Don't Fight it, America: Vote Trump

The thing I like most about Donald Trump is that every time--every fucking time--I try to type his name, I throw an "h" in there. I always want to give it a little bit of dimension or class that just isn't there. That's my whole opinion of the guy.

For those of you who don't know, Donald Trump is a professional rich person and reality TV star, like Kim Kardashian without the care put into his appearance. He's currently leading the Republican pack of presidential hopefuls and reveling in both the disgust of the left and the chagrin of the establishment on the right. 

Some say he's not a serious candidate, like a first round Ninja Warrior candidate. Journalists are comfortable imagining he's only running to raise his media profile. I get that; the alternative is imagining that a  Luke Wilson movie is real life.

You know the one.

Folks Wanna Remove Historic Confederate Statues Now

Good.

A little background
On June 17th of this year, a domestic terrorist walked into an evening church service in Charleston, South Carolina. After an hour of listening to Americans discuss their devotion to God, he opened fire on the room. Nine people died.

He chose one victim to spare and tell others of his motivation (five others survived). The white, 21-year-old man explicitly stated that he was killing black Americans to start a race war. Photos later surfaced of him bearing the flags of apartheid states, citing quotes from the founder of The American Nazi Party, burning the American flag, and--of course--waving a Confederate flag.

It's that flag that's become this tragedy's Easy Way to Preventing the Next One (TM). We always find something to blame and kick weakly in the shins after a white guy kills a handful of folks, but for once the target is a reasonable one. Making the Confederate flag a less common sight won't change the pervasive racism and cultural cowardice that filled this shitbag with the idea that murdering people would make him vaguely fuckable to women.

And some of that has spread further, to a desire to take down statues of Confederate generals which we apparently have aplenty down here. As a Southerner and a veteran of the US armed forces, screw The Confederacy. Screw their flag. Screw their generals. Screw each and every article of Confederate iconography.

But not the horses they rode in on; I don't think Traveller was racist.

Nature of the Beast

Maybe the last thing on this gaming shit for the time being. I know it's getting old. I know the theft and spread of Jennifer Lawrence's nude photos is the hotter story right now (no pun intended).

Folks are talking about models of behavior. Devin Farici has been pretty compassionate in his depiction of gamers as mislead teenagers. I think that's fair to remember, but I doubt that most of the hate here is coming from socially put-upon nerds. 

@devincf gigantic wall of garbage text that literally says nothing. what PR company paid you for that lip service?
— Georgy Zhukov (@Georgy_K_Zhukov) September 1, 2014

This bit was in response to Farici empathizing with these guys.
But check out that twitter. He has 22 replies. All of them are replies to other people, 20 of them have been made in the last week, and a half dozen are just him tweeting the same video to Zoe Quinn over and over again like a completely sane adult.

The Spectrum of Views on Gamer Identity

I didn't think up the idea that the identity of The Gamer is dead (I probably wasn't even the first one to come up with that title). I just seized on it when other folks brought it up because it stuck a chord of truth.

Dan Golding wrote "The End of Gamers." In it, he briefly describes the origins and definitions of Gamers before explaining why that definition is disintegrating as video games progress. Video games in the future—the near future—are universal and cannot be owned by any one group, no matter how filled with hate, fear, and bile.

There are 26 Things Wrong With This Video

Look, you kids today with your Mishapocalypses have a lot to deal with. I don't contest that, but if you lived in The South in 1992, "Achy Breaky Heart" was more ubiquitous and lingering than Tribble syphilis. It started line dancing, which for those of you who don't know is half-dancing and one half the world's most boring game of Twister. It is perhaps the whitest thing on Earth and it's definitely worse than an degenerative STI that only affects adorable, purring creatures from Iota Geminorum IV.

#1: "Achy Breaky Heart" (hereafter ABH-I) did all of that despite not having any sensible lyrics, no unique musical qualities, and no discernable point or message. I'm not saying it's a bad song; I'm saying it's black magic from a Stygian pit and revisiting it threatens the very fabric of reality. Unless you know where to find a paladin and a wizard in this, the year of our Lord 2014, there are scant few adventuring parties capable of undoing the damage that's being done here.

Xbone

I'm going to take a break from bitching about the awful movies this summer is vomiting up, casually mentioning dead folks in Syria, profusely apologizing for delayed posts, or whatever usually goes here on Fridays and whinge about the next generation of console games.

As most of you know, I play video games the same way most Americans play sports: shouting encouragement from a chair while someone else does it. I read articles, watch videos, and visit gaming webcomics regularly.  You might think that makes me somewhat unqualified to talk about emerging developments of an interactive medium.

Boston Bombings

You guys know about the bombing in Boston and how they caught the surviving bomber, but what you might not be aware of is Representative Greg Ball of the US House of Representatives advocating torturing the Dzhokar Tsarneav.

For more people saying we should torture Dzhokhar Tsarneav you can just check out the Twitter search (admittedly, there are a fair number of people opposed to it too).

Torture in this circumstance comes from two motivations. The more reasonable is interrogation. While Chechens are usually known for terrorism against Russia, the explosives knowledge and a choice of targets (a high-profile, internationally celebrated event with minimal security) might indicate some outside help. Certainly, applying pressure to get information on that outside help is going to be more effective than asking nicely. The beauty of torture is that you can ask nicely, then apply that pressure. Personally, I don' t think torture is very effective, but then I admit there's a liberal bias in a lot of my media feeds.

The worse reason is retribution. My fellow countrymen have an unhealthy attitude with retributive punishment that really ends with terrorists. We have an entire party that wants to punish people for bad life decisions and sees prison less as a place of reform and more as the expensive shelf to keep black people on so they don't clutter the place up. What I'm saying is that retributive torture is part of a long, bad cultural excitement over making certain people suffer.

Skipping over the topic of folks who allow no impairment of the second amendment while gleefully penning exceptions to the sixth and eighth, it's discouraging to have to remind people that we are supposed to be the good people here. The use of righteous outrage as a source of infinite justification for any retributive action is the action of the enemy, not of the self-purported leader of the free world.

Freepublican Finale

It started as a poorly-focused libertarian project built around promoting the work of a single individual, but became something much worse. Naming any of the players involved would be unprofessional, but for the sake of simplicity, I call the entire fiasco "The Freepublican Job."

We live in a society. By definition, we have to balance our needs and desires with those of the people among us. If we were all identical, it would be far easier, but people have a diversity of lives that most of us cannot fully grasp. We have to be conscientious of the consequences of our actions on people whose lives we can never anticipate.

It can be exhausting to try to be considerate of others and to anticipate how our actions affect others. It can be an almost stifling weight for people who are comfortable seeing the world from their singular perspective.

The siren song of libertarianism is that it promises to let us shake off those concerns. Perhaps that, and not institutional failings, are the reason it's been so much more successful taking root amongst wealthier individuals.

In a world where no one is required to think about anyone else, those who have temporal power feel that they could come out ahead, either because of the skills which make them powerful in the first place, or because of the temporal power they've already gained.

That's the ultimate failing of libertarianism. It's easy for the powerful to let everyone fend for themselves. It relieves them of the societal expectation to give any of their accumulated wealth to anyone else. It helps them sleep easily at night.

It's a philosophy which demands sensible fiscal policy from government and stipulates that it should never be used to impose societal expectations on others. No matter how strong those ideas are though, it will never gain a significant foothold until it's more than an excuse for the wealthy to shake off the responsibility that comes with their power.

Guns, and the Rights to Thereof

It started as a poorly-focused Libertarian project built around promoting the work of a single individual, but became something much worse. Naming any of the players involved would be unprofessional, but for the sake of simplicity, Saio Kaas calls the entire fiasco "The Freepublican Job." After much professional and mature debate, Saio Kaas is doing more freelance work while I handle this week's Freepublican post.

Guns have been a big issue lately, huh? As someone who's generally in the center, but leans liberal, it's almost frightening to see the veneer of detached rationality melt away from those further on the left when they discuss guns. Like nuclear power, guns are something frightening and other to them. The bone-deep fear gives them an absolutist attitude that empowers them to eschew rational discussion in favor of repeating just how right their attitudes are.

Obviously, I don't think taking everyone's guns away is the answer. I'd say that if the left calmed down and explained that they feel the same way, the right might finally get that point, but I'm not stupid. I might be the only one in this conversation who's not. The resistance to gun legislation isn't to preserve a completely unregulated weapons market; there are plenty of laws that restrict weapon (and gun) ownership, as well as every other amendment in The Bill of Rights. If you don't believe me, try suing the government over a loved one killed in Iraq. Try protesting in the middle of the road of Time Square. Try keeping your property once eminent domain comes up. Try getting a trial for US citizens killed in drone strikes. Try being a governor who doesn't want your National Guard sent overseas.  Whether you like it or not, the 0th Admendment is "People should be free, but let's be reasonable here."

What to Expect When You're Not Expecting the End of the World

After last week's retrospective, I wanted to let you guys know just what you were in for during the year ahead. It's not always possible to know what's going to happen, but there are a few things you can count on.

Mali – Local rebels sympathetic to Al Qaida and equipped with runoff weapons from Libya have dug into northern Mali and fortified their presence. Currently, France is working in the region to reclaim the region for the Mali government, but given the corruption of the Mali government and the many abuses of their armed forces, there's no easy solution to the problem. That means more politicking, more shitty decisions, and more time and support for Al Qaida. Or in Battletech terms: Prepare for Flashpoint: Mali, coming in 2013.

Edit: Since I first wrote this, France has already started air strikes and put boots on the ground, with more to come.

Ruminations on Machine of Death

The really fascinating thing about Machine of Death is the idea of predestination. It's a shitty observation about a book that's about predestination, but I'm talking about ubiquitous predestination. Predestination for the masses.

Our lives, for the most part, are fairly smooth lines of daily routine with a few jagged edges for the occasional car wreck or marriage. However, there come times when by surprise or design we reach massive changes made on something as small as a few words of commitment, action, or inaction. These are some of our most real moments. I'm sure that the moment in 2008 when Barak Obama first saw the results that made him president was the single point that massively changed everything that came after that in his life. There wasn't a gentle turn on either part of it and while the previous months lead up to it, the difference from "should happen" "actually happened" could have been nothing less than monumental. For the rest of us, no moments are more pivotal than death and near death moments. They are all the difference between something and nothing. There's a story, "Torn Apart and Devoured by Lions," that deals with this rather well. The central character's life revolves around the most important and exciting thing to ever happen to him; his death.

What Machine of Death talks around, but never quite about is the default role that so many people play in their own lives: the casual observer. There's this almost cynical view that the everyday paradigm of humanity is one in which we have little individual control of our fates, much less the world at large. Even an intelligent, interrogative, independent work like Machine of Death perpetuates this version of reality where we are simply passive observers waiting for something to come along and make us strong enough to change the world, whether that's a predestination, a bite from a radioactive spider, our wife being held in The Nakatomi Tower by Hans Gruber, or Gandalf telling us we have to help some dwarves buy new conditioner for their amazing, dwarven hair (I never read The Hobbit, so I'm just guessing.), is left up to the powers that be, but I can never quite shake the feeling that everyone around me is just as vague on the details, but still eagerly anticipate its arrival.

With the need for a catalyst and its prerequisite for fucking delivery to your door, I feel the collective consciousness would do good and believe in their ability to overcome challenges, but only if given the opportunity, and granted the power needed to be confident of their success. It's not noble, but it is reasonable, after a fashion. It does interest me in reconciling all of the worlds' irritating "special snowflakes" with the unspoken masses waiting for an authority to lift them up and tell them they're special enough to make a difference.

Linkstorm: The Message

Salman Rushdie decries self-censorship over Islam in the West. We can put as many drones in the air, agents in the airport, and monitors on the Internet as we want, but if we censor ourselves, terrorism wins.

That's how these assholes operate after all. Case in point: Greece's new Golden Dawn Party. In less than a year, a tiny fraction of the population have managed to frighten both the country's minorities and majorities.They know they only have to be loud and dangerous enough to scare the average person out of speaking up. Then, without a word of protest, they can assume silence is consent, declare a mandate from the populace, and continue on their merry way with a dogma that dehumanizes whoever they don't like this week.

The way to combat it is obvious; oppose them. Don't let them silence anyone in the name of "respect" or "tradition" or "security." Proclaim from every street corner that any totem of authority threatened by free speech is a graven image. Tell them, in the words of Warren Ellis, "Your God Is Not Strong."

Because these aren't strong people. They aren't any more dangerous than monkeys picking up handguns. Look at the case of Ajmal Amir Qasab, the last surviving member of the Mumbai Attacks of 2008 who was just hanged last month. He spent his last few days pleading for clemency and begging for lawyers to find him a way out of his fate. While there are hardened badasses with deep ideological roots in organizations like Al Qaeda, ultimately, their ranks are filled with far more people like Qasab, who only have the courage enough to pick up a gun and shoot it at innocents, only enough vision to think that will change something, and only enough compassion to request immunity from the consequences of their actions.

Real article begins below the cut:

Put Down Your Champagne and Revolvers

Look you guys, about three weeks ago, some serious shit happened and now I'm seeing Republicans declaring that America is dead and Democrats kicking back like the grasshopper before winter coming and the worst part is that there's a part of my mind that wants to be the tiniest bit shocked everyone's acting like children about all this but I can't because I possess both a memory and the ability to look a the mythical realm that exists beyond the end of my own nose.

I like Barack Obama. He is a likeable guy, and if you say differently then you could get Slider-ed through a dozen different realities where he runs for President of the United States, and you will be equally shocked each time he gets elected.

I like that Maine, Washington, and Maryland voted to legalize gay marriage. It's great that Minnesota voted down a same-sex marriage ban. I think it's a fine thing that Maryland passed the legalization of medical marijuana. I support Montana working to responsibly legislate medical marijuana in their state. Oregon and Colorado legalized marijuana. Just marijuana.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Why You Should Probably Give to Charity

In 2006 and 2007, Marvel Comics' event of choice was Civil War. It was a mess, with Tony Stark being a dick and Captain America trying to punch out legislation because the tactical genius who embodies American democracy couldn't think of a better way to overturn a law he didn't like. Like most events, a few unmissed characters died, important characters have since had their mean behavior explained away (extremis), and no one really talks much about it anymore.

We were promised an even-handed version of post-9/11 America, and got...well, a comic book treatise on post-9/11 America, with all of the subtlety that implies. We got a few words from 40-something white guys on how important standing up for freedom is, even when it's really, really hard and Captain America gave his dumbest speech since I started reading comics:

 

"Do not check yourself; wreck yourself."

In the end, Captain America gave up because the people (five "the people," technically) were against him and jesus, he didn't want his principled, uncompromising struggle to actually hurt anyone, especially anyone that wasn't Tony Stark's smug, bastard face.

Linkstorm: Civil Libertarian Roundup

Civil authorities are pressing for expanded domestic use of drones. I'm sure it's perfectly innocuous.

Errol Morris points to the Umbrella Man theories surrounding the JFK assassination as proof that you can never trust your own judgement as to whether or not something you see is truly sinister. Rather than giving up your own sense of reason to a man who looks like he's wearing an old man makeup, maybe there's another way. A way where you critically analyze facts and discrepancies without regard to how "sinister" they are or how desperate you are to prove a conspiracy.

On the Brink of Yellow Journalism

The US has approved the production of its first civilian nuclear reactor in thirty years. This despite sensationalistic reports about the dangers of a Russian ballistic missile sub that caught fire in late December. I'm not surprised the Russian government lied about this for two reasons 1) It's the Russian government. 2) The danger is overstated.

If the fire had spread from the outside of the hull to the interior--a dangerous turn which could have been prevented/addressed by sinking the boat--it might have reached either the nuclear missiles or the nuclear reactor. Because the reporters involved don't know any more about nuclear power than that it's scary, they're saying Russia was on "the brink of a nuclear disaster." Having only been taught about US Navy nuclear reactors, I can't say definitively that it wasn't, but I feel more qualified than the political and cultural writer who penned it, even if his Facebook pic is a thousand times cooler than mine.

Linkstorm: It Gets Less Political. Promise.

Jon Huntsman isn't crazy. He realizes Republicans need to face facts on science. He's not calling for the dismantling of federal regulatory agencies simply so that he can make more money hand over fist. He's pro-second amendment, pro-life with the standard exceptions and fully supports civil unions. He is still a politician, and is thusly slippery, non-committal, and often says nothing, but he's better than the alternatives. If Bachmann, Cain[1], Perry, and Gingrich can be frontrunners, Huntsman at least deserves some limelight. He has the potential to be unifying instead of polarizing. But hey, it's probably going to be Romney anyway. I don't mind that actually, so long as they make his biopic soon enough for Bruce Campbell to get the lead role[2].

I actually only bring this up because I have a tab open for his donations page, but I'm not certain on whether or not it's worth it. I do like him (if you hadn't guessed) and he needs the money (his dad actually dropped a load of cash into his campaign, which is embarrassing and gives a pretty bad impression). At the same time, I have to ask if its worth the effort the minimal (easily forgettable) indecision I've had over this has given me ideas for the novel[3], so it's not a total waste.

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Before You

Kris: You didn’t really think I’d talk politics for most of the week, then let you off easy on Sunday, did you?

Terry: You know, for a second there…yeah, I kinda did.

Kris: I did it 35 minutes ago.

Terry: …what?

Sunday Morning Soapbox: Calendar's broken. Deal with it.

With Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and Michelle Bachmann established as the Republican frontrunners for 2012, a lot of people are talking about the anti-science stance of conservatives in The United States.

io9 has an article that portrays this as a fad that's going to burn out: after all, if conservatives work in scientific fields, then conservatives will eventually come to love science, right? The article tells us that everything's okay because the religious nuts won't be around for much longer.

Decisions

Hey, I was just thinking about decision making and made a graph. Points represent decisions. The axes are the good and bad outcomes of those decisions.

As you can see, for the top left decision, you...aren't making a decision at all. For the rest, it's always a series of greater reward for greater consequences and there's always a handful of suboptimal options you never have to consider.

This model tends to ignore things like two decisions having different types of positive or negative results in favor of a simple, linear expression. It also fails to account for uncertainty, where each decision actually represents a range of unknown positive and negative effects.

 

Here, each decision is an unknown range of good and bad outcomes. Judging them by the best or worse cases yields very different options. For the sake of simplicity none of the decisions overlap, though they could.

I'd delve into probabilities here, but I was using MS Paint, and no matter how much better later versions have gotten, I can't get it to do a decent gradient without using the spray paint tool or just working with the pixels myself.