house on their island, they would find the interior decor has an office theme. This immediately appeals to those adapting to working at home in light of the recent coronavirus epidemic, as Raymond’s home office indicates a character that a portion of the Animal Crossing community can relate to. More appropriate still is that Animal Crossing: New Horizons was a game that people made a point of obtaining before widespread shutdowns took effect, to the point that people were grateful that GameStop resisted the shutdowns long enough to allow them to obtain a copy of the game.

So, is Raymond really the rarest character in the game? Not really. Whether at the Campsite or through Nook Miles Tickets, Raymond has the same odds of appearing as each of the other potential villagers. However, he is the current most desirable villager, and considering that there’s hundreds of possible villagers, there is high demand for this one character.

The demand is so high, that some players are stocking up on Nook Miles Tickets in an effort to get more chances to obtain this character. Some players are willing to exchange valuable in-game assets, such as millions of bells (the in-game currency) with other players on sites such as Discord for the opportunity to have Raymond move from one player’s island to another. In some cases, players are willing to spend real-life money in excess of the cost of the game to obtain Raymond from another player.

Of note is that because Raymond is a new character, an Amiibo for Raymond was not available at the time Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released, so players couldn’t simply scan it for the guarantee that Raymond would appear at the campsite.

Expediting Raymond’s popularity is that because players notice other players going to great lengths to obtain this character, there is an increased perception of value to him. On top of that, he gets noticed just for all the attention that surrounds him, similar to how the first result of a search engine favors results that get more traffic, and placing higher in search results results in yet more traffic.

There are many other popular villagers in ACNH. Among these are Marina, an octopus (there are only three octopuses in the game), Ankha, a cat that resembles King Tut’s sarcophagus, Lucky, a dog that was heavily bandaged, and Marshall, a squirrel that resembles a marshmallow.

What’s my favorite villager? Maybe I’ll reveal that in another post.

“You will not bow before Snoke.” -Rey, Star Wars: The Last Jedi

As I examine the character of Snoke, it becomes apparent that he is a stand-in for the kind of psychological turmoil that would be experienced by a person in Ben Solo’s position. While it’s apparent that Snoke in the Star Wars universe is a personal entity that is adversarial and interacts with the other characters, it seems to me that he’s an allegory for something experienced by those with mental illness and emotional trauma in the real world.

Snoke seems to be a stand-in for unwelcome, demanding voices as experienced by someone with a psychosis.

While the cause of such voices is still not fully understood, it seems they are caused by thoughts in a person’s own head, which the brain wrongly interprets as audible. This phenomenon can be caused by, among other things, prolonged stress or perhaps just inadequate sleep.

In persons with obsessive-compulsive disorder, a person’s unwanted thoughts can “take over” making them believe that they have to do certain things. At first, it’s usually trivial and ritualistic tasks, like how a person washes their hands. But conceivably, these thoughts can develop into “voices” that can “guide” them into some poor life choices. There are cases where the voices have a spiritual meaning to the person experiencing them, and they might wrongly attribute them to the divine!

Considering this, the allegory of Snoke becomes much more apparent. For one thing, his voice sounds almost exactly how a judgmental internal voice would sound: wise enough to sound like they’d have answers to the person’s problems, but can even be loud and abusive if there exists even a minute flaw.

Also noteworthy is that Snoke demanded continual sacrifices to placate him, and what’s more, what he demanded was whatever could give Ben hope outside of Snoke himself. Evil voices demand similar sacrifices! It was Snoke who pressured Ben into killing his father, who was a connection to Ben’s old life. When Ben did kill his father, it still wasn’t enough. What’s more, the fact that Ben felt conflicted about it was enough to invalidate the sacrifice as far as Snoke was concerned!

Ben then felt pressured into killing his own mother, and to his credit, he didn’t go through with it. However, Ben’s conflict was noteworthy enough for him to bring up again when meeting Rey. Snoke was willing to condemn Ben for his mere thoughts!

But it’s interesting that Snoke would have such direct access to Ben’s thoughts, especially considering that he couldn’t do the same to Rey without the assistance of a force-ability designed to that end. For some reason, Snoke had more direct access to Ben.

Snoke has been manipulating Ben for a long time. Ben was coming to realize that, if Snoke had his way, the abuse would be continual.

So Ben killed Snoke.

For a long time, Snoke pulled Ben along with the idea that he could bring out Ben’s potential. But the reality was, Snoke was intent on continually using him. With Snoke dead, Ben ascended to the position of Supreme Leader of the First Order, and in so doing, he began to rise to live up to his potential.

”The Supreme Leader is dead.” -Kylo Ren

”Long live the Supreme Leader.” -Armitage Hux

Sometimes, you hear something that sounds intuitively true, and meshes well with what you’ve already accepted. You decide to accept what you’ve just heard without asking questions or looking into it.

If this sounds like you, you may have experienced truthiness. But what is truthiness?

Truthiness describes the quality of an assertion that lends itself to being accepted as true based on the intuition of the listener, rather than supporting evidence, if any.

The term in its current usage was coined by political comedian Stephen Colbert on his program The Colbert Report in the year 2005. Previously, the term was obscure and referred to something that was dependably true.

In the political landscape, truthiness occurs on a constant basis. There are many, many examples that illustrate its occurrence.

One example is the video of the emaciated polar bear which trended with the help of global warming alarmists. The video showed the polar bear trudging about, clearly famished, picking through rubbish. The video, as presented, was intended to pull at the heartstrings of viewers, who then make the assumption that human-assisted global warming led to the diminishing of the bear’s natural habitat, resulting in its sad condition.

For the polar bears as a whole, the reality of the matter is far less bleak. The polar bear population is currently booming. What’s more, polar bears are even thriving where arctic ice is receding. As for that particular polar bear, it may not have been as well off, but as is often the case with both animals and people, not everyone gets off as well.

So, what’s the truthiness? Those already accepting of the ideas surrounding anthropogenic climate change see a polar bear struggling, and easily attribute it’s sad situation to the consequences of human callousness. They need look no further into the matter to arrive at a conclusion that fits their preconceived notions, but if they did, they’d have likely arrived at a different conclusion.

Those forwarding the video for reason of climate change alarmism might not have looked far into the matter themselves, but it’s possible that they’re aware of what’s going on, and decided to forward what they decided might provoke a reaction that more strongly favored their cause. Selecting only the evidence that favors a conclusion while ignoring what does not is called cherry-picking.

Another recent example of truthiness has to do with an alleged statement by American President Donald Trump, apparently suggesting “injecting disinfectants” as a means of fighting off an infection caused by the novel coronavirus.

When information media outlets got wind of this, they ran with it. Trump was ridiculed by corporate media outlets (with whom he had an adversarial relationship to begin with), lambasted by media pundits, and his supposed advice was even warned against on Lysol’s website.

However, the recording of the conversation that sparked this controversy is publicly available. In it, Trump asked a hypothetical question about internal use of disinfectants as a possible treatment to a coronavirus infection, and it was directed towards someone studying possible treatments for the novel coronavirus. The question was hypothetical, and didn’t sound like such a treatment was immediately advocated. During the conversation, Trump deferred to the medical professional, which would seem more responsible in that particular situation.

So, what’s the truthiness? It’s the inclination of the usual consumers of corporate information media to assume that President Trump continually goes off on ignorant tirades, as this is how those media outlets habitually portray him. To them, it’s another day to get outraged over something he said, and once they’ve tired themselves out banging pots and pans together, it’s back to sipping overpriced coffee while pondering some philosophy that they read about on some dark corner of the internet.

They didn’t look into what the President actually said, or in what context, but considering that what they’ve already heard goes neatly with the conclusions they’ve already come to about him, why would they feel inclined to do so?

By the way, presenting information that is intentionally misleading in an effort to direct the listener to a particular outlook is called deception.

There are many, many more examples outside of politics, and they largely have to do with rumors, hearsay, and other various forms of misinformation.

For example, it’s been said that Takis snacks cause ulcers. This makes intuitive sense to someone raised on the idea that spicy foods cause ulcers. However, the idea that spiciness causes ulcers is a myth.

You might have heard it said that a party at your college got so rowdy that a soda machine was thrown from a window, and when a student officer attempted to intervene, he was thrown from the window, too. Did you check for police reports or old news stories, or did you take his word for it? You might be asking “did you go to the same college as me?” That same story has been told at many colleges.

Arbitrary third example? Another popular college story is that the library is slowly sinking into the ground because the architects that designed it didn’t consider the weight of the books. It appeals to a sense of irony that a team of educated professionals would make such a short-sighted blunder.

Truthiness works as well as it does in making ideas gain traction because it appeals to preconceived notions while inhibiting the desire to verify. Those who become more aware of it are in a better position to see just how strongly society has been pulled along by it.

Decades ago, a man in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania robbed a bank while having lemon juice smeared on his face. His reasoning was that because lemon juice is an ingredient in invisible ink, the juice would make his face invisible. He was so sure of his plan, that he made a confident gesture towards a security camera on the way out. Later, after the man was apprehended, he reportedly exclaimed, “But I wore the juice!”

Taking note of the incident, a couple researchers decided to study just why people who were not very smart believe themselves to be brilliant. The phenomenon that the two studied would later come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

So, what is the Dunning-Kruger effect? The Dunning-Kruger effect describes the tendency of people with insubstantial ability to think highly of their ability.

One example is with bad drivers. We know who the bad drivers are: they’re the ones that drive fast and weave through traffic, a recipe for collisions. Yet, they tend to believe that this behavior makes them good drivers, and that in the event that they get into (cause) an accident, they’d just be good drivers having a moment.

Another example is the tendency of people today to believe themselves to be scientifically-minded, for having benefited from the advancements that others have made. In reality, few such people have ever conducted a repeatable study in a controlled environment which was subsequently peer-reviewed. Using smartphones doesn’t make you a genius.

There are many, many other examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect that one can think of. It can be apparent in the following quips:

• “My tech-savviness is expressed through the ownership of a smart watch.”
• “I feel the course won’t be a major challenge, judging by the first few pages of the textbook.”
• “I’d have this “parenting” thing down. University of YouTube FTW!”
• “Who needs manscaping when you have plenty of Axe Body Spray?”

In many cases, the Dunning-Kruger effect is observed when a person who is inept lacks the introspection necessary to perceive their own ineptitude.

Conversely, as a person studies more in a field of knowledge, they tend to come to a better understanding of just how little they really know, which may have to do with the tendency of the more capable to sell themselves short.

Recently, the Dunning-Kruger effect has come to the awareness of many people who have afterwards attempted to use it as a clever way to explain to another person that they’re not as smart as they think they are. A person attempting this should take care to define the Dunning-Kruger effect properly, so as to avoid a certain irony that could otherwise result.

It’s been a few days since World Obesity Day. While the international community seems content with issuing a statement regarding stigmas surrounding obesity, I’ve decided to share what I’ve been doing regarding the obesity problem.

“But Raizen,” you might be asking, “since when were you obese?” I wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t play a part to help the world be a healthier place.

A quick note before describing what I’ve been doing:  I don’t attribute my fitness progress to any one of these approaches in particular. Many internet personalities do just that, and leave their viewers to determine for themselves why they don’t get the same results when they attempt them. I’ve been doing each of these approaches at the same time. What’s more, there may be other variables that may not have been considered. While I’ve been experiencing some positive results, I make no guarantee that they will work the same way for everyone.

Intermittent fasting
This seems to be the current fitness fad that’s going around. It makes intuitive sense: eating fewer calories day by day results in gaining less weight. Personally, I doubt that many marketers will get behind this trend, as it involves people spending less.

While people have been searching for the natural human diet in terms of what they can eat, the right question is how often they eat to be in line with the dietary patterns of early humans (putting aside how misguided it is to assume that what’s natural is better for us). Early humans were hunter-gatherers, so they more likely ate later in the day, after having worked to hunt or gather the food that they would be dining on. This means that our ancestors likely didn’t eat breakfast, but instead got right up and got right to seeking out their food that they would consume later in the day.

The idea of breakfast, as well as the idea that there should be three meals in a day, is a very recent idea. And it came about at around the time that people started to get seriously fat. What’s more, the most commonly-marketed breakfast items are among the most fattening items in the modern human diet. Considering this, it should make some very obvious intuitive sense that if one were to skip breakfast, they wouldn’t be gaining as much weight.

While there are a few approaches to intermittent fasting, the one I went for is the 16/8 approach. This would be where a person picks 8 hours a day where one eats as normal, while refraining from meals or snacks for the remaining 16. I don’t usually hold to it on weekends, as the 16/8 approach seems to work sufficiently five days a week. The hours that one spends sleeping do count, so it’s acceptable to take a meal schedule like 11:30am – 7:30pm. What’s important is that during the dining periods, one doesn’t overeat. If a person takes the 8-hour period as an opportunity to gut-load, they’d likely defeat their attempted diet.

One might wonder whether one gets hungry while intermittent fasting. The answer is yes, but it’s not actually a big deal. When a person gets hungry, that’s the body telling them that “if you don’t start looking for food soon, you’re going to die so go, go, go!” What your body doesn’t realize is that the situation isn’t really that dire, and you are surrounded by food on demand nearly all the time. If you stay busy with something else (like your job, or even a video game), you tend not to notice hunger as much.

Adopting a healthy diet
A healthy lifestyle doesn’t just involve not eating as much, the quality of what’s consumed does make a difference. There are many, many principles to a healthier diet, so it’s mainly a learn-as-you-go experience. Here’s a few principles that I’ve picked up along the way:

• Look at food for what it is, rather than how appetizing it may be. Most fast food is disgusting, so avoiding it can help a lot.
• Many food items that are perceived as healthy are actually far from it. This includes muffins, granola bars, organic snack foods, the list goes on and on. Learn what’s garbage in disguise.
• Whole grain is better than white bread. That cheap wheat bread that you see is actually colored brown, and has an arbitrary amount of wheat added to it so it can legally be called “wheat”, so don’t be tricked.
• It’s hilarious that after rigorously working out at the gym, people line up for smoothies that are teeming with sugar.
• Paying attention to calories is an eye-opening experience. A heaping plate of pasta can easily demolish a daily calorie allotment.
• Beware of what’s heavily marketed, because the main interest of those peddling the products isn’t your well-being, it’s to get you to buy things. Marketers have caught up with the keto fad, and are now in the process of ruining it.

Frequent exercise
This is the effort part of the fitness regimen. I’ve been changing this up from time-to-time, but the idea is to adopt a few different exercises that hit multiple muscle groups. Here is an example:

Dumbbell floor presses
Dumbbell side swings
Curls
Squats

Four sets each, 10 reps per set. Three times a week. The exercises can be changed up. Not everyone can do pull-ups right away. Frequently swapping in one exercise for another, such as subbing in push-ups or lunges, helps to ensure that a wide variety of muscles get attention.

As exercise is incorporated into your lifestyle, it helps to get adequate protein. Protein shakes can help, but they’re pricey and overrated. Tuna is great, because it provides a high amount of protein with few calories.

Limiting sugary drinks
The main things I drink are black coffee and water. While sugar isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, it’s fattening in drinks because they lack the fiber that would slow the incorporation of sugar into your system, resulting in a sugar rush followed by a crash.

But what about energy drinks? In most cases, the main ingredient that gives them their effect is caffeine. The contribution of most other ingredients outside of sugar are negligible. Energy drinks may have colorful, textured cans with lightning bolt patterns and other edgy packaging, but you’d be better off just drinking coffee.

Fruit juices are sugary drinks, so while they may have vitamin content, it’s usually better to eat the fruit, instead.

There you have it, my approach to making the world less obese. It takes a bit of effort, but so do most things that are worth going for.

The Gregorian calendar is about to increment, and here is an image to describe this passing year. No need to photoshop this time, this one has been ready since January:

Old media has demonstrated it’s efficacy by hastily concocting a story that defamed a young man for doing nothing more than smiling while wearing a hat that they didn’t like. That’s the current year for you.

YouTube was recently found to have been in violation of COPPA, and was subsequently fined. Afterwards, in a public statement, YouTube suggested that they’d crack down on content creators who post content directed towards children without tagging their videos as child-appropriate. Content creators that run afoul of YouTube’s COPPA measures could end up fined $42,000 for each offending video.

Since learning of this, YouTube’s content creators are speaking up in outrage about both COPPA and YouTube, with some saying that this recent development could result in the end of their channels.

If you’re wondering what COPPA is, it’s the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, a law passed in 1998 that makes it illegal for website owners to collect data on children under the age of 13. Why 13 and not 18, which is the generally-agreed-upon age of adulthood, I don’t know. Website owners have largely responded by disallowing persons under the age of 13 from starting accounts. In light of this, it should be obvious that COPPA is a good thing, as it extends protections to children online that adults would love to have.

So then, why the outcry among YouTubers against it? The answer is simple: YouTube has turned the onus of compliance with COPPA to its content creators, complete with a disproportionately steep punishment for slipping up.

That being the case, it’s obvious why YouTubers would be upset with YouTube and COPPA. While this seems unfair on YouTube’s part, it would be just the right move if their aim was to present COPPA in an intensely negative light, turning public opinion against COPPA, and potentially stir up a movement that results in getting COPPA repealed.

Is that what’s motivating YouTube? It’s hard to discern motives for certain, but if turning people against COPPA wasn’t their plan, it’s hard to think of a reason for them to punish the community for their own failure to properly manage a website. But if we were to look for motives, it helps to understand how YouTube makes money.

YouTube is owned by Google, a tech company that offers many online services that are (apparently) free to those who want to use them. These services include Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, and the huge search engine that put them on the map. Because Google offers its services for free, many have wondered: How does Google make money?

Google makes money by collecting data. About you. And anyone else they can. Google then takes this information and sells it to a network of advertisers who then use it to serve targeted advertisements.

Make no mistake, the information collected about people is something that ad companies are willing to spend a lot of money on. On the internet, advertisements are big business. The more effective advertisements are the ones that succeed in convincing people to make purchases. If advertisers know what kind of things appeal to you, they can serve you advertisements specific to you that other visitors to the same page might not see.

As a person uses Google products, Google collects data on that person that’s used to construct a profile specific to them. While Google is who we’re talking about today, they’re far from the only tech company that collects data like this to sell to advertisers. Even social media outlets get in on this, and it’s on these platforms that people voluntarily surrender piles of information about their interests.

To give an idea of how extensive an ad company’s profile could be on you, the algorithms that are used collect deeply personal data, including psychological information. An ad company is able to make determinations about a person’s internal tendencies, including sexual preferences, that the person themselves might not even know about. Even the federal government doesn’t collect this kind of data on the general population. If they wanted to, tech companies are capable of making a person’s life a living hell, and they have all they need to do so.

If that’s not scary enough for you, try this one: an advertising company was able to determine that a woman was pregnant based only on her purchasing history, then serve her targeted ads based on this information before the woman herself discovered that she was pregnant.

Considering this, think about what Google has to gain from having COPPA repealed: if COPPA no longer factored into their considerations, their dragnet of data collection could be cast without restraint. Children would then be included in Google’s data collection endeavors. As the shopping season comes full swing, consider what this would mean for the pocketbooks of millions of parents: children would be included in Google’s psychoanalytical scheme of subconscious desires, to be directed as their data purchasers wished.

Of course, indirectly encouraging parents to max out credit cards on Christmas toys is just one of many ways the data purchasers can use data from children. If the data purchasers had political motives, they could use this data to direct culture and political opinion in a manner and scale that has never been seen before.

If you want tech companies such as Google to collect data on your kids, then go right on ahead and play into YouTube’s hands: react with outrage about COPPA as though COPPA was to blame. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s about time that even more limits were placed on tech companies concerning the data that they can collect about us.