What House of Cards means for the Future of Television

I’m a little late to the discussion, but I wanted to make sure I gave this topic the thought it deserved. Two weeks back, I - like many others - shotgunned House of Cards over the course of a couple days. I’d come down with some sort of ebola-esque virus, rendering me unable to do much outside of consuming massive quantities of over-the-counter medication and equally massive quantities of Netflix. Thus, in a perfect storm of “why the fuck not” I decided to devote what little energy I had to seeing whether House of Cards was really all Netflix professed it to be.

Here’s the short answer: Yes, House of Cards may well be the most important and influential piece of content this year - but for many reasons that I hadn’t predicted. While it’s very existence was enough to make it interesting from a business perspective, there were certain aspects of its execution that really pushed it beyond curiosity and into importance. No, I’m not talking about the oft-cited breaking of the fourth wall (which you either buy into early or spent the remaining 12 hours or so hating everything about) but rather, certain other aspects of the final product turned out to be significant game-changers for both the creative and business models of television as a whole - and the implications are staggering.

Let’s break it down:

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The site can rally around many things, but collective introspection isn’t one of them.

Reddit’s Victim Complex (recap of “Living in Reddit’s world” panel at SxSW)

Yes, Reddit needs more introspection. But don’t ignore the work that the SRS Fempire is doing in calling out bigots and creating safe spaces for progressive viewpoints.

There are thousands of Reddit users unhappy with the dominant tone of the userbase, and since there’s no viable alternative to Reddit for us to flee to, we will civilize most of Reddit if given the chance.

To speak of Reddit as a hivemind always necessarily means ignoring a large portion of its culture. And much as I’m embarrassed that people like the men’s rights activists can earn sympathy for hateful ideas in many large subreddits, I’m still very proud of more thoughtful places like /r/FoodforThought and /r/TwoXChromosomes and /r/occupywallstreet, and of sillier ones like /r/shittyadviceanimals and /r/YouTubehaiku.

Between the controversial poles of Reddit are thousands of subreddits that generally promote goodwill and share good content. It’s easy to ignore them as “boring” because they’re not made of clickbait drama for Adrian Chen to go all Chris Hansen on. They’re more the kind of subreddit that trickles stuff to BuzzFeed, Gawker, Tumblr, and everyone else. “Living in Reddit’s world” means enjoying a relatively democratic powerhouse that helps us all find the best things on the internet.

All the drama wouldn’t really matter if Reddit were an inconsequential backwater of no value. But it’s not. It’s a bustling city that exports information and entertainment, a city that needs urban renewal. The criticisms are valid. But they must be followed by active participation. If you refuse to help clean it up, your criticisms are only cries for attention.

(via nickdouglas)

Bolded by me. Reddit is a microcosm of the internet itself, meaning that large amounts of what you get out of it are directly due to what you put into it. Yes, there are seedy, embarrassing, or hateful sections, but there are also poignant, intelligent, and inspiring sections.

It really is true that to understand Reddit as a medium, as a source of information, and as a source of community, you not only need to tailor the subreddits you’re subscribed to, but you also need to participate in the conversation. If you’re just reading whatever surfaces to the defaults mainpage, as Reddit is a microcosm of the internet, the content will look and feel like the rest of the internet: loud, manipulative, repetitive, emotional, and oftentimes offensive.

The genius of Reddit isn’t the memes or the fury, but that when properly utilized, the commentary can be just as interesting as the originating article. Better said, unlike other types of “link aggregators,” “the thing” you think you’re coming there for is oftentimes only half of the experience.

An example: Right now for me, one of my top articles on my tailored mainpage is a youtube clip from the movie Watchmen where Rorschach says “You’re locked in here with me!” It provokes an “oh, interesting, I remember that film” response from me, so I go to the comments. Inside the nearly 1000 comments, is an entire discussion on how that line differs from the novel, the pages presented as evidence, the reasonings behind the line, the psychology behind the meaning in both forms, intentions of the entire novel, how Alan Moore can’t write female characters (with ample evidence presented), as well as people’s likes/dislikes/thoughts on the film itself. 

You see that “the thing” that would simply be the end point on another site is just the beginning on Reddit - it’s the catalyst for conversation that acts as the real jumping off point. Now extrapolate that same experience beyond pop culture and into everything: science, politics, gaming, economics, World News, etc. These were all examples I pulled from my own front page this morning, each of which has a lively and detailed discussion within the comments. If you’d like to check out some of the best of reddit for yourself, spend two minutes perusing /r/depthhub and /r/foodforthought

Is every comment gold? Of course not. Even within tailored subreddits you can’t avoid the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, or the reality that again, as a microcosm of the internet, there are all types present. 

But the takeaway is that the community is itself a source of information. Much like subreddits narrow the focus of information down to certain topics, the discussion narrows it further down to even more specificity. Great focus is put on contributing to that conversation, so by engaging - either through providing additional information or by asking explicitly for additional information - that topic becomes a rich source of interesting and topically relevant knowledge. The thing is just the start, the real value comes from participation.

Wrapping this up, Nick’s right - within that construct of “the people make the thing more than just the thing,” the future of Reddit comes down to the active participants defining what they value: the community of Reddit itself must define what it deems important. I don’t believe that Reddit as a whole as a “culture,” as a site with 40 Billion pageviews a year can be summed up as an aggregate whole. I do believe that specific subreddits have cultures though, and participation in those cultures is akin to validation. No, you will never escape the reality that it is a smaller version of the larger whole in which it lives (the aforementioned “microcosm of the internet” reality) but as it can be whatever you want or need it to be on an individual level, that individual requirement can make the whole thing a greater (and better) whole.

(via nickdouglas)

School Shooting Prompts Legislation To Study Violent Video Games

japanesemetal:

stfupenguins:

baconqurlyq:

I have given up hope that we’ll ever have legislators who learn from our [recent] past. Violent video games promote violence as much as rock n’ roll, porn, comic books, or movies. Which is to say - not at all.

Then again - it’s easier to blame something like video games or music rather than take a measured look at the multiple, difficult variables that causes atrocities.

Video games are available all over the world.

High levels of mass shootings happen in the United States.

There’s your study, fuckweasels.

The most popular video games involve killing a bunch of people. Not monsters, or robots, you’re shooting other ‘humans’. The most popular shows involve the same shit.

I don’t think violent video games & movies should be censored, but you can’t say that they have no effect. Everything has some sort of effect, and when the majority of popular video games involve violence and targeted shooting, that’s going to have some sort of effect, sooner or later. To deny that is basically to deny that any sort of media has any sort of influence whatsoever.

To say rock n’ roll and porn have never influenced anybody to do anything? Please. We as humans are influenced by our environment, and the media plays a big part of what makes up that environment, in this day and age of digital isolation.

Are violent video games to blame for the shooting? No. The shooter had a troubled family life, mental problems, and lots of other issues. The media sensationalism that shooters get probably contributed as well. For all I know, the shooter may have never played any video games at all. But as a society we should be mindful of what we consume. You are what you eat. 

Does that mean the government should get involved? Not necessarily. But lets not lie to ourselves about the effects of mass media and entertainment.

Actually the most popular game this console cycle as “Wii Sports” followed by “Mario Kart Wii” various flavors of “Pokemon” “New Super Mario Brothers” “Wii Play” and “Kinect Adventures.” In fact, every single one of those “most popular video games” that “involve killing a bunch of people” were beaten pretty soundly by the “Wii Fit” games.

If we don’t want to focus on consoles, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, the yearly CoD franchise release, has sold about 15 million copies across all platforms - World of Warcraft, on the other hand has 10 million active players - per month. Hell, “Angry Birds” alone beats every single “Call Of Honor, Modern Battlefield” (aka: “Modern Shooter” genre) knockoff ever created, combined - and it beats them all by several orders of magnitude, with somewhere around 750 million downloads and 200-250 million active players per month.

More importantly, as was pointed out above, video games are a global industry while mass shootings are not. The aforementioned Black Ops 2 sells about the same in North America as it does in Europe+Japan. The aforementioned shootings do not have the same split, occurring in America to a much higher degree. So unless violent video games somehow affect Americans differently than they do other countries with a similar video game consumption (including, you know, Canada) we don’t need to “lie to ourselves” about anything because there simply isn’t and has never been any correlation.

But since we’re discussing inaccurate perceptions, let’s really get into it. The average video gamer is 35 years old and has extraneous income to spend on what is a really expensive passtime. 68% of those gamers are over 18, 47% of them are women. The perception that it’s solely emotionally underdeveloped manchildren playing games in their parents basement is about as far off as you can get.

So before you say things like “the majority of popular games involve violence and targeted shooting” or ”let’s not lie to ourselves about the effects” you might want to actually know the very smallest amount about video games and the video game industry. I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but a simple google search would have shown your perception to be wildly off base.

tl;dr - No - fucking read it.

Source: baconqurlyq

9/11

I hope that in the near future, when we look back at September 11th, 2001, we will remember not only the tragedy and courage of the day itself, but also our response to the events.

To me, that’s what I remember most about September 11th, 2001: that in grief, we were united - in the best sense of the word - despite its roots in sadness. We had watched 2977 innocent people murdered live on national television, replayed over and over again until it made us sick, and yet in our confusion we defaulted to comforting and protecting each other. We were all Americans, all attacked, all dealing with the tragedy together.

But days later, our national demeanor changed, along with our national discourse. As a nation we became fearful, and full of anger. We began to lash out externally and internally, choosing to respond to hatred with more hatred. We set upon our own with an appetite for xenophobia that bordered on ravenous. In doing so, we lost much.

We are a country born of immigrants, but immigrants became the enemy. We are a country whose culture is formed and shaped in a melting pot, but we gazed upon certain members of our own with explicit suspicion. We are a country whose core values are of religious freedom - values so important that they were writ at the cost of blood - and yet we cast them aside without hesitation to scorn, threaten, and even assault those who “dared” to believe differently.

What happened 11 years ago was a tragedy in the truest sense of the word, but we only compounded the tragedy with our response. In the days after September 11th, 2001, we showed the best of ourselves as a nation, but followed it with the worst. A decade later, we’re still dealing with the effects. Children barely young enough to remember the event itself are now old enough to discriminate because of it. They’ve been taught by eleven years’ worth of base emotion to fear and hate their fellow citizens, and what they’ve witnessed during their formative years will create a lifetime’s worth of internal and external conflict. We’re only now beginning to repair the damage but it may take an entire generation to get us back on track.

We can be better - not just in the sense of wounds healing, but in all aspects of the word. We can learn all the lessons there are to learn from a tragedy and from our response. We can heal and make ourselves stronger at the break. We can remember that when we chose to make our hearts so vulnerable in the first place, it was because the alternative wasn’t who we wanted to be as a people. And one day I hope that when we look back on this event in years to come, we’ll be able to say that our insanity was temporary, and that we’re better now. Because we can be; we can be so much better.

I’ve seen it in us.

Do Creationists believe in the God Particle?

Ugh, to answer your question: yes they do. I’m already seeing this get totally misunderstood by the “I only pick and choose which science I believe so it doesn’t challenge my beliefs” crowd, and I’m already getting shit for explaining how this does not mean science found “scientific proof of God.” I’ve stopped explaining it to those who choose to remain willfully ignorant, and I’ve honestly stopped caring when people say it’s rude to point out and/or mock the willfully ignorant.

Ignorance is not an excuse; ignorance is a disease. Willful ignorance is one of the worst traits a human being can have. The universe - in all its complexity, curiosity, and utter sheer monstrosity - is nigh unknowable; the only way we will know a very slight bit more requires curiosity and the humble willingness to accept that we know very little in the first place. Most importantly it requires a desire to learn and explore, not a belief that we already know everything of “value.”

We know more today than we did yesterday. Yesterday we knew more than we did last year, and last year we knew more than we did a thousand years ago. Thank science for that. Science is fucking awesome, and to ignore science unless it reinforces your already-established beliefs, systems, and structures (or worse: to only participate in, and/or support science that reinforces them) shows an inexcusable lack of understanding and respect for exactly what science is and offers; even while you likely continue to use the products of such science on a daily basis.

Science and religion can coexist, but only so long as religion defers to science when science shows religion the light of new information. If within that new information, science runs up against or past the boundaries of established religious ideas, then religion must acquiesce. This is the nature of science: it sheds a light of understanding upon the stories that religion tells to explain what exists in the darkness. 

Science does not seek to reinforce beliefs. It does not not hate, nor love, nor judge. It does not provide comfort.  Science is impartial and indifferent. It seeks new data, new knowledge and a further understanding of the entirety of existence around and within us. Religion may say what should be, but science explains what is.

So no, science did not find evidence that “proves” the existence of “God” or any evidence of a creator of any kind. It may or may not have found some additional data about a type of very small particle (properly called the Higgs boson) that will prove or disprove very small elements of very complicated equations that will have very big ramifications for our understanding of how certain basic forces of the universe function and interact.

If you’re curious about how things like mass and gravity work, then this is very big news. If you were just hoping to have your existing beliefs validated, then you’re barking up the wrong tree because science doesn’t really care about your beliefs - it persists and exists outside of your beliefs. 

That is the very nature of science: to wage a constant war on ignorance. So show some fucking respect and stop siding with ignorance; if for no other reason than science has a habit of winning that particular battle.

(via evangotlib)

Source: inothernews

What Value Hath Facebook?

It’s oft-repeated that Facebook has captured one seventh of the world’s population. It’s a staggering accomplishment, and a statement that successfully evokes the kind of scale at which Facebook operates. Facebook is more than a social network, it’s the social network. It’s become a bedrock of connectivity that crosses generational, commercial, and personal lines.

Facebook is also at the crossroads of what their recent IPO means, both internally and externally, and what each of those mean for the future of the company. Lots of smart people are asking somewhat philosophically-inclined questions like “what does Facebook mean?” and “Where do they go from here?”

The questions, despite their wording, all ask the same thing: Facebook has been successful up until this point, but their current advertising-and-privacy-based business model is bumping up against the connected population of the planet. With that in mind, what does the company hope to accomplish from here on out?

After a couple discussions with entertainment executives - who always remain fascinated with tech in much the same way that some people are fascinated with scaring themselves shitless at horror movies - investors, friends, and my father, I decided to lay my own thoughts out here on what we’ll see from Facebook in the near future. To clarify, I have no inside knowledge, and could be completely wrong on every single point here. That being said, I don’t think it’s too far of a stretch to connect the dots. 

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kenyatta: Sigourney Weaver as ‘Ellen Ripley’ in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) Watching Aliens on TV right now. This movie holds up so damn well over time. I think people forget how important Aliens was to pop culture. Most sci-fi action movies and games look they way they do because of the art direction and production design of Aliens. (The first movie, Alien, borrowed a lot of its look from 2001: A Space Odyssey.) This was James Cameron’s first studio movie after the low budget, independent The Terminator. Aliens proved that Cameron knew what he was doing and set off a fantastic career. The success of Sigourney Weaver’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Aliens created roles for strong women in Hollywood action movies.  It preceded a cultural shift in America, past second wave feminism and towards a world where we were allowed to celebrate women who rocked. Ripley also became the archetype for James Cameron’s later characters of Sarah Connor (Terminator 2), and Max Guevara (Dark Angel).  I’d even argue confidently that Ripley laid the groundwork for all of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi asskickers from Buffy to River Tam. Also: Paul Riser’s greedy, conniving “Burke” was the perfect foil for a 1980’s America pissed off at the greed of yuppies who seemed to value profits over humanity. I’ve read board posts where people describe the dialogue and tropes of Aliens as cliché — the sci-fi movie with the false ending, the badass military Latina soldier, lines like “game over man, game over” — but most of this is ignorant of pop culture history. You have to remember that many of these elements became tropes because everybody copied them from Aliens. Also: Alien 3 is still a huge fucking disappointment. This is the legacy of Aliens. It’s a seminal film - though Kenyatta and I seem to disagree on whether Alien or Aliens is a better movie (spoiler alert: I think Alien is - but I also love the claustrophobic feeling of confined filmmaking) and to what degree Alien borrowed from 2001, versus to what degree Aliens borrowed from Alien (I think there’s a lot more of Geiger in Alien than there is 2001, and I think Aliens took that Geiger and simply ran with it.) However, Aliens did literally create and then define a genre of film, and then it simultaneously defined the tropes and archetypes of that genre so well that they’ve almost never deviated. Additionally, it created a new style of female protagonist that was unapologetically awesome, completely modern and unlike anyone else in contemporary media. Also worth reiterating, James Cameron wrote and directed it, so all of this was his defining vision (presumably) from start to finish. So I mostly agree with all of this…with the possible exception of the last line. Now to be fair, I’m also disappointed in Alien 3, but I’d like to expand on why. The film David Fincher intended to shoot was ballsy. It was a throwback to the intimacy and organic claustrophobia of Alien. It treated Aliens like The Empire Strikes Back, and openly recognized that the entire trilogy was actually the story of Ripley and the inevitability of her solitude. She is, without getting into hyperbole, the loneliest woman in the universe. She has seen and survived things that no one else has; this is her strength and her weakness. From that standpoint, Alien 3 attempted to finish her story of being fated to a life of solitude, survival, loss, and never knowing anything more than pyrrhic victories. In fact, fate versus free will (especially within the contexts of class and religion) was a big theme running through the whole film. But where Aliens was a sequel trusted to the singular vision of one writer/director, Alien 3 was now a “franchise film,” subject to meddling, studio-mandated script changes, and production infighting. The best description I can think of is that David Fincher set out to make a sequel to Alien - a film that was claustrophobic, thoughtful and lonely - but the powers that be wanted Aliens 2. The film was co-opted and then edited to be…well, awful. The film cobbled together for the Alien Quadrilogy Anthology from the husks of what Fincher shot and what made it into the theatrical version is…well, it’s okay. There’s a lot of potential, but it’s still uneven. It’s certainly miles ahead of Alien: Resurrection, which was nigh unwatchable. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for the film nonetheless. I consider it the final leg of Ripley’s dramatic arc. Her tragic final act, if you will, and a fitting end to her character. When taken out of the context of any other Alien sequels, it’s a recognition of the importance of her character, and it treats her with the respect that she deserves without shying away from the inevitability of her fate. Her final act is a sad - albeit selfless - end and the one time in the three films she’s ever, truly been in control of her own fate. She takes back control over her life by ending it in defiance of the Xenomorphs and the corporation that have combined and conspired to haunt her for unknowable years now; and the relief on her face is the last image we have of her life, her journey, and her fate. It’s beautiful, really. Flawed beauty, but beauty nonetheless. …Of course, then they made a fourth film.
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kenyatta:

Sigourney Weaver as ‘Ellen Ripley’ in Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)

Watching Aliens on TV right now. This movie holds up so damn well over time.

I think people forget how important Aliens was to pop culture.

Most sci-fi action movies and games look they way they do because of the art direction and production design of Aliens. (The first movie, Alien, borrowed a lot of its look from 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

This was James Cameron’s first studio movie after the low budget, independent The Terminator. Aliens proved that Cameron knew what he was doing and set off a fantastic career.

The success of Sigourney Weaver’s Academy Award-nominated portrayal of Ellen Ripley in Aliens created roles for strong women in Hollywood action movies.  It preceded a cultural shift in America, past second wave feminism and towards a world where we were allowed to celebrate women who rocked. Ripley also became the archetype for James Cameron’s later characters of Sarah Connor (Terminator 2), and Max Guevara (Dark Angel).  I’d even argue confidently that Ripley laid the groundwork for all of Joss Whedon’s sci-fi asskickers from Buffy to River Tam.

Also: Paul Riser’s greedy, conniving “Burke” was the perfect foil for a 1980’s America pissed off at the greed of yuppies who seemed to value profits over humanity.

I’ve read board posts where people describe the dialogue and tropes of Aliens as cliché — the sci-fi movie with the false ending, the badass military Latina soldier, lines like “game over man, game over” — but most of this is ignorant of pop culture history. You have to remember that many of these elements became tropes because everybody copied them from Aliens.

Also: Alien 3 is still a huge fucking disappointment.

This is the legacy of Aliens. It’s a seminal film - though Kenyatta and I seem to disagree on whether Alien or Aliens is a better movie (spoiler alert: I think Alien is - but I also love the claustrophobic feeling of confined filmmaking) and to what degree Alien borrowed from 2001, versus to what degree Aliens borrowed from Alien (I think there’s a lot more of Geiger in Alien than there is 2001, and I think Aliens took that Geiger and simply ran with it.)

However, Aliens did literally create and then define a genre of film, and then it simultaneously defined the tropes and archetypes of that genre so well that they’ve almost never deviated. Additionally, it created a new style of female protagonist that was unapologetically awesome, completely modern and unlike anyone else in contemporary media. Also worth reiterating, James Cameron wrote and directed it, so all of this was his defining vision (presumably) from start to finish.

So I mostly agree with all of this…with the possible exception of the last line.

Now to be fair, I’m also disappointed in Alien 3, but I’d like to expand on why. The film David Fincher intended to shoot was ballsy. It was a throwback to the intimacy and organic claustrophobia of Alien. It treated Aliens like The Empire Strikes Back, and openly recognized that the entire trilogy was actually the story of Ripley and the inevitability of her solitude. She is, without getting into hyperbole, the loneliest woman in the universe. She has seen and survived things that no one else has; this is her strength and her weakness.

From that standpoint, Alien 3 attempted to finish her story of being fated to a life of solitude, survival, loss, and never knowing anything more than pyrrhic victories. In fact, fate versus free will (especially within the contexts of class and religion) was a big theme running through the whole film.

But where Aliens was a sequel trusted to the singular vision of one writer/director, Alien 3 was now a “franchise film,” subject to meddling, studio-mandated script changes, and production infighting. The best description I can think of is that David Fincher set out to make a sequel to Alien - a film that was claustrophobic, thoughtful and lonely - but the powers that be wanted Aliens 2.

The film was co-opted and then edited to be…well, awful. The film cobbled together for the Alien Quadrilogy Anthology from the husks of what Fincher shot and what made it into the theatrical version is…well, it’s okay. There’s a lot of potential, but it’s still uneven. It’s certainly miles ahead of Alien: Resurrection, which was nigh unwatchable.

But I do have a soft spot in my heart for the film nonetheless. I consider it the final leg of Ripley’s dramatic arc. Her tragic final act, if you will, and a fitting end to her character. When taken out of the context of any other Alien sequels, it’s a recognition of the importance of her character, and it treats her with the respect that she deserves without shying away from the inevitability of her fate.

Her final act is a sad - albeit selfless - end and the one time in the three films she’s ever, truly been in control of her own fate. She takes back control over her life by ending it in defiance of the Xenomorphs and the corporation that have combined and conspired to haunt her for unknowable years now; and the relief on her face is the last image we have of her life, her journey, and her fate.

It’s beautiful, really. Flawed beauty, but beauty nonetheless.

…Of course, then they made a fourth film.

Source:

kenyatta: U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.” The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light. The officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military. Well fuck. via Danger Room | Wired.com It’s a good thing Christianity is a religion of peace, otherwise this whole “wiping whole cities off the map and declaring ‘total warfare’ against one-and-a-half billion people” thing might sound like the crazy that happens when ideology trumps humanity. The saddest part? I’ve heard the same end-goal (the complete destruction of a billion-and-a-half people over an ideological disagreement) from people who weren’t in positions of power but who were just as “Christian” as this fellow. Just ordinary folks whose faith “requires” them to have a zero-sum outlook on the world where opposing viewpoints are mutually exclusive and require extinction. Sure there’s the argument that “it’s only a few bad apples” or “it’s only the more fringe, extreme adherents” - which exactly the same as the argument made when viewing the more violent products of Islam - but it’s hard not to keep seeing the single common identifying factor of “religion” in the mix. Here’s my advice to the world, whether you’re a Christian or Muslim or any other religious affiliation: if your self-identification requires the same thing from the entire rest of the planet, you’ve gone insane. Time to put down the scripture and realize that you’ve been brainwashed into trading your humanity for your ideology, and if you don’t walk back from that edge immediately, you’ll fall off. Let’s review what falling off looks like, for the kids in the back: You’ve been told that the entire rest of the world needs to bend to the whims of your personal worldview, either by voice, by sword, or by the death of the outliers. Doesn’t that sound fucking crazy? Doesn’t that sound laughably irrational to the point where no one would think that any person with the critical thinking skills of a third grader would ever allow themselves to get to that point? Doesn’t a Lt. Colonel (under the supervision and therefore, assumed approval of a two-star General) in the world’s largest and most well-funded military who feels that way teaching other officers the step-by-step process towards reaching that genocidal end goal sound like the scariest fucking thing you can think of? And lest you think that I’m just adding a personal anti-religious bias to the mix, feel free to click through the link and download the PDFs yourself to see “Action Items For Military Officers” like this example, downloadable here that suggest going to mosques to “share the Gospel.” There’s only one cause of this particular type of insanity, and this is its natural effect.
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kenyatta:

U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a “total war” against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary.”

The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light.

The officer who delivered the lectures, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still maintains his position at the Norfolk, Virginia college, pending an investigation. The commanders, lieutenant colonels, captains and colonels who sat in Dooley’s classroom, listening to the inflammatory material week after week, have now moved into higher-level assignments throughout the U.S. military.

Well fuck.

via Danger Room | Wired.com

It’s a good thing Christianity is a religion of peace, otherwise this whole “wiping whole cities off the map and declaring ‘total warfare’ against one-and-a-half billion people” thing might sound like the crazy that happens when ideology trumps humanity.

The saddest part? I’ve heard the same end-goal (the complete destruction of a billion-and-a-half people over an ideological disagreement) from people who weren’t in positions of power but who were just as “Christian” as this fellow. Just ordinary folks whose faith “requires” them to have a zero-sum outlook on the world where opposing viewpoints are mutually exclusive and require extinction. Sure there’s the argument that “it’s only a few bad apples” or “it’s only the more fringe, extreme adherents” - which exactly the same as the argument made when viewing the more violent products of Islam - but it’s hard not to keep seeing the single common identifying factor of “religion” in the mix.

Here’s my advice to the world, whether you’re a Christian or Muslim or any other religious affiliation: if your self-identification requires the same thing from the entire rest of the planet, you’ve gone insane. Time to put down the scripture and realize that you’ve been brainwashed into trading your humanity for your ideology, and if you don’t walk back from that edge immediately, you’ll fall off.

Let’s review what falling off looks like, for the kids in the back: You’ve been told that the entire rest of the world needs to bend to the whims of your personal worldview, either by voice, by sword, or by the death of the outliers. Doesn’t that sound fucking crazy? Doesn’t that sound laughably irrational to the point where no one would think that any person with the critical thinking skills of a third grader would ever allow themselves to get to that point?

Doesn’t a Lt. Colonel (under the supervision and therefore, assumed approval of a two-star General) in the world’s largest and most well-funded military who feels that way teaching other officers the step-by-step process towards reaching that genocidal end goal sound like the scariest fucking thing you can think of?

And lest you think that I’m just adding a personal anti-religious bias to the mix, feel free to click through the link and download the PDFs yourself to see “Action Items For Military Officers” like this example, downloadable here that suggest going to mosques to “share the Gospel.”

There’s only one cause of this particular type of insanity, and this is its natural effect.

I’m gonna write an essay on this some time, but in the very near future we’re going to need to reshape everything we currently know about the education system. Our education system is built around the discovery and memorization of information, because for the vast majority of human history information was hard to come by. “Facts” in and of themselves were guarded and held closely by the aristocracy, and passed down from within. Access to information was hard to come by and some people spent their entire lives collecting personal libraries just to ensure continued access to that information. We don’t live in that world anymore, at least not in the connected world. In fact, I think it’s fair to argue that we have such an overabundance of information that “discovery” is no longer the issue. Quite the opposite, in fact: the problem we’ll need to base our education system around is not information discovery, but information parsing and analysis. Usually, the analytical aspect of education doesn’t come into play until the late high-school years, as the time before then is spent building a base knowledge piggybacked on top of rote memorization. However, I think that method will quickly cease to be effective, because when the information becomes overwhelming, it stops communicating. You can already see the ramifications on and off the internet, where there’s beginning to be a sense that “your fact is as valid as my opinion.” That sort of analytical failure only happens when fact and opinion start getting muddled together in bad analysis, and only gets passed on by those with an inability to parse and analyze that information. And unless we start reshaping the way we present information to students, it’s only going to get worse. The world of “here is a book - it will be your primary source of information on this subject and within it is fact” no longer applies. The internet broke that, as it has done to so many other aspects fo the modern world. If we don’t change the methods by which we approach the entire world of education to reflect that fundamental change in the connected planet, we’ll be forced to deal with an education system that sacrificed the “education” for the “system.” tl;dr: Information used to be scarce, but now it’s abundant. Therefore, we need to bias our teaching methods towards parsing and analysis of information as opposed to just discovery and memorization.
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I’m gonna write an essay on this some time, but in the very near future we’re going to need to reshape everything we currently know about the education system.

Our education system is built around the discovery and memorization of information, because for the vast majority of human history information was hard to come by. “Facts” in and of themselves were guarded and held closely by the aristocracy, and passed down from within. Access to information was hard to come by and some people spent their entire lives collecting personal libraries just to ensure continued access to that information.

We don’t live in that world anymore, at least not in the connected world. In fact, I think it’s fair to argue that we have such an overabundance of information that “discovery” is no longer the issue. Quite the opposite, in fact: the problem we’ll need to base our education system around is not information discovery, but information parsing and analysis.

Usually, the analytical aspect of education doesn’t come into play until the late high-school years, as the time before then is spent building a base knowledge piggybacked on top of rote memorization. However, I think that method will quickly cease to be effective, because when the information becomes overwhelming, it stops communicating.

You can already see the ramifications on and off the internet, where there’s beginning to be a sense that “your fact is as valid as my opinion.” That sort of analytical failure only happens when fact and opinion start getting muddled together in bad analysis, and only gets passed on by those with an inability to parse and analyze that information.

And unless we start reshaping the way we present information to students, it’s only going to get worse. The world of “here is a book - it will be your primary source of information on this subject and within it is fact” no longer applies. The internet broke that, as it has done to so many other aspects fo the modern world. If we don’t change the methods by which we approach the entire world of education to reflect that fundamental change in the connected planet, we’ll be forced to deal with an education system that sacrificed the “education” for the “system.”

tl;dr: Information used to be scarce, but now it’s abundant. Therefore, we need to bias our teaching methods towards parsing and analysis of information as opposed to just discovery and memorization.

(via ericmortensen)

Source: sisterpearl

Q:also i know you'll probably say something about over population or how we don't really need to create more children considering all the children that exist without families, or even about the validity of those couples unable to have children so for over population it's true, and i'm not saying the threat to our existence is here now but it does go against nature. as for couples who cant have children, natural selection takes care of that.

Anonymous

When I wrote this, I knew I’d get at least one comment like the above. I’ve broken it down line by line below:

also i know you’ll probably say something about over population or how we don’t really need to create more children considering all the children that exist without families,

You “know” wrong - I won’t, and I won’t need to.

or even about the validity of those couples unable to have children so for over population it’s true

Also wrong: I don’t feel the need to judge the “validity” of other people’s relationships.

and i’m not saying the threat to our existence is here now

Foreboding, but okay. Aside from ourselves, neither am I.

but it does go against nature.

Huh. That’s interesting, in its complete and total inaccuracy.

Which part of “nature” are you referencing this being against? The part where gay animals actually exist? The part where gay animals also exist as monogamous couples? How can something that already abundantly exists in non-human “nature” be “against nature?” How can something that naturally occurs in all species above a certain intelligence threshold be “against nature?”

More importantly, how can something that naturally occurs in human beings be “against nature” unless you’re using some new and vacuously self-serving definition of “nature”? To be totally honest, this is such a specious argument that I’m not even entirely sure what you’re trying to communicate.

as for couples who cant have children, natural selection takes care of that.

So your entire argument for monogamy is procreation? I think you’re missing your own point here. In fact, I’d argue that if your goal is procreation and continuation of the species, monogamy is more of a threat as it inevitably leads to a limitation on human production. Hell, tossing monogamy would help solve that natural selection “issue” you mentioned earlier as it would allow the potentially positive advantageously procreative genes from one partner to not be limited by the other partner’s nonprocreative genes.

But that’s not what you’re actually saying, is it? You’re not actually making an argument for a human institution to be regulated by the “laws of nature.” You’re just inventing arguments that sound similar enough to scientific concepts that you hope they’ll convey scientific weight to invented arguments like attributing an innate morality to nature. Put more plainly: You’re obviously grasping at straws hoping that if you make enough small points that sound like they might be valid, they’ll come together into a larger one that will.

But that’s the funny thing about small points and logic: they don’t work that way. They each need to work together for a larger point to be made. Yours work at odds against each other: Disregarding the incorrect “definition” of “nature” as demonstrated above, either male/female monogamy is “against nature” for its inability to produce children (meaning that the goal of procreation is paramount, and monogamy as an institution falls apart) or the monogamous coupling itself as a social structure is paramount and therefore it doesn’t matter whether children are produced or not. You cannot have it both ways.

But you knew that. You were just hoping that if you threw enough of those straws into the air, your lack of an actual point wouldn’t be as obvious.

So I don’t need to say anything about overpopulation or the number of children that currently require families; while they’re important topics, they don’t need to be addressed to invalidate your argument. All I need to invalidate your argument is your argument, as it inevitably invalidates itself.

On Bullying.

I’ll admit from the beginning that this is going to be a stream of consciousness “essay,” so I’m not entirely sure where it’s gonna go. I may or may not edit it before posting,* but I wanted to be able to speak my peace as I figured out my feelings. Multi-tasking, folks - it’s a great way to put your foot in your mouth.

So there’s a big movement right now to stop bullying. From my shallow understanding of the evolution of the cultural meme, it began with the very noble “It gets better” campaign, which I truly do admire. From there, it extended to all aspects of bullying, across many different ideas, until it became sort of a generalized “Stop bulling” campaign.

Somehow I find myself objecting to this, and I’m going to do my best to explain why. It may not be what you think.

Read More

On scaring one’s self shitless in a 556hp CTS-V Coupe.

In the past I’ve made no bones about my love of BMWs. I learned to drive on one and I think certain M models are as close to automotive perfection as one can find under 100 grand. There’s a balance to the overwhelming sensory overload, and a confidence that allows BMW drivers to know exactly where the car is, where the capabilities of the car allow it to be in a few moments, and then let you to put it there. Hitting an apex in an M-tuned BMW is a matter of seeing the apex and then wanting to - it really is that communicative.

So if I love BMWs so much why, exactly, did I find myself inside of a Cadillac dealership yesterday asking to test drive one of their newest and most egregiously “American” models, the CTS-V coupe? Simply put: I’ve been hearing over and over how it’s a better M3 than the M3.

Heresy.

I must drive it.

Now, I’m certainly not the “traditional” Cadillac target demographic (being that I’m still decades away from being AARP-eligible) but in the past few years, they’ve been making a play at the exact automotive space I inhabit: younger sports-luxury aficionados who value a well-built, fun car. So after trying and failing two different times to find a dealership with a CTS-V coupe in stock, I randomly swung into a dealership whose location sat equidistant to two errands, armed with some free time and willing girlfriend.

As it turned out, there was an idling CTS-V just outside the doors, sitting there for all the world to steal see. Pictures don’t really do justice to just how ridiculous the car looks in person. With the notable exception of the twin, center-mounted, cannon-sized exhaust pipes, the massive 20” wheels and tires, and the only-very-slightly-smaller-than-the-wheels brake discs, there doesn’t seem to be a single curved surface on the entire car. A huge bulge dominates the hood, as if the engine has tried and only barely failed to escape. Every part of the rear converges into a single crease, like an axe seen straight-on. Sitting there idling, it seemed…well, aggressive but not particularly impressive.

Nonetheless, “I’d like to test drive a CTS-V coupe,” I told Mac, a man who was exactly like my grandfather, had my grandfather been alive and much more willing to let me hoon around in his automobiles. “Of course you would,” Mac replied, a slight twinkle in his eye. The unstated implication was “don’t break it,” which was made slightly more specific when Mac let me know that the last test driver wanted to buy that exact car. But Mac, consummate professional that he was, gamely trotted out back to ensure that I had my fun before the soon-to-be owner checked for pre-purchase issues.

So with my girlfriend in the backseat and Mac on the passenger side, we settled into the jet black, 4000 pound beast and I set about arranging my mirrors to allow me to see anything aft of my shoulder-blades. The beltline felt like it came up to my neck, and the rear window was like a porthole to the outside world. But the seats hugged you in a forgiving manner and the engine purred - not growled, but purred - out in front.

About that engine… There are many reasons this car is being lauded to such a ridiculous degree, and one of the biggest comes down to a very simple number: 556. That’s the amount of horsepower they’ve crammed into pushing this two-ton beast. Five hundred and fifty-six ill-gotten horses, stolen from an unsuspecting Corvette before being supercharged and set loose upon the tires. And all it took to wrangle or wreck those horses was my ankle tilting my foot six inches in a single direction. Yee-haw.

At the moment they seemed fairly happy in that engine bay though, if a little eager to run. First things first though: backing the horse-sodden coupetank 100 feet out of the dealership and onto the road.

So high beltlines and WW2 bunker-esque sightlines revealed the first checkmark in the coupe’s con column. Even with the back-up camera projecting its fisheyed view of the world behind the coupe’s behind, it still felt a little like an airline pilot asking everyone to duck their heads so he could back the 7:45am LAX-Newark out of the gate.

“Don’t scratch the already-bought 70k coupe on an Escalade, you jackass,” I told myself. ”And don’t look like you’ve never driven a performance car either,” my ego interjected. Hush, you two; I’m trying to concentrate here.

With the side-mirrors cranked outward and alternating between the backup camera and looking over my own shoulder, I navigated the relatively drama-free affair with nary a touch to the gas petal. That’s the thing about an engine that additionally has 551 pound/feet of torque - it’s got idle covered. Hell, it’s probably got towing the aforementioned 767 at idle covered. Pulling the shifter down to drive, we started down the street.

A brief sidenote on transmissions: personally I’m transmission-neutral. I prefer manual but live in LA so an automatic does have its benefits. That being said, if I’ve never driven a specific model of car, I always - always - test drive an auto. I don’t want to spend the entire affair getting used to that specific car’s clutch take-up point and pedal effort and miss the details of the rest of the car. So I test drive an auto, and then try to find the best deal I can with a transmission-neutral attitude.

In the CTS-V, the auto isn’t some fancy duel-clutch affair, it’s a somewhat better-tuned, gear-selectable version of the familiar PRND automatic we’re all used to. Yes there are buttons on the back of the wheel that let you go up or down, and yes you can push the shifter to the right of D and do the same, but it’s nothing particularly new or exciting in the realm of speed and power management. Back to the drive.

Pulling out behind the dealership, the dynamics of the car were still a mystery, so I eased onto the go-fast pedal. Surprisingly there was no lurching or bucking from those broncos, just a smooth forward momentum that felt as at home in a Cadillac as it would in a mid-level 3 series. Tipping in a little further, it responded with the same amount of drama-free linear acceleration.

Interesting.

While Mac discussed the relative merits of the navigation system, I was feeling out the steering. A little overboosted, and way too light on the effort, but it tracked nicely and even felt nimble. Yes, I just said that a 4000+ pound car that I’d previously described as a “coupetank” felt “nimble.” Trust me, it surprised me too, but there’s no denying that the same slight directions that my BMW translated into inertia-destroying sideways movement elicited the same results here. A one-inch caress of the wheel and we changed lanes. No seeing or sawing necessary here, it tracked straight when needed, and turned quickly when asked.

The suspension was a surprise too. As is my test drive wont, I aimed for every crease, nook, cranny, rock, and small bug I could see ahead of me, just to get a sense of how the car can handle drama. Much to my surprise, the CST-V handled everything with aplomb. As many of you may well know, the major surface streets of the San Fernando Valley are well known for their driving prowess and excellent surfaces, so long as both of those phrases are intended to mean “filling-shattering brokenness.” But as I banged the 20” low-profile tires off of a small-ish intersection pothole, the car communicated the exact physics of what had just happened underneath me without forcing me to feel the harshness. It was like getting an email from a cousin that reads “Discharged from the hospital today, turns out it’s benign.” Full awareness of the situation, but not concern; exactly like my BMW.

Hmmm.

So it steers well, communicates well, and remains drama-free until asked - a couple points in the win column there. But about that engine…

“Let’s let you open the taps a little,” Mac asked, right on cue. “Two stoplights up, hang a right, find an opening, and punch it.” 

Oh Mac, you lovely, lovely man.

Keeping the car in auto, just to be safe(er), I did exactly as he said. Coming around the corner, I glanced down at the transmission indicator, which displayed a bright red “4.” Three inches of pedal travel later, it dropped to a “2,” the engine growled a few octaves higher, and two things happened simultaneously: The first was an immediate forward momentum the likes of which I’ve simply never felt before. It was what I imagine being kicked by a mule would feel like - one minute you’re in one location, and the next you’re not. The second was my girlfriend’s response to that acceleration: a squeak of surprise, slight indignation, and utter glee emanating from the back seat. A few dozen MPHs later, I back off before I rear-ended some unsuspecting Kia.

“Hehehe,” said Mac about two feet to my right, “it’s a fun car.”

“That was fun, let’s not do that again,” I hear, whispered through a smile behind me.

But there’s a problem with this: I’m hooked now. I’ve had that taste and I need more. It’s not enough to see the light, I need to see if I can touch the sun. Three miles later, I decide to do it again, this time without Mac or anyone else’s permission. Coming up on a red light, I’m alone in the right-hand lane with a couple cars to my left. 50 feet away from the crosswalk, the light turns green. I set my jaw, click off three ticks to the left-mounted steering wheel button - bringing the transmission down to first gear - and bury the pedal 3/4 of the way down to the floor. Your move, CTS-V.

But then word comes back up to me through the system: “Bad move Barrett; now you’ve made me angry.”

The gods shrieked down upon me in fury, or that’s what I remember hearing as light bent around the front of the car the same way it does when the Enterprise decides to go explore that distress beacon. The CTS-V allowed the slightest moment of hesitation as it prepped itself, went through its preflight checklist, dug in, and then hit the big, red “Fuck You” button.

Simply put, I’ve never, ever felt anything that accelerated with the kind of quantum warp feelings that this car does. It simply rearranges your understanding of immediacy and velocity. Less than one second later, I’ve bounced Mac’s skull off the Recaro seats, hit 4500 RPM, travled a hundred yards or so, and absolutely scared the shit out of myself to the point where I have to pull off the throttle completely. I glance down at the tach as I do so, and see that I’ve still got another 2500 RPM before the redline. 20 to 60 in about a second, at partial throttle.

Holy fuck.

“Thanks, you just broke my head,” Mac genially jokes. I get the sense this isn’t the first time someone’s taken a bit of liberty when it comes to his personal safety. He’s smiling though, his expression offset by my own sheepish grin. I don’t dare look back towards Beth, more out of fear of the car than her. We trundle back to the dealership, with me not daring to poke the sleeping dragon again along the way.

After a nice parting chat with Mac, we walk back towards my car, and I ask Beth what she thinks. Surprisingly, her response is to giggle a bit, letting me know that despite her predispositions she actually liked it. I call her on it too, to which she replies that if I buy it, she’s nicknaming it “The Beast.”

“Because of the way that it looks, the way it sounds, or the engine?”

“Everything.”

And she’s absolutely right, it is a beast. A beast in a tuxedo, but a beast nonetheless. A day later though, I’m thinking a new nickname is in order, because for all its Doctor Jekyll-like upper-class luxury tendencies around town, it’s got 556 little Mr. Hyde’s lurking, waiting, and ready to burst free at a moment’s notice.

And that’s the thing: that on-demand Jekyll/Hyde differentiation is always what made the BMW M’s so special. They’re the business casual of automobiles - sports jacket when you want it, but leather jacket when you don’t. That balance - that on-demand, free-flowing tap of fun and whimsy, hidden in the back of the company Christmas party - is what made the M3 the perfect car for those of us who still think from time to time that we’re just “playing adult.” Instant kid, just add right foot. And that’s the same ballgame the CTS-V coupe is trying to play.

I don’t know if it’s ready for that league though, as 24 hours after the drive, I still don’t know whether I want a CTS-V for anything longer than an afternoon. For all the things it does right, there’s just as much it does wrong. It’s the most “American” automobile I’ve ever driven in that the excesses are accentuated to a ridiculous degree, and its faults are both directly related to those excesses, and simultaneously hidden away in the hopes that they’ll be forgotten.

The engine is just plain bonkers, as are the brakes - slamming to a stop in this thing must feel like hitting a freight train head-on. It’s got style in spades and the interior is luxurious without hinting at bling. But the engine and style force you to notice how difficult it is to see anything not directly in front of you, and the steering and very slick  magnetorheological suspension (meaning magnetic fluid inside of the dampers allows a computer to control how hard or soft the suspension is, based on driving conditions) can’t help but remind you that the whole car’s got to really work behind the scenes to hide a weight that can be measured in whole number multiples of Volkswagen Beetles. Coupled with all of that is that if city driving revealed anything, it’s that trying to hit apex in this car would be like trying horseback archery - possible, but only with an overall skill and familiarity with the mount that few possess.

There’s a definite passion there, and in many ways that’s the biggest pro a car can have, but it’s mitigated by its own nature to only worry about moving forward as quickly as possible and not concern itself with anything in the past. In the end, it feels like a roller coaster - awesome to experience for a short period of time, but exhausting as well. Even for someone who values automotive adrenaline injections as much as I do, I think there comes a time when you reach the point of “too much for its intended purpose.” Maybe that’s the true achievement of the CTS-V coupe - revealing that exact point of “too much.”

Though, with that being said, maybe I need another test drive…just to be sure.

Yes, does the climate change? Of course it does, it’s changed for thousands of years. But the idea that one factor, and man’s contribution to that one factor, of which there are hundreds of factors that have an influence on climate, that that one factor of which man’s contribution is a small part of, is somehow the tip of that tail that wags the whole dog, and that we have to change all of our economic policy based on that, is just a pure overreaction that is not backed up by any kind of real evidence.

- Rick Santorum via Santorum to Huntsman: Yes, You’re Crazy

There are so many things wrong with this statement, but the one I’m going to jump on is the following: the earth is not thousands of years old - it’s billions of years old. The climate has changed for billions of years. Billions, not thousands.

Furthermore, I’m going to be very loud and very clear here that if you truly believe that the earth is only thousands of years old - based I can only imagine on the “infallible word” of a single, poorly translated document overruling an overwhelming preponderance of evidence - then your inability to critically think, understand basic first-grade science, and/or divorce your personal beliefs should immediately disqualify you from candidacy for any political office.

I’ll even double-down on that one and make it even more clear: If your religion flies in the face of accepted science, and you accept those religious tenets as being more accurate than science, then you should not be allowed to hold a political position in this country. Your own irrationality and your own inability to differentiate science and religion has disqualified you, and under no circumstances should you be allowed to hold sway over people’s lives and livelihoods. We should not accept willful ignorance from the people who run and rule the most powerful country the planet has ever seen and we should not allow that ignorance to burden the populace at large.

To be totally clear, I’m not denigrating religion here, though full disclosure demands I admit to finding them all a bit silly. What I am denigrating is the wanton disregard of established fact in favor of personal religious opinion by those in a position to affect millions of others with that opinion. Freedom of religion in this country goes both ways - you’re free to believe what you wish, but you cannot assume that your beliefs should translate or influence other people. THAT’S what the first amendment guarantees: not just the freedom to worship, but the freedom from undue influence of any single religion, including Christianity.

We are not a “Christian Nation.” This is an indisputable fact. Do you know how I can say this? Because in the Treaty of Tripoli, signed only five years after the adoption of the First Amendment, and one of the few items put before the Senate to be unanimously ratified, it states:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,

That seems fairly clear to me.

The outright denial of science in your political decision-making because it interferes with your religious viewpoint is no different than demanding a population-wide acceptance of your religion. It’s really that simple. You’re welcome to believe what you want to believe, but I’m welcome to demand that the people who hold sway over the country as a whole be able to critically think and divorce their personal religious sentiments from the actions that directly affect me as a United States citizen.

If they cannot do so - if their religious delusion is so great that they can’t or won’t accept commonly understood science like the established age of our planet - then they should not holding political office in ours or any other country that has enacted and still recognizes a separation between church and state. Anything less, and we should just admit that the whole uproar over “Sharia Law” is really just because you want to get there first with yours.

Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.

Jimmy Carter calls for an end to the War on Drugs (via maxistentialist)

Just legalize the lot of them already. You’re never going to legislate away poor decision-making, nor should you try. Legalize everything, put a sin tax on it, and remove a massive amount of problems inherent to the current system.

(via spytap)

I’m gonna reblog myself here because I have more to say on this issue. Apologies for the upcoming stream-of-consciousness.

At some point we’re going to have to acknowledge that the entire United States has an incredibly hypocritical viewpoint of drugs, and it’s a massive drag on our entire societal structure. We let alcohol advertise itself as a fuckfest of a party in a bottle and encourage kids to look up to the sporting event that fills in the gaps between commercials, or buy chemically-laden soda in cups so large they’d rent for 1000 a month in NYC, but then shout “won’t someone think about the children?!” when the mere idea of legalization of marijuana comes up.

Let’s be brutally honest here: right now there is nothing stopping your kids from obtaining and partaking in any substance, be it alcohol, weed, or meth. The only thing standing in the way now or if they were all 100% legal is parenting - but nobody wants to admit that they may be a subpar (let alone a bad) parent. Don’t want your kids using drugs? Maybe parent (it’s a verb too, you know) a little better. Don’t want your kids spending all day in front of the television? Maybe parent. Don’t want your kids stealing cars and going on three-state joyrides? Parent. But when they’re adults they get to make their own decisions – good or bad – and that’s the ultimate reflection on your parenting.

Here’s the real kicker that so many people hate to hear: You cannot legislate away someone’s bad decisions. You just can’t. People make poor decisions every day, from staying at a shitty job they hate, to not kicking their abusive significant other to the curb, to eating 4000 calories of brownies before bed - but they’re perfectly allowed to do so. That’s their right. People are allowed to make bad decisions because it would be ludicrous to suggest otherwise. 

A non-nuclear family member of mine was an alcoholic, but that wasn’t because of alcohol, that was because of my family member. Alcohol didn’t make him an alcoholic any more than meth makes someone a meth addict. He chose to use, chose to repeat the actions, and chose not to seek help. At some point it’s arguable that it was out of his control, but that doesn’t change the fact that the onus was still on him.

If weed is legal then yes, some people will smoke and drive. That’s not a reflection on weed, that’s a reflection on some people’s inherent ability to make very poor decisions. It already happens, in fact. If they hurt someone else in the process, that’s still not a reflection on weed, but on their continued ability to make poor decisions. And we have laws in place that cover you hurting someone else regardless of the reasoning behind what lead you to make a left hand turn on green into oncoming traffic - drunk, high, distracted, or stone-cold sober.

What bothers me the most is that we already know all this. We know this because we drink a coffee, a beer, a milkshake, or smoke a cigarette knowing that it has a physiological effect on our bodies; in some cases *because* it has a physiological effect on our bodies. Each of these has negative effects, and in some cases the only positive effect is “it makes me feel good.” But these are considered the “okay” drugs. The other drugs though, those are the bad ones. Not the 3500 calorie Baskin-Robbins “food item” or the “kids meal” with enough chemicals in it to outweigh the actual food ingredients; those are just good-old American convenience commerce. But if we don’t break down some doors and throw people in jail, someone’s gonna grow, dry, and smoke a plant indigenous to half the Eastern Seaboard just to feel better – no, I meant the other plant with the exact same general description.

So joking aside, are some drugs really bad news? Sure. So is BASE jumping, but we’re not outlawing quick-open parachutes. Rock climbing is dangerous as hell. Boxing and football cause massive trauma to the brain - arguably far more than almost any drug - but we’ll happily cheer on both a local and national version of those regardless. In every single one of these cases, you’re absolutely willing to say “well, that’s their decision, and if they get hurt or die then they get hurt or die.” So what’s the fucking difference?

If you BASE jump or even jump out of enough planes you’ll eventually die. There is no way to make skydiving 100% safe. If you drive enough, you’ll eventually get into an accident - and that would be the case if everyone were 100% sober 100% of the time. People have ruined their lives over drugs, alcohol, food, or video games - in every case that is not a reflection of the item to which their obsession attached, but of their inability to properly deal with the obsession. Life has inherent risks to everything that we do and don’t do, and yet in most cases, we’re given absolute freedom to make stupid decisions regardless of whether or not they’ll have an effect on someone else and only punished if that negative effect comes to pass.

Fine, you want to get controversial: guns kill people. Defensively, or offensively, guns exist for a singular purpose: to kill. There is simply no other use for a gun. And I’ll even go so far as to claim that target shooting is simply the emulation of killing using a target as a stand-in for flesh. Should we outlaw guns? They have nefarious possibilities, after all.

So all it really comes down to is an arbitrary notion that these are good drugs and these are bad drugs. And we must do everything possible, and ruin whatever lives necessary to keep these drugs from being ingested, while doing everything possible to push the ingestion of these other drugs. It sounds really stupid when I write it out, right? That’s because it is.

Look, if you want to eat a Big Mac, or eat ten Big Macs, or have a beer, or smoke a joint, or shoot up heroin, or huff paint, there’s nothing that should stop you from using or abusing your own body. It’s yours to do with as you see fit so long as you don’t bother or hurt other people - and as stated above, we already have laws that cover that.

So aside from puritanical hypocrisy, can anyone give me a logically valid reason why we shouldn’t simply legalize all drugs, tax them, and acknowledge that the system up until this point is a complete and total 100% utter failure at everything aside from self-perpetuation?

Honestly, I’d love to hear a single logical counter-argument because even though I don’t even smoke weed let alone do anything harder, I can’t fathom why someone else shouldn’t be able to make that same decision for themselves. Feel free to either email me or use the ask feature.

(via spytap)

Source: maxistentialist