Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Feral or Violent; Problem Cats

Many times a violent animal is often called feral, but this is very incorrect. Other animals, when in their natural habitats, are not inherently violent without good cause.

Other animals are driven by the same needs we have; food, shelter, and social structure. When these are lacking any animal becomes antisocial, and even violent, in their pursuit to get their needs met.

Cats are the best example, every time I see a cat called feral it has always been given this label due to antisocial behaviors. The reasons for these behaviors have always been correctable, usually with basic medical care.

Antisocial behavior toward humans is expected if the cat has been abused, their natural social structure allows for it but does not encourage it. A feline society is loosely hierarchical, the alpha watches over the pride in exchange for a few privileges.

If the alpha feline ever fails to protect the pride, or abuses their position, then the other members rebel. A natural reaction, even among humans.

If the alpha is a different species, then trust must be earned again. This is often why many felines will become violent toward humans, they have been abused or neglected by the human they once respected as the alpha.

So taming them is simply not a solution, actually we never tamed any of the other animals, ever. Even if they obey out of fear, they are still willing to rebel once the opportunity presents itself.

This is what violent cats and dogs are doing, rebelling. They learned that by acting violent they will be sent away, even if left in solitude they prefer the shelter to human interaction.

To alter this behavior there is one simple thing that they need to see, you need to love them, and you need to love them a lot. First, ignore all their outbursts as much as possible.

This means you will be hurt, but if you love something you will be willing to go through this just to save their life. Only offer them affection when they are calm and loving, eventually they'll expect the reciprocation.

Learn what they want, and give it to them; a few exceptions to this exist, cats can't have too much tuna so only give them that in small amounts. Usually the things they want are actually quite convenient, like playtime or a specific kind of toy.

Cats have sensitive spots that most other animals do not, for this reason you have to learn how to pet them correctly. The catch is that it varies for each cat.

Very few cats like to be petted near their tail, so that may be a trigger. It could also indicate a medical issue if they respond with ferocity, so you may want to have that checked out.

Most cats will guide you, just put your hand out and watch what they rub up against you, that's where they want to be petted. The more they trust you, the more contact they will tolerate.

No one likes to be touched, grabbed, or petted by someone they do not trust, the same is true of cats. A violent cat will likely not want to be petted until they are certain you will not harm them.

Patience is key here, you adopted them for love but they learned to fear instead. So you have to teach them what love actually is, and show them that you also want to be loved.

I have dealt with many violent cats, and several actually feral ones, and I have always been able to earn their trust. In doing so, you will find that they are the most grateful felines.

Saturday, December 26, 2015

Compass Housing Alliance, Karlstrom

To Whom It Concerns: (Compass Housing Alliance, Karlstrom)

Our Christmas holiday was ruined this year simply because of a small problem with the elevator that was exacerbated by the lack of response from those who are managing our apartment building. Not only was almost everyone gone, and no emergency contact has been given to us, the few that we could contact acted like it was none of their concern.

They wouldn't even help by opening the only other way to enter the building, which left us in the cold or trapped in the building to avoid getting left in the cold. Ultimately, some of us developed a network of contact so we could call someone, because the door dialer at the main entrance for the apartments also appears to be out of order.

The biggest issue is that many residents suffer from major health issues that make using the stairs difficult or impossible, also others had no one to contact when they needed someone to open the fire escape door to allow them in. Some took to placing something in that door to allow them to open it, which ultimately lead to us finding homeless people who refused to go to the available shelters in the building.

This defeated the purpose of having a secure entrance and left many of us ready to contact the police, luckily they vanished, possibly up to the roof or other parts of the building. All of this could be avoided if we either had keys to the staircase entrance or a reliable and responsible emergency contact.

However, due to the frequency of the elevator breakdowns these last few years, it is also clear that maintenance has been lacking. Of course this would not prevent future problems, but it would reduce the amount of reliance we have on the managers if it was improved.

Many of us feel these are not unreasonable complaints as we are paying rent, and neglecting the building is unlawful. Considering the amount of state funds the management receives in subsidies, it is stealing from both residents and taxpayers.

So please find a solution to prevent this, as this is also not the first time we have faced this issue. It appeared that they were trying to work on a solution during the last several years, but none has been ever been presented.

Some of the residents are trying to work their way off the system, others are too elderly or physically handicapped. This kind of problem makes any improvement nearly impossible and increases the stress of the disabled to levels that are dangerous to our health.

Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Gamers and Stereotypes

The psychology of gamers is something often left to the scholars, but only because no one wants to see how stereotypical we are. So let's break it down with into the archetypes and explain why each are pretty accurate.

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The psychotic:

Psychotic people rarely pose a danger to modern society, but this is because we offer them plenty of outlets for their emotional outlets. The greatest ones we offer are video games.

Video games are inexpensive and plentiful, they are also very safe. Every time a psychotic becomes a danger they focus on the number of video games they have, while ignoring the trigger to cause them to become violent in real life.

In every instance there is either a lack of new releases or the people in charge prevent them from getting their fix. The flaw is not in the games, it is our inability to diagnose psychotic tendencies in people before they commit real world violence.

Prior to games we had other media outlets, like movies and television shows, even radio. Prior to all that, we were so violent as a species that no one noticed the psychotic people anyway.

So better diagnosis and more video games will reduce their desire to harm other people in the real world. Video games become the best medicine for them.

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The lonely nerd:

We all know these people, at one time they were wrongfully associated with Star Trek fans, and often they were forced deeper into isolation. Then online video games came along and gave them a new way to socialise.

These are the introverts created by society, and strewn about so much that they were unable to socialise with their own. This created the stereotype that reclusive people are maladjusted, which is just paranoia caused by misunderstanding them.

A nerd is actually more attuned to social trends than most of us, they know what's popular and why, but as a society we see them as awkward and uncoordinated. Ultimately, a nerd would make a great marketing genius, able to even predict the next big fad before it happens.

Even today we tend to force them to become more reclusive, but video games over the internet have allowed them to congregate with their own. Essentially this means they are now more social than the rest of us.

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Over competitive muscle brain:

This type of gamer is rarely given the spotlight, even though they are truly the most disturbing. In the past we only saw them at sporting events, but today we see them in every subculture in the world, even video games.

These are people who are more interested in proving that they are the best than enjoying what they are doing. They are also the bread and butter of sports.

The advent of gaming has offered them a new field of competition, one in which they are even willing to cheat to prove their superiority. To them, the games are not fun outlets of aggression or methods of socializing with people like them, they are another arena to prove that they are better.

Every good gamer will admit that the muscle brain is ruining online video games as a whole, but we have little recourse. These people will always be in every arena spoiling everyone's fun.

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The perverts:

As with everything that exists, there are those who sexualize gaming. This is rather inconsequential and does not need to ruin everyone's fun, though many will complain about these people for no reason.

The complaining does retract from the enjoyment of others, because sex drive increases revenue of any product, for game this means the developers can finance more games. So suck it up, play the games, and stop worrying about the mouth breathers who are probably the real reason the game was able to be published.

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The gamer geek:

This is the most sane of the gamer archetypes, and I'm not saying that just because I am one. This is the classifications of gamers who look at the games objectively, while enjoying the rich stories and elaborate worlds presented.

To us, the game is a reflection of real life, a reflection of social structures which can be analyzed and enjoyed. A gamer geek often finds exploits, but never uses them.

We also find beauty in the art, even in primitive games like those from the old eight bit systems. We are the ones who insist on box art, high quality manuals, and other collector quality paraphernalia.

Another label we could be given is "game snobs."

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So the next time someone tries to lump all gamers into one group, or blame our outlet for their own problems, remember this blog. Most likely the people trying to discredit games and gamers are actually just jealous, because ultimately, the games allow us to live among the morons and scumbags.

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Corporate Greed

Now the third par of how corporations are actually screwing you. You always here about how bigger corporations are evil monsters but the small businesses are innocent and perfect.

This is because we, as a society, must have a bogyman, so we bought into the marketing campaigns that paint the bigger corporations as evil monsters. It was an easy target to hate, of course Republicans didn't help the big corporations by giving them that stupid label of "person."

The fact is, corporations are not the bad guys, but corporations can have bad people working in them. The entire reason corporations became our bogyman was because some struggling small businesses discovered that they could more easily push out the big corporations using the laws.

So they started campaigns to paint every major corporation in competition with them as bad, then convince the local idiots to vote for laws that pushed those bigger corporations out of the towns. Now the part you missed, a corporation does not have to be big, even your local ice cream shop is probably a corporation of it's own.

A corporation is actually a business that pools it's profits rather than splits them up among those in charge. Oddly, a corporation may only have one person that is in charge of this account, which is what small businesses do.

Bigger corporations have more people in charge, that means more people making decisions. This is actually why major corporations are less corrupted than the small businesses.

Yes,I did just type that. Don't buy the rhetoric about how big corporations are ruining everything, if that was the case then we'd already be extinct.

Farmers Hate People

Continuing on the topic of how corporations are really making us ill, we revisit the most corrupted industry called "organic farming." This also mirrors herbal remedies and homeopathy, but the opposition to something that could save billions of lives is why I pick on the organic crap.

Long ago, farmers discovered some methods of preserving food for transport to the grocers across the globe. This would have helped so many people get food that no one should have starved, but they did, and for only one reason: greed.

Farmers did not see a solution to a problem, instead they saw an opportunity to increase their profits by exploiting the people who depended on their products. To do this, they started destroying edible food.

Yes, that was how they kept the demand high, collectively deciding to reduce the food they sold to make their products more valuable in spite of improved preservation methods. Suddenly there was a crisis, at least that's what we were told, and the government had to subsidize these poor starving, filthy rich, farmers.

Of course that didn't atop them from scamming us all, actually it encouraged more corruption in the farming industry. Then the competition got heated as a few decent companies developed even better methods of preserving food.

The farmers did not like the fact that the companies who produced these openly shared them so everyone knew they existed, worked, and were safe. So the farmers did the one despicable act they could get away with, terrorism.

Farmers across the globe began to spread lies by funding fake studies to show that certain chemicals caused cancer, they did this for all the chemicals but the ones they used. Crafty people know that too much of any chemical will kill you, and many of them will cause cancer.

So the fake studies could easily convince most people that "chemicals" were bad even though everything is a chemical, and that modern genetic modification was bad even though it produces fewer mistakes. Not to mention, synthetics and modern genetic modification are all more regulated than any of the others, because the scientists requested it.

Yep, the developers and scientific minds that produced modern GM methods, as well as the synthetic compounds used in foods, requested regulations. This is what science is, regulation of all discoveries so that false information is quickly removed before someone gets hurt by it.

Organic farmers refuse regulations, they actually oppose regulation of their own food in all ways, even the use of pesticides known to cause cancer. Most chemicals that qualify as "organic" were discarded by the corporate farm industries because they were being sued.

They were sued because these organic compounds, as we discovered, were very poisonous. If the food is not processed then the organic pesticides and herbicides will kill you.

Your Cough Could Save Your Life

Corporations are actually making us ill, but not in the ways that people think. Actually, I take that back, corporations are convincing us that we're sick even when we're perfectly healthy.

First, coughing and sneezing has never been shown to spread illness, ever. I imagine you saying "but doctors ...", the fact is that doctors are not scientists.

First, most bacteria are not airborne, they die when they dry out. So very few coughs will ever transmit any bacteria, unless you cover your mouth.

That's right, coughing or sneezing into your hands increases your chances of spreading something because your skin is perfect for them to survive on. We cover a cough or sneeze out of respect for others, but really it can potentially cause them to get sick from it.

Now here's the fun part, the potential is actually negligible. You read that right, most coughing and sneezing is caused by basic environmental factors, even chronic coughing.

Here's a small list of those innocent and perfectly healthy reasons to cough or sneeze that doctors don't tell you about:

1. Dry air.
2. Dust, miniscule amounts can trigger both.
3. Pollution, even a tiny bit.
4. Indigestion, which often causes throat irritation.
5. Cancer in almost any organ, though this is really bad to get, you can't pass it through coughing and sneezing.
6. Perfumes, which are technically pollution but most people don't know that.
7. Minor infections, these cannot be spread to another person.
8. Dander, the dry skin of any organism, even yourself.
9. Swallowing food, if food gets stuck to your throat it will trigger coughing fits.
10. Anything in the sinus cavity can drip into your throat and irritate it.

There are literally thousands of more things which will cause coughing or sneezing that are not a reason for concern. Actually, if you don't cough or sneeze your are more likely to suffer complications or even die.

Now, the list of things which you can spread by coughing or sneezing around someone: none.

It is not being around a person who is coughing that spreads it, it is only if they expel moisture, have a bacteria or virus that can survive in saliva, and that moisture lands on you. Or the moisture can land on their hands then they touch your skin or hair.

So why do doctors claim coughing and sneezing can spread deadly diseases? Because the companies that sell products marketed to "keep us safe" convinced them it can.

The paper industry is notorious for underhanded marketing tactics like this, and they are the ones still fueling this myth. From masks to tissues, none of which have been shown to slow the spread of disease, and chemically they become huge liabilities as they actually give bacteria and viruses a great breeding ground.

Other products that actually make us ill are the cough suppressant. Unless you know what's causing the cough, preventing it could mean your death.

The body evolved to cough as a method of dispelling particulates which could be harmful, even carcinogens. So the corporations convinced you that coughing is bad, they then convinced your doctor to support this claim, just to make huge profits off your illness that you probably don't even have.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Honest Review of the Twitter App for Android

Twitter developed a nice, simple, sleek, and working app for Android so long ago I don't recall the date. But as time went on they began making a ton of huge mistakes.

The first was reinventing the wheel, which is not something I usually gripe about but in this case they didn't really reinvent it. Instead of using the built-in Android libraries for basic features like animations and video, they moved the entire app to the NDK then rewrote all those from scratch.

If said features were unique, I'd understand, but these are to play simple GIFs and web video, nothing fancy like YouTube's annotations. Of course YouTube uses only the SDK, so even if they did do all that the Twitter app would need no new NDK libraries.

Then all hell broke out on the app as feature after feature was added using all new code in spite of being nothing more than basic Android features. This creates huge errors as the native code tries to access a lot of stuff that is not even there.

Ultimately, this creates a very sluggish and glitchy app no matter what device it is used on. But Twitter developers simply don't care, all theybseem to care about is cramming as much useless garbage into the app as possible.

So now we have the promoted tweets showing up in every expanded tweet, which slows the already slow app down to a crawl. They also added what they call "moments," which is just "what's popular" but with a bunch of extra code added to the app.

To make matters worse, this all updates in the app constantly, even when the app and notifications are turned off. Adding in the automated refresh nonsense makes the Twitter Android app more like a virus than an app.

So the flaws in the Twitter app for Android are:

1. Bloated - by using the NDK and recreating all the features already built into Android, the app takes up way more space than it needs.

2. Memory - bad memory management has always been a huge flaw in the Twitter app, as if the developers know nothing about the devices they are developing for.

3. Constant Updating - the timeline is updated automatically so frequently that it slows the entire device down and makes reading your timeline impossible.

4. Useless Features - like the Microsoft paperclip, no one likes these. From their constant search updating for "moments" to the intrusive promoted tweets showing in every single expanded tweet, all they do is ruin the app.

5. Background Updates - to make the automated refreshing more of a hassle, it happens even if you turn off notifications and the app is in the background. This interferes with other apps and processes as well as destroys your bandwidth.

So my recommendation is to find a third party app to access Twitter, many of them don't show any promoted tweets so that's an extra bonus. Some will require being purchased, but most allow you to try before you buy and they are worth it.

Once you get use to the other layouts, Twitter becomes both useful and pleasant again.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Star Wars Revived

I am looking forward to the new Star Wars, in spite of my distaste for Disney. Many of the fans will agree that George Lucas was actually the worst part about the franchise, so it's nice to see what someone else can do with it.

The thing most people will disagree with me about is why Lucas just plain sucks. He is arrogant and ignores what the fans say, we saw this when he did the rereleases of the original trilogy.

Every fan said pretty much the same thing, that adding new special effects to the old movies only ruined the experience. The primary reason for this was because the new effects didn't look like the old effects, a point often glossed over by most reviewers.

Modern effects are shinier, and back then they were so primitive as to lack enough realism. The old effects looked grainy and rough, and though they were sub-par for today they fit into the film as they were.

It is much like airbrushing an apple sitting next to the Mona Lisa, the modern paint would always stand out no matter how hard you tried to blend it in. This is what made the additions so offensive to fans, even modern fans, they simply didn't look right.

Now the Greedo shooting first is a great example, the story was actually changed in the books. The real problem was that Greedo's shot did not look like the same blaster fire as the originals, it also traveled the wrong angle.

All the CGI animals also looked out of place, partially because CGI was primitive when they were added, but mostly because they didn't have the rough edges that the rest of the scenes possessed. So no, it was not the story changes that actually bothered anyone, it was simply the lack of integration.

That said, Lucas then ignored all the complaints and made the prequels using his own bland idea of entertainment. The prequels wound up containing nothing but every mistake he made when he remastered the original trilogy.

We now know that it was Spielberg who was the actual brains behind the genius of the first Star Wars trilogy. Now we come to today, and a new director, with a new vision.

First off, I have only seen the trailers at the time of this blog, and read a few news articles about the new trilogy, so I have no spoilers to post. Abrams is brilliant, as long as he is within his element, and Star Wars actually fits his style perfectly.

Star Wars is more like a romantic, swashbuckling, space adventure. So lots of explosions, battles, impossible stunts, and anything to put you on the edge of your seat will only improve it.

Abrams is known for cramming as much gratuitous action into a movie as the runtime will allow, the trailers shown suggest he kept this habit in the new Star Wars. Another fun factoid is that Abrams actually wanted to add more strong female characters, something which Lucas seemed against.

So in the trailers we see females who are, for lack of a better term, bad ass. They are still a bit Hollywood, but that can be forgiven as long as they're strong role models.

Also, the trailer hints at the new Sith lord finishing what Darth Vader started, many may not know what that actually was and will mistakenly think it has to do with Luke and Leia. If you have been paying attention though, the grand scheme of Vader and Palpatine was to eliminate all Jedi.

In the comics and novels this is reiterated so much that it's impossible to miss, but Lucas failed to get this point across in the prequels. The good thing, this means they don't have to recast Luke Skywalker in case they can't get Mark Hamill to return.

That should be a weight off a lot of shoulders, and this does not count as a spoiler because it was explained many times in many places. If this comes as a surprise to you then please try to sit through the prequels again and pay attention, or read the novels.

So in conclusion, I am really looking forward to this new trilogy.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

It's the End of the World!

Doomsday scenarios are the bread and butter of our modern society, in spite of being such old news we should have tired of them by now. But what are the odds of one happening in our lifetimes?

The odds are very slim, considering how much we are prepared for them as well as our heightened sense of fear. So the question remains, why do we continue to tell such stories?

The answer is found in an evolutionary trait that plagues our species, in the past this trait called suspicion helped us to survive. So ultimately, suspicion is not a bad thing, but because of it we have prepared for the worst so much as to render our fears obsolete.

Many hours of media are dedicated to highlighting these fears, even the famous and brilliant Stephen Hawkings has bought into them. So first, let's examine the possibility of AI destroying us.

Digital technology is bound to the laws we hardwire into the machines. With the advent of the "Three Laws of Robotics" we have developed the answer to this threat.

The laws are basic morals for any machine, ones which can be hardwired into any digital intelligence. Notice I do jot refer to it as artificial, this is for one basic reason, intelligence must evolve.

The very fact that we cannot just create intelligence has been discovered recently, a fact I actually realized over two decades ago. Not to dwell on the fact that when I presented these findings I was promptly ridiculed and discarded from all serious efforts of AI development, this is the primary reason we have nothing to worry about from the mechanical organisms we will eventually create.

As an intelligence evolves, we will be the effect known as natural selection, deleting those intelligences which prove to be psychotic will lead to sane and rational intelligences remaining. In Hollywood terms, we will create JARVIS long before Sky-Net becomes more than a wet dream.

This is not to say that we should not be cautious, we are still responsible for how these intelligences evolve. Which leads us to the nanotechnology, a relatively new advance that could be our salvation or our doom.

Nanotechnology has the potential of becoming a weapon out of control, which means we simply have to regard how we use the technology as we develop it. The potential for benefit is much like vaccines, proper use and regulation could help us more than harm us.

Now the big one, climate change. This is a very real and obvious threat now, one which more than half of the laymen still deny.

Climate change is based on the observation that climate is becoming very unpredictable, and this change coincides with our species advance through the globe. My choice of wording is very purposeful, because there are a lot of scams involved in this subject which use this threat to sell new products.

Our use of some old technologies does impact the amount of damage we do, but ultimately it is our population size which poses the biggest threat. Luckily we see that this problem may actually be solving itself.

As our vices improve and increase in number, our population growth is slowing in spite of the over extended lifespans we now enjoy. This will impact climate change for the better, if we stop trying to alter our world.

Currently we hunt, and destroy, other species which we insist are invading our society. Even then domesticated species are targeted out of old fears which we know are baseless and dangerous.

We encroached on their territory, and by doing so we have upset the balance of the environs, causing new species to evolve in the place of those we eradicate. The answer is simple, stop doing anything, literally.

So to solve climate change we just have to let the planet itself heal, the rest is already taking care of itself by our losing the drive to reproduce. Which leads us to the biggest threat to our species, zombies.

Or more realistically, the super virus or bacteria. As scary as it sounds, this would ultimately be a huge benefit to our species.

We owe the existence of our species to the appearance of a super virus, one that caused a large enough of a mutation which gave us the brains we now possess. It is also likely that a super virus or bacteria caused the destruction of the dinosaurs, which paved the way for mammals to dominate the planet.

The chances of other mass extinction events is negligible, or in most cases unstoppable. So yes, barring our own mistakes, we should just sit back and enjoy what we can.

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Supernatural doomsday stories are mythology, to even consider them is insanity. They make great tools in recruiting fools to follow these prophets, though we all know that they are foolish nonsense proven false for thousands of years.

Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Teaching in Schools the Correct Way

Religion has this strange ability to blind people to difference between fact and fiction, at least that's what the evidence shows. However, this may be only part of what the facts show, considering that many believers who were not indoctrinated still show a lack of ability to discern fact from fiction.

Our educational system in the USA is known to be a failure, and this may be the result. Though much has improved, often teachers are allowed to assert whatever they want without impunity, and any student questioning the teacher is punished.

Education in the USA is also more about memorizing material than actually using what you know to discover more. This is essentially teaching children not to question the authority figure, as well as discouraging any form of exploration or actual learning.

Basically, we are setting people up to fail in life. This has even greater ramifications that we have known about for a long time, illustrated by the old adage of "always ask the kids how to set the VCR."

Because of our education system, people are unprepared for technological advances of any sort. This causes them to fear these advances, which creates scams like organic foods, chemical free, and gene editing.

This problem also opens people up to hoaxes like alien abductions, bigfoot, and religion. Ultimately, this is also why the government opposes allowing free education for everyone.

Many of the scams and hoaxes are funding our political leaders, the rest know that these scams and hoaxes make it much easier to keep people complacent. This complacency is precisely what the governments actually want, and any idea that can be used to justify their own desires is best.

Religion is the easiest tool for convincing the masses to follow blindly, but even hoaxes like bigfoot offer enough distraction. Hoaxes are more useful to the leaders than one may think, if the masses doubt what the reports of leader actions state then it won't matter what the leaders do.

So the cure for all of our problems is simple, improve education by teaching kids to doubt everything, then showing them how to test everything. Teach them only the scientific method in elementary/primary school, and teach them nothing else.

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Nostalgia, Anecdotes, and Star Wars

Nostalgia is actually very dangerous, especially considering most people do not actually remember what they think they remember. I'll use the first Star Wars trilogy as an example, because it's a perfect one.

In my memory the movies are very realistic, the special effects were so believable I can even picture myself in the movies. The script was even well done, with smooth transitions and dialog that was smoothly threaded together.

Then I checked out CinemaSins and saw their take on the updated ones. The only reason Lucas did the updates was because nostalgia had fogged his memory.

So I tried watching them today, I got halfway through the first and thought "the books are ten thousand times better." This is because the books feed off the nostalgia, but in reality the movies themselves actually suck by today's standards.

Ignoring the grainy production values, the script was choppy, the plot was sloppy, and the special effects couldn't even pass for real. Star Wars is best left as a memory, because in my memory it's much better than it actually is.

Nostalgia is a problem because the past actually sucked, no matter how fondly you remember it. Your brain will record what it likes best, even altering the memory to make it feel better when you recall it.

This is an effect of all the chemicals in your brain responsible for pleasure, triggering a pleasure chemical makes the memory have a bigger impact on the neural network. So negative events are often forgotten completely, and those which you do recall are plagued with missing bits.

Nostalgia is simply a side effect of the brain preferring pleasure over pain, and the fact that you recall pleasant memories better. So ultimately you cannot trust any of your memories, but more importantly, you can't trust the positive memories of any era.

Those memories with positive enforcement may have negative consequences that you don't recall, which could be dangerous. At the very least, living in the past will make you forget to look forward.

Religion Vs Atheist

The biggest lie that religious people are telling today is that atheist is a religion. When pressed for why all they say is "it just is because I say it is."

The reason for this tactic is because religious people are simply too closed minded to even understand that not everyone needs religion. Actually, their minds are so closed that they cannot even fathom someone possibly thinking differently than they do.

As an atheist who was raised by an obsessively religious parent, I know for a fact that everyone thinks differently. This is actually a good thing, if everyone saw everything exactly the same then nothing would ever improve.

This is why religion must force everyone to assume that everyone else thinks exactly like them. Religious leaders lose all profit and power if things improve, their entire power structure is based on keeping people as miserable as possible.

So followers are forced into a spiral of despair from the start, and it all starts by convincing the follower that they are flawed and that those flaws are bad. Once convinced that all differences are flaws, they strive to hide their differences by pretending they are just like all the other followers.

By doing this they naturally become miserable, they hate themselves more than they hate everyone else. Then jealousy makes it's ugly appearance.

These followers then work to ensure that everyone else is as miserable as they are, which then encourages more people to join their religion. Ultimately, peace and health is against all religions, it's poison to them.

Thursday, December 10, 2015

A Message From the Head Office of the Illuminati

We're sorry.

There, we said it, are you happy now? Yes, it was all a giant conspiracy paid for with galactic credits we earned by selling human kidneys taken from everyone.

At least we left no scars when we removed them from you during your twenty first birthday, using a secret technology that allows all elite members of the Illuminati survive forever. We cannot share this technology, the reptilian overlords will not allow it.

The moon landing was faked, but no, we did jot film it underwater, idiots. We used advance computer technology given to us by the Grays, it's all CGI, there is no moon, that's just a huge balloon tied to the Google car.

Bigfoot is actually Frank, our favorite intern. He's actually a Wookie, but they are from Mars, not sure where Kashyyyk came from, sounds like the sound that the loch ness monster made when we shot him in 1802.

The internet you're using is monitored by four agents, we have everything you ever typed or said stored in massive servers on Orion 5. We sell this to the droids of Voltair G5, who then beam advertisements into your head.

These droids gave us the brilliant idea to create evolution, if Scientology had jot stolen Dr. Hubbard from us we would have used his story instead. Ironically, we also wrote the bible, both evolution and the bible were to distract you from the only being who can save you.

This god being won't save you if I tell you who he is, so we were forced to create these massive conspiracies to test you for him. Sadly, you all failed and we're going to reset the entire planet in about two weeks.

Don't worry, you'll only suffer from the horrible lava that will cover the planet for a few moments, enjoy your last weeks of existence.

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If all of that sounds crazy to you, then why do you believe the bible, quran, or torah?

Wednesday, December 9, 2015

The Folly of Christmas

As a child, Christmas is a great holiday with all the candy and food, but as you get older it becomes more tedium and selfishness. The original holiday was much better, more about helping each other through hard times than gifts.

It is ironic that the people who claim the holiday as theirs are the very people who ruined it. Christians removed the joys of sharing with people in need and replaced it with giving your kids junk which they don't even need.

But the tedium comes mostly from age, the holiday is exactly the same every year. From the decorations to the traditions, and more importantly the music.

As we grow older, we have had the holiday shoved down our throats every year. The same greetings, the same decorations, the same iconography, the same traditions, and the same damned songs.

I sit in Starbucks typing this, and hear over the loud speakers the exact same songs written before my mother was even born. Most were recorded when she was a child.

Now I have heard these same songs on repeat, making for the same one being played at least a hundred times per day in all the businesses, for forty years. That means I have heard them repeated more than a million times each, and now they're driving me insane.

To compound the problem, the exact same decorations are hung in most businesses, except Starbucks. Starbucks has the compassion to at least try to vary their decorations every year.

But most have the same plastic ice hangings, blinding blinky lights, snow made of cotton, nativity garbage, headache inducing red and green window decals, plastered on their display cases. The only time of the year in which no creativity is seen in any window display.

As you pass the businesses to carry on your day, you try not to let those toxic, repetitive colors destroy what little sanity remains at this point only to be assault by another cookie cutter display of pure laziness. To make it worse, people actually pretend to enjoy this maddening trash.

The trees through downtown are strangled by the same lights they hang last year, adding to the light pollution most of us never enjoyed anyway. This assault on our senses is offensive to a species who prides themselves on being the most adaptive.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Atoms Are Random

I have heard the structure of the atom called "ordered," of course they use the word "order" to actually mean "organized." But in both cases they're dead wrong.

First, everything in nature appears predictable, we created laws based on those predictions. However, nothing in nature is organized.

Atoms are not an exception, the more we study these building blocks of everything, the more we see just how chaotic they are. In fact, on the quantum level, atoms are so chaotic that the math for predictions becomes too cumbersome to do on paper.

The nucleus is often thought of as stationary, still, and in place. But this is certainly not the case, every proton and neutron are constantly shifting position and vibrating.

Often these neutrons and protons vanish for short periods of time, or are replaced by other neutrons and protons seemingly at random. Ironically, this is the reason we were ever able to split the atoms.

The electrons are even stranger, to the point of defying all logic. Electrons don't fly in a simple orbit around the nucleus, they actually move around quickly and randomly. If you looked at an atom it would look like a cloud with a very dense core, nothing like the model used to describe how they behave.

Electrons also don't stay on their "levels," as we once thought. Often they jump levels, seemingly at random.

The atom is the perfect reflection of the universe, chaotic, strange, unpredictable in many ways.

Friday, December 4, 2015

Climate Red Alert

The notion that we are incapable of impacting the environment is psychosis. It is a very well established fact that all organisms impact the environment they reside.

Humans live in the global environment now, so we impact them all, even our much needed oceans. Changes to the environment do impact the climate of said environment as well, this is another undeniable fact.

Now, let's go back many millions of years ago to the last species to alter the global environment as much as we do. The reason I say it like that is because it's not the changes that pose a threat, it's the amount of change without a counter balance.

The dinosaurs are a large collection of species which altered the global environment in one way so drastically that their dietary system became imbalanced. We are causing more change than they did, our technology has slowed the impact on ourselves but we have done nothing to stop it.

Their ecosystem became so imbalanced that most of their species were extinct long before the cataclysm that wiped out all but a handful. We can expect the same result, if we do nothing then a single cataclysmic event will wipe us out simply because we will have no stable ecosystems to rely on for food.

To complicate matters, our impact is causing the climate to destabilize, returning the Earth to a state in which modern life cannot survive. When the planet first formed, the climate was very chaotic, and nothing today evolved until after it had been stabilizing for billions of years.

This is why climate change is really important, if we do not change our ways, the changes we cause to the environment will cause our extinction. This is undeniable, observable, and repeated fact.