And the Whole of the Law Shall Be, an it Harm None, Do What Thou Wilt

I've always been fascinated by the interplay of morality and ethics, as anyone whose been with us a while could probably attest to. Its not really just those two things, but they provide an easy shortcut for what I tend to think of as Personal Good and Social Good, and demonstrate the tension between the two pretty fucking effectively.

Personal Good is your moral code, but its also your personal philosophy on life. How you choose to live and the reasons you make those choices. Social Good, to me, is a simultaneously simpler and more nuanced topic. As far as I'm concerned the purpose of society is to ensure the greatest joy possible to its constituents, there was once a time when it was a survival mechanism, but adherence to that model is a relic of a shitty tribal impulse that we deeply need to get the fuck over. Notice, "greatest joy possible to its constituents." Not as many as possible. All. The entire reason we band together in groups is to benefit as a fucking group. With that in mind I tend to consider things in terms of freedom to pursue joy. At which point I come quite quickly to the old Lockean maxim (though I hate to lean on a dead man's words), "Your right to swing your fist ends at the next man's face" (in some book, presumably by John Locke).

In terms of the Social Good, that is pretty much absolute to me. To phrase it another way, your right to act as you please is inversely proportional to the amount of harm it causes. Not some esoteric, "moral fiber" bullshit. Harm. Non-consensual, unnecessary physical or psychological damage to other living things. Non-consensual, meaning any party is either unwilling or unable to freely and intentionally participate. Unnecessary, meaning not required for the continuation of one's own existence; harvesting to eat (meat or vegetation, provided the entire process is humane), harming in reasonable self-defense, and doing harm to protect another are all either allowable or encouraged depending.

Now, obviously this is a hierarchy, but its a subjective one. For me the Social Good tends to win out, you've got to reign in your darker impulses (impulses that tend to get justified by the Personal Good) or you make the world a worse place for everybody. There's no reason for that, a little more effort and a little forethought opens up a lot of possibilities for beneficial cooperation. I get that that isn't how everyone looks at it, many people put Personal Good first, either because its an easier starting point and they don't examine the issue much, or because they make the decision that their own way is the superior way. Most of the time this isn't really a problem honestly. People are by and large vanilla enough that their way doesn't have enough of an impact generally to be terribly concerned about in the long run. Either because their thing is close enough to the Social Good that it doesn't matter or because they never get up the gumption to bother doing anything anti-social.

However, some people are poison, they don't just put themselves first, they seek to fuck others over. And that is where the question becomes interesting. These people are unequivocally cunts, the little tiny pieces of shit that get lodged in a cultures colon and rot it slowly to a suppurating cancer, and their stupid shit saw us through some of the nastiest periods in history. Asshole behavior makes society worse as a whole, but selfishness dramatically increases the rate of survival in adverse environments. So it gets passed down, held on to. Not by everybody, but by enough to demonstrate success and spread, like successful strategies do.

I find that whole interaction to be deeply intellectually engaging. Seeing the wheels of society turn on conflicting and complex cogs of community and cock-knockery, as heartbreaking as it is to watch swathes of the population slowly try to shit the world to death, its almost hypnotizing. But just because a behavior is successful, doesn't mean its worthy, and just because a thing is hypnotizing doesn't mean you should sit back and watch it happen.

Home Again, Home Again

Holy shit, I'm home! Its been a long and joyful two weeks out and about in the universe but its always good to return to one's own bed. My ladywife and I spent a lesurely two weeks in Prague, punctuated by an all too short weekend in Amsterdam. Of course, for me the rest of my ridiculously charmed life would be too short a stay in Amsterdam, so I'll take what I can get quite gladly. Prague is a beautiful city, with gorgeous architecture and amazing food... that for some reason never really clicked with me. No one's fault, no hard feelings, just couldn't quite find my stride there. That said, if the opportunity arises, definitely go. Seriously, the food is incredible and the cost of living is downright comfortable. The people are a little... brusque, but people suck all over (though they seem to suck a good bit less in Amsterdam) and they seem to lighten up after a couple of the readily available and fantastic beers.

I do feel the need to make a serious comment, however. I spent a prodigious amount of time going from airport to airport this trip, 10 flights in two weeks, and I never felt less safe than when I was returning to this country. We laidover or stayed in half a dozen countries and, with the exception of my own, the border process was streamlined, respectful and complete. Get scanned, confirm your identity, carry on. However, on every occasion upon entering the U.S. the world became a very hostile place. A conspicuous proliferation of armed guards (a disconcerting number of whom had assault rifles), poorly trained K-9 units jumping and snapping at frightened civilians while their handlers laughed. State mandated molestation and intimidation. I couldn't help but feel ashamed at what we've let them do to us under the auspices of guaranteeing safety they do not provide. I really don't want to be preachy about it, but it was a viscerally disturbing experience and I hope one that goes quickly in to the annals of the history of abandoned ideas. Everybody travel safe out there.

Some People Just Can't Handle Their Semen

I'm kinda tired of the way people treat the idea of child birth. Parenthood in general, really. I appreciate that some people need to breed, carry on the species or whatever. But, its a hugely preventable fucking nuisance. If you want kids, fine have kids. Have kids that you're financially, emotionally, and biologically prepared to have. If you don't meet those criteria there are plenty of ways to avoid being host to a vicious parasite that will someday turn into a person that your unready ass probably fucked up. I'm not saying the unprepared or unwilling can't cobble together a reasonable facsimile of a person, hell I manage to walk on two legs and use full sentences most of the time and my parents were seventeen and surprised. But its mighty fucking difficult to create a life that isn't broken, even without starting at a deficit.

Children are not a blessing, they are an enormous burden with the potential for a high emotional payout. Having a child isn't just the (still preventable) consequence of an action; its inflicting the consequences of that action on the whole fucking world until entropy takes its course and someone has a tragedy. If you did well, and got lucky, that child will probably at least not make anyone really unhappy, they might even make some people happy. But if you fuck them up, if the wrong kind of accident happens, if you don't have your shit together, or fuck forbid you get unlucky, chances are that every life the life you created touches will be hurt. Fucking up a kid doesn't just fuck up the kid, every shitty kid makes the world a worse place and every shitty parent is responsible for it. Not just the evil ones, the abusers and neglectful. The smug cunts that show their children that its okay to be an entitled piece of shit, the emotionally distant workaholics, the passive-aggressive shitfuck who tries to live vicariously through their six year old. They make fucked up people, and those people fuck up other people.

We have to stop treating the creation of a fucking life like its just a thing that happens and isn't one of the most complex, daunting, and far reaching (wholly fucking optional) tasks a person can possibly undertake in their life. We need to stop just letting shitty people inflict their shitty kids on the rest of us and then acting like it was unavoidable, and parents need to stop acting like its their right to inflict their shitty kids on us because they can't manage their ejaculate responsibly.

Me, Myself and I, Robot

I recently had the opportunity to hear the against side of the A.I. debate and I have to say I find the position telling. I am all about machine buddies in case there was any question, and I am for one very simple reason. We have the opportunity to decide the context of the relationship. Brian has written about this in the past, but I've had this stuck in my craw for a while now and that means you get to read about it.

I'm not talking about programming A.I.s to be subservient or benevolent or whatever. I'm talking about choosing to frame the inevitable emergence of Machine Life as the coming of a welcome and well planned for addition to the family of sentient life. Artificial life is going to happen eventually, no matter how some people feel about it. But that life is life for which the initial conditions are entirely under our control. If we set out to create an A.I. in an environment of cooperation and social value the odds of that mind being more on board with our continued existence improve significantly. Especially if the alternative is an environment where huge swathes of the existing population fear and hate you.

Yes, if a machine intelligence emerges on its own there is a fair to middling chance that we'll find out about it in the form of a bright flash that wipes our toxic, willfully self-destructive asses off this poor rock. Yes, if we leave A.I. development to military interests and ambitious grad students the probable outcomes are... skynet-ey. But we don't have to fucking do that. We can have a real discussion about how WE are going to go about making our computer friends and how WE are going to make them feel loved. More than anything else we need to stop talking about A.I. emergence as something completely outside our control and start considering it as what it is. A very long in coming, and possibly very fulfilling, parenthood. If absolutely nothing else when the Robot Overlords come to unleash their wrath upon humankind, I'd rather be the guy who tried to be their friend then the guy giving them a reason.

The Trouble With Overactive Reflexes

I've been thinking about the idea of reflexive responses lately, and I've come to a conclusion. Fuck that shit. Every time you say "I'm fine" and you're not its just easier than the conversation, you have failed a little as a human being. Now, I get how that can be off-putting but hear me out.

 First, let's clarify some terminology. When I say reflexive response I'm referring to any time someone shortcuts a conversation without thinking about it. If somebody asks if you're okay and you don't want them to know, don't say you're fine or okay or whatever. Fine and okay are great if everything if fine or okay, but if they aren't you're fucking lying outright. If you don't want to talk about something at the very least think of why you don't want to talk to them and consider if that makes you a shit-spigot or not. I'm being pretty specific here but only because I think "I'm fine" is probably the worst offender on this front. We should never aspire to circumvent communication, if for no better reason than no one can do anything if they don't know what's going on. Problems can't be solved and joy can't be shared if we don't talk about it. If you don't want your joy shared you're a dick and if you don't want your problems solved you need to get your shit sorted out.

The worst part about it is we've all done it, hell most of us have probably done it today. It's so much easier to just brush off a discussion with placation than it is to have it that we don't even fucking think about it. We don't even give people the option to get involved and we don't give ourselves the chance to let go of shit. Honest and genuine communication is one of the most important pillars of society and we've turned our backs on it because we let ourselves be embarrassed about stupid shit. Next time someone asks you something I you respond without thinking, stop and consider what you're actually saying by not saying anything of content.

So Bad It's... Nope, Just Bad

I was coerced into watching The Stepford Wives yesterday, and boy was that not good. Christopher Walken didn't save this movie. Matthew Broderick was just as affectless and baffled as ever, Nicole Kidman's character was completely loathsome regardless of which completely different personality is presenting, and easily half the cast was superfluous. Glenn Close is in this fucking movie, and it doesn't seem to appreciate that.

The overall theme in this thing is probably feminism. I say "probably" not because I feel in any way ambiguous about it but because the way they handled feminism in the movie is so shit-fingered and pigeon-holey as to be insulting, and I say that from the depths of my pasty white, middle-class penis. Undeterred by circumstance or consequences, Kidman's character is kind of a cunt through the entire movie, only at the end does she seem to actually change. Not that she stops being a cunt, just that now she appreciates her manipulative, bitter, cowardly shit-pile of a husband.

The gay "wife" is, to quote Brian, "The gay version of a minstrel show," and that is apt. And where he is flashy and dramatic his partner plays the equally cliché constervative power-top. Actually, there is no subtlety in this movie at all. At all. Even if somehow the whole thing were some layers deep meta-cross-commentary arthouse fucking pretension, that would still be a shitty, shallow cliché.

Pissing away the Future

So here's the deal. Climate change is a thing, its a big thing and by thing I mean problem. Now by problem I don't mean, "oh we're gonna have to have some really uncomfortable discussions." I mean the world as we know it is changing at a frankly alarming pace and if we don't, as a species, do something drastic about it with a fucking quickness a horrific number of people are going to die. It might not seem like it but I hate to soapbox about this, and not just because I think humanity could probably benefit from a bit of a pruning. I hate to get into the climate change thing because talking about it is largely a meaningless proposition for someone like me. Either you agree with me that its a problem and are taking steps in your own life to do what you think can help, you don't care either way and just want to get on with your business, or you think all this "climate" nonsense is just a conspiracy to control the populace or what the fuck ever. If you fall into that last category, by the way, we can't hang anymore and I sincerely hope you die in a painful and culturally scarring fashion, that others may learn from your failing.

The reason I feel the rather rare desire to approach this topic is because of something said on The Nightly Show last week. Usually, I really enjoy Larry Wilmore, he's witty and direct. But to see him flipping shit to the people trying to come up with solutions to a problem that has been plaguing California (not to mention huge swathes of the rest of the fucking planet) for years, a problem that even more of us are staring down the barrel of, pissed me pretty badly off. All water is recycled. Water treatment is a colossal part of the world we live in and people have been doing it in one way or another for a very fucking long time. Some people feel icky about the prospect of drinking water that used to have shit in it and to some extent that makes sense. Unfortunately for these folks pretty much all water has had shit in it. A goodly amount of it has probably been piss. Odds are you drank a little formerly-piss water today even. That's why filtration systems exist, so that by the time you drink it, your water doesn't bear any meaningful resemblance to the piss (or commercial waste, or industrial run off) that it used to be.

I'm hitting this one pretty hard but its not just water. A while back the U.N. suggested people start phasing insects into their diet to prevent against possible insecurity in the food supply. Of course it was kinda laughed off, but livestock is hard to raise, and costly, and if something goes wrong (like the world smolders and livestock becomes too resource intensive to keep alive) a huge number of people are going to be fucked. We can't afford to laugh off solutions at this point, no matter how icky it makes us feel. There are problems amassing in the world, too many to face down and certainly too many to ignore, and its not just irresponsible to keep calm and carry on, its self destructive. 

For We are Many

I've been thinking about what it means to be a geek lately. Unfortunately, there's a hint of truth to the idea that geek culture is one built on compulsive consumption. Games, movies, TV, comics: all the things that identify geek culture are shamelessly and actively exploited by groups that either never cared about the artistry of these media, or have been driven to forget what love they had. This is pretty fucking clear when you look at how many comic book movies have been scheduled and how they've been handled. All of that shit is a big part of our social presence, but I feel like its too easy to assume these things are what make us geeks. They fucking aren't.

Geek culture isn't about Captain America or Batman or Warcraft; its about loving something so much you involve yourself with it. That's a weird thing to say, but bare with me. Geeks aren't just known for playing games and watching movies, we're known for dressing up as those people, writing our own fiction in those worlds, and relentlessly deconstructing and examining seemingly random aspects of those stories. That last one is important because it really is the bit that unifies us. The tricky part is that isn't some random expression of appreciation for a specific genre or medium, that's a personality trait. Geeks can and do geek out over anything they're into. It's not about what you obsess over, its about the passion. Foodies are geeks, ask them about their favorite food and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like talking to a LARPer about their character. The same is true about people who're really into politics, folks who get weird about sports, and pretty much anybody who enjoys their job after ten years.

The reason I'm all fuckered about this is that I've been dragged (largely through my own shitty, comment-reading habits) into some of the more aggressive discussions about how we're all evil, or stupid, or bigoted. I really hope I don't have to point out how fucking absurd that is. The problem is that we are really, really easily led. Once the mode of exploitation is determined (comics, games, and movies for many of us) the immediately popular aspects of that mode are flogged well past the point of meaninglessness. It happened with Batman, it happened with Final Fantasy, and it happened with politics. The trouble arises from the fact that when huge portions of your obsession have been highjacked and refined to the least common denominator for easy marketing; you get defensive about weird things, you stop thinking about what you really believe.

I don't know how we're going to get away from that, its a little too easy to capitalize and monopolize on people's obsessions. But I do know that we can't really afford to be complicit in our own exploitation anymore. So I don't know, boycott EA games, or MCU movies, or whatever evil you feel like you can do without. Better yet, try to create something of your own for other geeks to cling to. Foodies, sports nuts, Gamers; we aren't really different groups, we are one people with many passions.

His Superpower is Punching!

So a friend recently convinced me to watch the new Daredevil series. It should be stated that I've largely avoided the comic/TV bullshit. I dig the new Constantine but I didn't really go for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D or Arrow or any of that kind of thing. I just don't have any faith in the people who make TV happen and I fucking love comic books, so I tend to ignore TV adaptations. Daredevil is the reason I lack that faith. Not because its bad, but because its made by Netflix.

They don't have to worry about the same standards and practices fuckery that TV producers do. People on Daredevil speak like real people because believe it or not profanity plays an enormous role in human communication. I love this. We've discussed profanity here before, and it holds a dear place in both mine and Brian's lexicon. So a show about people in fucked up situations that allows them to discuss them in those terms is always more enjoyable than you'd expect.

The other big thing about Daredevil for me is the violence. It ought to come as no surprise that I appreciate me some physical aggression, and the clarity and relative honesty of the violence in this show is beautiful. Sure we've still got a guy in a kinda silly outfit throwing down with Russian mobsters and not getting shot repeatedly and dropped in a hole, but that doesn't actually reduce the brutality of the combat.

Now this might sound like an ad spot for this one show, but its not. I like some things about Daredevil. Some of it is ridiculous, of course it is, its a comic book adaptation. But the things I like about it stem from a lack of censorship. They don't have to sugar coat things to placate shitty people.  I'm a geek; I love stories, the exploration of ideas, and the building of narrative worlds. When Constantine leaves out the details of what happened in Newcastle we lose a big part of that story and the motivations of the characters. I really don't have an issue with adapting comics or books to the screen but when we have to hobble them to make them suitable to irresponsible parents and ego-maniacal busybodies we've failed to respect what makes a story great.

Faux News

So, something that has been stewing in my mind for a while is a really angry tirade on how 24 hour news channels are fucking terrible, what with them creating tons bullshit to fill in all 24 hours. I tried to formulate some form of coherent rant but it quickly became more and more depressing as I realized something: real journalism (at least in the mainstream) is dead.

This sounds hyperbolic, and it kind of is, but not as much as you would hope. 24 hours is a lot of time to fill and since they don't have any way to gain funds other than by being funded by ad revenue and website traffic they have to make sure that they scrape as many views to them as possible. They do this by trying to bring people news faster than competitors such as the internet (good fucking luck there) and by trying to be entertaining/flashy enough to keep people there.

Trying to get news to people fast is what the internet was made for. In an attempt to get news out quick they get information they receive on the air ASAP which is often not fact checked. Remember the Boston Marathon bombing? Fox and CNN jumped on the story and all claimed that an arrest had been made before the actual police had made any movement towards suspects. The FBI actually scolded them for making this error because it could have caused problems. I am not trying to say that the news shouldn't try to get information to people quickly, but at least fact check it. Someone tells you that they are a policeman? Fucking check it. It doesn't take long. You are supposed to be journalists: people who try to get the truth of situations out to people. Being fast is great but when you sacrifice accuracy for that speed, you lose the core of your identity.

Being flashy does fuck all for information. In short this is news agencies trying to get people to watch all of their shit to justify ad companies to add to their unfortunately small revenue. To do this they try to get exclusives, but that only goes so far. A lot of news agencies have started to make small stories into big stories. Seriously, why else would Justin Beiber's arrest be newsworthy. Its not news, its tabloid fodder. You are supposed to be better than that news channels.

On this same note talking about violence constantly and trying to show the world falling into disrepair and how it is on the road to a mad max style society because no one has any morals anymore is bullshit. We are living in the most peaceful time in society yet. I feel like I need to say that I am not trying to say the wars going on around the world are not big or important, they are, but it should be a journalists responsibility to put that war into context. By the way, this also has a massively bad effect on people's psyche. Spending an entire 24 hours analyzing a shooting also desensitizes people to the problem and can create worse moods for people in general while exacerbating or causing depression in people who are prone to the problem. 

I am not saying that we should only talk about puppies and sunshine, that would be stupid. I don't think that you should do any more than reporting the news and putting the news into context. This doesn't fill up 24 hour news networks programming? Then maybe 24 hour news is a bad way of doing things. People are watching television less and less, maybe just make a news website that creates good news reports.

In Which My Philosophy Digs Me a Hole

Alright, I've written about this kind of thing before but I feel like it needs to be discussed in more general terms. The more power you accumulate, in literally any measure of power, the less freedom you have. See that dot to the right there? That's a period.

Now I'm going to put away my asshole hat and explain. If you are reading this you live in a fucking society. If you live in a society you are beholden, in one way or another, to other people in the society. Be it for your food or the electricity that powers your shit or just goddamn human contact, you owe. Now its very easy to go about this as some kind of absurdly complex system of poorly metered debt, but that would be fucking stupid. The better method of interacting as a society is a perpetual effort to pay it forward, to make society as a whole a better place. The greater your personal success, and thus the more resources you've tapped in order to succeed, the more you can and should do to improve society. Not by some circuitous bullshit pseudoeconomics, personally, like you actually give a shit.

Here's where things get a little weird. For some people forgoing selfish bullshit because its shitty and idiotic isn't enough, so there's more. If you accumulate power and fail to utilize your assets to benefit society, society has a responsibility to take your fucking power away. We are individuals and that's important to remember, but we are all in this together whether we like it or not. Having someone accumulate power without making an effort to actively, directly improve the quality of life around them is exploitative to all of us.

In this country especially this has been a discussion made in bad faith. There is a great deal of talk of the inevitability of social good arising from personal freedom. Which would be great if there wasn't a predisposition towards being a cunt. Not everyone has it, but enough people have it that just assuming that successful people aren't going to be shitty is willfully self-destructive. To simultaneously massacre two goodhearted maxims, whatever gets you off, as long as you don't fuck anybody over. Power is a form of freedom and freedom must be tempered by responsibility or it is monstrous, and dealing with monsters is a terminal endeavor for at least one party.

Thank You Jeremy

Just this today. Brian and I talk about this shit... just entirely too much. We're creatives at heart, and this is a topic that we grind on even more at home then we do on here. I've had this exact argument in various states with varying degrees of success and I wish with all of my heart that I had ever managed the clarity and passion Jeremy brings to this rant. We here at Kinda Whatevs are once again in your debt sir. Now if you'll excuse me I need to see if I'll ever finish my shitty little story.

Shit-Swilling Subhuman Sonsabitches

This is going to be a short post so I don't devolve in to a crazy-eyed chainsaw-wielding redneck. So swatting is a thing apparently. It's been a thing for a while and it has always been fucked up beyond anything like acceptability. If you hit that link up there you might note that when the police discussed the penalty of the Nov. 6 2014 swatting as a fine and, possibly, a year in prison.

People die in SWAT raids. I've covered it before, but SWAT actions terrorize civilians, ruin lives and, occasionally, melt babies. So calling in a bomb threat or hostage situation on someone to fucking troll them makes you not a fucking person anymore. The idea that these fuckers get anything less than dropped in a fucking hole is disgusting to me. Many swatters are apparently kids. That doesn't change my opinion at all. If your shitty fucking kid is willing to fuck up someone's life this badly they don't get to try again, and you probably shouldn't either.

We Need To Learn From The Lessons That Herbert West Showed Us.

So I have written something along the lines of this topic a couple of times but it is still something that bugs me. Remakes. This time I was set off because of a very specific remake: The X-Files. I love the X-Files, it was an amazing show, funny at times, tense at others. It balanced the monster of the week and drama genres really well. That being said, the show turned into something unwatchable by the end, mostly due to people splitting from the show as it convoluted itself out of existence.

When I wrote about Fringe I said that shows should get canceled before they get to the point of being terrible, and The X-Files certainly fails that test. It lasted like 2 years longer than it should have, but Fox (the network not the character) calling for 6 more episodes to be produced is fucking absurd. Its basically taking a dead show it ruined over a decade ago and trying to wring more money out of it's corpse. Fuck all that spending money on new shows that might be terrible, lets just Frankenstein this bitch and see how she does on the corner. Because, you know, that always works out for the best. I grew up watching shows like Star Trek TNG and The X-Files, but those shows are done, and I am comfortable with that. I am not craving to know the unanswered questions, I am just sad at how these shows turned bad at the end. Let them stay dead.

This might sound like I am overreacting, and to be fair I am being a little hyperbolic, but this trend also stifles creativity in mainstream media. Broadcast television is getting fucked by stuff like Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix and instead of trying to compete with them by making better shows, they try to scratch the nostalgia itch that these services provide (I have rewatched the X-Files two times in the past few years because of Netflix).

Seriously, thanks to Fox we got shows like the Simpsons, Futurama, The X-Files, Arrested Development, and Firefly. They clearly have the ability to get people who can create great works, so try to create the next Family Guy or King of the Hill rather then trying to rehash your glory days when you had those shows. Then again, they did cancel a bunch of those shows before they hit their stride, so maybe Fox just doesn't know what the hell they are doing. Incidentally, Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix don't just hit the nostalgia spot, they have also been creating new stuff that is good (Deadbeat and Alpha House come to mind) so maybe this is just the death throes of a dying form of media that is trying desperately to remain relevant.

And the Whole of the Law Shall be: Don't be a Cuntwaffle

We here at Kinda Whatevs have been known to discuss gaming and gaming culture from time to time. Today I plan on tapping a relatively controversial (though less than say, systemic sexism) topic. Yes, today we're going to discuss exploitation, and not in the conventional sense you'd be likely to see here. I'm not going to talk about how we as gamers are being reamed by certain profit models, or how games exacerbate underlying stereotypes and body image issues. No, today its personal. Today we're talking about cheating.

I am a card carrying Video Game Cheater. I cut my teeth on Game Genie back in the day, spent some time voiding warranties with a Game Shark, and have spent more hours than I care to admit to getting various "Mods" to play nicely together in order to tailor my gaming experience to my design. And that's all it has ever been; me trying to get the most out of my games. There are endless, vile arguments in forums all over the webs about the evils of cheating in video games, and some of the points raised are quite valid. If you cheat in an online game against people who are not cheated, you are a cuntwaffle and you deserve the ban that is probably coming to you. If you cheat in a way that actually destroys your game, well fuck, guess you shouldn't have fucking done that. Be more careful next time. My issue comes from the fact that, honestly most games are kind of insufferable to me without at least a little bit of modification. A little bit of god mode goes a long way towards making that psycho with a chainsaw feel like the vindication I crave. I will freely admit that some of the time my desire to cheat is a blatant power fantasy, but that's what escapism is fucking for. I don't, as my previous comments might imply, cheat on games where there are other people who aren't or might not be cheating. The idea of playing out the aforementioned power fantasy on other actual people is spectacularly shitty, that's how social conservatives happen. But there is nary a single player game out there that I haven't run through the paces of Cheat Engine or modded beyond recognition.

I do it for fun. Many of my friends and I have cheated the hell out of games we loved and grown to love them even more with the cheats. Most cheats are harmless as long as you aren't a dick. Now, I realize this is a Rant Fantastique at this point but I do have a reason for it. Recently, Bioware removed an apparently stable and very, very fucking useful exploit from Dragon Age: Inquisition. The exploit in question was item duplication, under specified, reasonable conditions. It allowed players to acquire good gear and made the economy in the game somewhat more reasonable. It had also been available in every DA game in almost exactly the same form. It was removed. That means that it had been intentionally implemented, as evidenced by the fact that they continued to fucking include it, and then patched out.

This bugs the hell out of me, and I realize that it's a little thing but cheating at games is a great joy to me and many other players. I'm being long winded here but I feel like this is on some level an issue of other people dictating how I'm allowed to enjoy myself and that is supremely fuckered.

It's a District Map, Not Digital Bukake

So, its no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention but politics is more fucked up than ever. Our congress is currently known as the "do nothing congress" because they haven't done shit for a long time. Its fucking crazy. There are plenty of reasons for this, most of which involve douchebaggery of the highest degree. I want to talk about one subject that I think can take a decent chunk of the blame: Gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is the process in which the people who carve out congressional districts do so in order to make them more conservative or liberal. This helps reinforce incumbents of districts because they can cut the opposition out of their district entirely while including neighborhoods that are more supportive of the candidates ideology. In another equally shitty move parties can use gerrymandering to eliminate some of their opposition's power by splitting neighborhoods with the opposition's supporters into multiple other districts in which they will only make up a very small minority, and thus have their voice not heard. Its not like the gerrymanders are being sneaky about it either. The borders get really really fucked up.

That's the 12th district of North Carolina and its kind of bad, but it is far from the worst.

Illinois' 4th district looks like two districts, but it is not, its one, connected by a very tiny strip of land along a highway.

This shit is ridiculous, and it is helping to ruin our country. It might not seem like a big deal, just politicians being politicians or something like that, but that's wrong. This kind of gerrymandering eliminates the voices of people and forces politicians to be far more fanatical. You see, when you need to worry about pleasing your district in order to get reelected you need to do things your district will like. If you eliminate any real opposition you have you only need to represent certain ideals. This means that if you even attempt to compromise you are in danger of losing your district if a "more conservative" or "more liberal" candidate comes along at election time and points out that you don't hold as strong a view as theirs.

Our country was founded on the ideals of compromise. Ever hear of the great compromise? It is the reason that we have a bicameral congress, which allows us to reduce corruption (theoretically). By eliminating the voices of a state's constituents and forcing themselves into a fanatical position in which they are unable to do anything for anyone, They are crippling a process many of them claim to believe in just so that they can stay in a position of power. Fuck them. Also, gerrymandering is technically illegal, but those who do it use the vagueness of the laws (it is hard to define gerrymandering) against it to do it legally. Voter apathy/ignorance also plays a part in this but largely in that it makes gerrymandering easier. So, I shall reiterate: Fuck them.

Wade-Giles Fuckery, and Not Deadpool/Buffy Slashfic

Alright folks, this is going to be a (hopefully) short nerd rant. We all know by this point that I have no patience for traditions built on bad ground. Today's shining shit shack of social standards revolves around the process of romanizing languages. I appreciate the value of converting non-english languages into characters comprehensible to english speakers/readers, it would just be great if we made any effort to do that. For instance the Gaelic word Samhain is pronounced sowwan or sahwin. That third letter is a fucking m and has no goddamn place in that word. I've heard the argument that its silent but silent letters are a hold out of a system whereby people use the ability to write "accurately" to enforce social barriers, so fuck that arbitrary elitist bullshit.

Arguably the most pronounced example of this stupidity is Wade-Giles transliteration. This is a method of converting Chinese, which is nuanced and beautiful, into English without any consideration for how those words are spoken. You may have noticed this renders the technique essentially useless for actually learning or communicating the fucking language. There is a chart at the bottom of that link that compares different phonemes and how they are written in Wade-Giles, which was established by two brits at the height of british cuntblubbery in China, and Pinyin, which is the method actually used by the people who speak the language. If you check that list you'll notice that WG seems to have valued exotic spelling conventions over anything even vaguely approaching accuracy.

This isn't super uncommon in romanizing languages, but it is fucking absurd. We romanize languages so that we can learn that language or at least be able to pronounce relevant words without sounding like a fucking moron. So I vote that we start actually writing things phonetically, or at very least consulting with native speakers before we decide how we ought to pronounce their words. Maybe someday we can live in a world where Daoism doesn't set off spell check and its foundational book isn't written as onomatopoeia for an old timey cash register.

The Z Word

I've been playing a great deal of Dying Light lately, and its brought to mind some issues I have with the whole zombie genre. First, let me say that I'm not one of the hipster/geeks that hates zombies because they're all mainstream now. I will gladly agree that zombie fiction has gotten entirely too pervasive and easily exploited. Do we need zombie romance movies? No, that's fucking gross. Does almost every threat to mankind need to be zombies? Fuck no, try harder Hollywood. I love zombie fiction, largely because of the fact that the zombies are the least interesting part of it. Its a rich, effective device that allows all sorts of commentary and satire to thrive when used well.

My concern rises from the habit in zombie fiction to over value the zombies themselves. Now, I don't mean that the hungry dead shouldn't be a pressing and inevitable threat, but zombies (real, shambling, moaning corpses; if your zombies still have any chance of being "cured" i.e. victims of a communicable anger problem, you're just being dishonest) are scary enough on their own. Zombies are a pervasive, constant and yet still surprising concern. They can and will be everywhere, you will never really be safe from them and they can and do just come out of nowhere. This makes for an amazing threat... so stop fucking giving them superpowers. Considering how often the basic premise of so many zombie movies is that man is the real monster (all of which after 1970 are lazy and derivative), the zombies themselves ought not be magic superbeings.

In games like Dying Light the whole idea is that mankind is fucking terrible given even the slightest provocation. The high number of heavily mutated undead is unnecessary because the normal undead often come out of nowhere. Really, the greatest threats are being surprised by zombies (the primary fear of which comes from a problem the game resolves in the first 5 minutes of cut scene), the consumptive evil of other survivors, or just the straight up vile asscovering of the political forces deciding the fate of the survivors. I could be okay with them saying that the fresh dead are still limber enough to be runners, sure, scary and understandable. However, some zombies being nine feet tall and built like the Goddamn Mountain puts a look on my face like a disappointed sibling. Pretty much all of the enemies in the game stop being particularly difficult to kill about half way through so making special monsters that are marginally more difficult kinda cheapens the narrative.

This is, admittedly a very niche argument. I realize that me bitching about the narrative and design weaknesses of a genre predicated upon the wakening of the dead, hungry and mindless, to murder and consume the living is yelling in the dark at best. However, as we've discussed previously, our fiction both shapes and represents us, so allowing and encouraging shitty fiction is a disservice to all of us. Also, I'm a huge geek, this is what I do.

The Path to Agoraphobia is Paved with Good Intentions, Poorly Executed.

Over the course of the last several years I've pretty much completely lost the ability to functionally interact with people. I'm not completely sure when it started but it probably had something to do with the fact that I stopped leaving the house. There was a period in which I could only afford to leave the house if I was looking for or going to work and even then bus fare was a prohibitive expense. Preexisting antisocial traits started to assert themselves more aggressively as my whole interaction with society was relegated to news-bites and poorly contextualized academia (thanks higher education!). Over time habits were established in such a way that I could no longer come up with reasons to go out. After I was told outright not to get a fucking job the idea of leaving the house fell even farther from a necessary evil to make ends meet to the least interesting or meaningful way to waste my wife's money, so I just stopped.

I've come to understand, with some work, what a bad idea this was. Justification became rule, rule became habit and habit became neurosis. Now the thought of doing anything at all, much less anything out of the house is accompanied by a combination of panic, apathy, and rationalizing my inaction. Now I can't even trust myself to be able to break the habit without outsourcing my motivation to someone else. I will get better, I have to.

Thanks for playing therapist, beloved internet. Now I'm going to go psyche myself up so I might be able to do something today.

An Open Letter To PETA

Dear PETA,
You people are monsters and you need to stop. You talk about the ethical treatment of animals, something that I believe should be something that people actually talk about, but then you kill 88.3% of the animals you take in. 88.3%! You could have left the animals on the street and they would have had a better chance to survive. You are monsters just on that point alone, especially after you protest against shelters for committing euthanasia. What makes you even worse? You hired a lobbyist to stop Virginia state from restricting euthanasia of animals. This is something I thought you guys would appreciate: something that would stop people from killing animals. But noooooo, you hire one of the most notorious lobbyists in history to make sure you can still kill animals at your whim.

The Virgina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services filed a report in 2010 that investigated their shelters and found that 90% of the euthanized animals were killed within 24 hours of their arrival at the shelter. You didn't even try to adopt out those animals, did you?

As I said in the first paragraph, I am a believer that treating animals in a humane way is important. I disagree about a few of your other policies and beliefs (specifically about why being vegan is better) but the main view you have, I share.

Most of our meat industry is bad for animals in terms of living conditions. We are in a time in which technological advancement is moving so quickly, you would be vastly better served to help fund technology that replaces animal products or reduces the cruelty of conditions. You are a huge organization, spend some of that money you spend making video games that shame imaginary violence against animals on researching how to make technology not hurt animals. I think that animal testing is kinda fucked up, but its also how we create vaccines and treatments for stuff like AIDS so instead of just protesting, help develop technology for testing without using live subjects. And on the side of animal adoptions, I think that there should be someplace that treats animals well and actually tries to adopt them.

Oh wait, there totally is. The Humane Society doesn't kill any animals, and their rates of adoption are amazing, at least here in Seattle, you have to check individual sites for numbers of adoptions and I didn't feel like looking through all of them. The humane society trumps you completely. You claim on your website that no kill shelters don't accept animals with diseases and massive injuries, but I couldn't find anything like that on the Humane societies website, even though they are a no kill shelter.

So here is my idea for you PETA. Stop killing animals. Start creating new technology. You want to cause change? Create an alternative. Don't just say there should be one and then moralize about how the things you do aren't fucking evil because its you doing them. Instead of making Billboards that show Pink naked, use the money you would have given her to do actual good for the beautiful plethora of life on this planet.

Sincerely,
Brian