Homelessness Isn't the Problem, Society Is

Often a misconception of homeless and poor people permeates our culture. Today that misconception is the notion that they're all junkies, drug addicts.

Ironically, the misconception is spread by real junkies, in their offices or on radio, even on television. This is because they don't want you to notice that they're using your tax dollars to pay for their drug habit and vacations at rehab centers.

While there are some junkies who are on the streets, most have homes and jobs, many are politicians, and some pretend to be homeless for sympathy. However, the vast majority of the poor begging for money on the street are no addicted to any substance at all.

There are many legitimate reasons for someone to be unable to access help, such as a mental disorder, discrimination for being GLBT, and even caring for a best friend who is not allowed in the shelters or homes. That latter is a problem caused by the hatred for life common in our society.

Most people are too wealthy to be at risk of being in such a position, they wrongfully believe they are middle class or the oppressed. Unless you have had to live on a diet of noodle soup, food bank handouts, or garbage for an extended time, you are rich.

If you have never been one paycheck away from losing everything, then you have never been poor. If you have never used rocks for pillows, you have never been desperate.

Homeless people are those who's families have discarded them for all the wrong reasons, who had so called friends betray them when they needed it most. These are the people society hates for no good reason, or they were used up by society then dumped.

Homeless people are the ones you mock to mask your inadequacies, the scapegoats of the weaker humans. They are the ones you point your fingers at to distract other from your horrible flaws.

The homeless are the people you use to justify not caring, there are just too many to help so you'll just pop into a bar instead. They are the people you need to kick when they're down so you don't have to face the mistakes you made in your life.

The needy are the ones you can blame for all your mistakes when they don't work out, they are the leeches in your twisted mind. The homeless are the demons hiding under your beds, corrupting your children so you don't have to admit what a horrible parent you are.

The needy are the ones you can blame for your own laziness, they won't get a job so you shouldn't have to work for your money. They are the people who corrode the government even though they have no power to affect it.

Those who starve suffer so that you don't have to, feeding your sadistic need to see someone worse off than you. They are the other people, the ones who don't matter, they are your modern slaves.

White Privilege Kills Kids

Racism is one thing we were told was gone before we had the internet. Today they can no longer lie to us and I am in awe at just how bad it really is.

I have always had mostly white friends, the few black people I have spent time with were always so wonderful and … well, like me. We listened to the same music, usually Stone Temple Pilots or Nirvana was the common link.

We loved the same art, manga and anime, beautiful since 1970 something. We even at at the same places, Jack in the Box tacos, hell yeah.

Our mannerisms and language were almost indistinguishable, though some had accents from the regions they grew up like New York or Arizona. Our only difference was that they had darker skin, and mine was dependent on the amount of sun I was exposed to.

Until recently I had never considered how lucky I was to have these friendships, but now I know they were lucky to have lived long enough in this country to have come into my life. This frightens me, considering how many really cool and awesome friendships I have missed just because some idiot with a power trip and a gun shot them for having a different color of something.

People who are racist are killing others for cosmetic differences, no different than killing someone for not having blond hair. Being able to see this problem has also opened my eyes to the stark contrast, what is often called "white privilege."

This does, in fact, happen all the time. I was once a casual marijuana smoker, we just called it pot, and enjoyed joints after work while watching lame television shows or keeping our security guard friend company during his night shift.

When we were intercepted by police they would confiscate the pot then let us go with a warning, every single time. Then I hear from people I know in other regions, thanks to the internet, who I forget have brown to black skin complaining about the cops harassing them.

It would have been better if the cops had harassed me when I was a pot smoker than to discover this discrepancy. These racists are killing children just because the kids were born with one chromosome different.

These kids are humans, people, one of us hairless apes no less valuable than any other. I am ashamed to say that most white people are not even worthy of being part of any kingdom of life, the other animals only kill out of necessity.

Service Industry Sucks Because of the Customers

The thought of training new employees in food service still gives me nightmares, not because of the new employees. Customers to food service are often skewed by the stereotypes of the employees there, resulting in a tendency to be rude and abusive.

Many times the customer will believe a mistake is made when it wasn't then go into a fit of rage when this is pointed out. Cognitive dissonance accounts for some, but most often it is the arrogance of thinking the food service employee is below them before ever entering the establishment.

The thing is that being the customer does not always make you right, or even intelligent. To the contrary, in most cases.

Customers believe service employees can do anything the customer demands. Sorry but moving mountains is not within the power of service employees anymore than you.

Arrogance of the customer believes that the service employee is a leech on the system or a failure in life, which is far from true. Most service employees are, in fact, people trying to make it in spite of the odds being stacked against them by you, the customer.

Recently businesses have had to always take the employee's side because the problems caused by customer arrogance. Now you have a really good reason to make most service employees love you, that means be courteous, friendly, and tip well.

But I know most customers will not do this, most will continue to be total assholes toward every employee because of their arrogance. So thanks, you assholes, for shooting your own foots off.

Now here's the kicker, consider this exact same problem applies to religion. Customers being the theists, and service employees being the atheists.

So that leads me to this final thought: Thank you, theists, for destroying your own religions.

USA: Where You Are Free To Be Stupid and That's All

The irony of the USA is that while most of us still deny that we are animals, those same people behave just like cattle with guns. The breeding of our species has been our of control for so long, and we see the impact on the rest of the world quite clearly.

But in the USA most people act like cattle, focused on sex and fucking us all to the brink of extinction. Only China could possibly be worse about this than us, considering they don't even worry about the toxic air they produce.

But let's stick with the western world, because we should have the freedom to be smarter than them. I look around and see so many herds of cattle, I mean families, with many calves in tow, acting like they're somehow superior to those of us smart enough to not breed.

The sad part is that they could still keep fucking if they want, all they need to do is get sterilized or use protection to prevent becoming cattle. Then end result of this cattle like behavior is the propagation of the most idiotic people in the country.

There was a movie based on this that may just be a documentary about our future if the people in my own country don't start behaving more like animals.

Do Not Raise Minimum Wages

A successful economy works best with the least amount of government influence, either direction, for the same reason theocracy is a failure. Once you have finished reciting your propaganda lines, please, continue reading.

We see the reason clearly when minimum wage is increased in the USA, though not in other countries. The reason for this discrepancy will become clear very soon.

Consider the copyright system, originally it was made into law because offering the inventors a time to recuperate the costs of development would increase the number of people willing to invest in innovations. Today the copyright laws are outrageous, insanely oppressive because of a few corporations pulling the strings of the politicians.

So in order to sell a version of a product that is made more efficiently and with less costs the copyright holder must be paid whatever they ask, until the day the species becomes extinct. Resulting in absolutely no savings to pass onto the consumer and thus the original producer gets to decide the value of their product no matter how necessary it is for survival.

The end result is that the labor used in the entire process of selling the product to the consumer is added to the total cost, and the only people really earning massive profits are those who hold the copyrights. Walmart is often wrongfully blamed for this discrepancy.

Often people will use the profit value of the corporation, which is a total sum of all their holdings. The outlet stores are only a small portion of their profits, the company owns many other companies which it makes the bulk of it's profits from and no one ever looks at the problems these others are causing.

It's legerdemain, the outlets are given focus by the primary company so that no one realizes just what the company is actually guilty of. Most of the corporations are doing this now, using the minimum wage and their trademarked outlets as smoke screens to cover the real problems.

Should minimum wage be increased? Maybe. We can't know for certain at this time because the costs of everything are hyper inflated by the fact that super wealthy people are being counted as middle class.

Here's the guideline: if you can afford a new phone and computer each year and own a home or a car newer than 2005, you are super wealthy. Most of us are lucky to own a computer that's not more than a decade old or a phone that is now discontinued, and if we're really lucky we have a studio closet … sorry, I meant apartment.

My cat Pepper is the least expensive thing I own, compared to my PS2 that I have had for 7 years even. Ironically, she is more valuable to me than my own life.

So no, do not raise the minimum wage, simplify the fucking laws involved with the relationship of corporation and government so that the corporations cannot get away with atrocities or influence our politicians more than the voters do.

The Bums And Their Wars

Military, a necessary evil that is becoming obsolete. Currently the least amount of war is present in our world than ever before, taking into account population and resource inequality.

Yet there are those calking for more war while the majority of us love the idea of a world without it. Profit, the driving force of why they want war, it's not legitimate profit though.

A legitimate business caters to the individual consumers, their success or failure and profits depend on the value and demand of their products. War is not this, war generates profits from compulsory customers through the financial collective called the government.

Thus war is just welfare for those who don't need any. I hear and read of many people complaining about the poor and needy who collect a pittance from the government here, costing a small fraction of the taxes collect by the government.

Often the poor and needy are called lazy, I get it, they sit around in offices all day gossiping about who fucked who or playing games on the company's internet connection … wait a minute, that's the upper class I just described. Okay, those lazy poor people, always going on shopping trips in their limos paid for by taxes to pay thousands of dollars of taxes on a single outfit for a fundraiser to convince the politicians to give them more money … wait, those are the warmongers in Congress.

The laziest thing I see poor people do qualifies as a job, standing on a street corner in freezing or scorching weather asking for a sandwich. Middle class does this as well, though they enter businesses and beg for food in the form of a job.

So who are the lazy scumbags draining our taxes? You tell me.

Republicans Are Not Conservatives

Political parties and ideals are often considered interchangeable in the USA, this is rather idiotic as a Republican is not conservative and conservatives typically support Democrats. There are several tests online go figure out your political leaning, most are pretty accurate and telling.

The reason for their lack in popularity is because politics has become a circus, and nothing more. It's all for show as a means of distracting the voters from the reality of the world around them, like religion, it's to keep you from asking questions.

So here is yet another plea from a Democrat supporting, atheist, conservative to learn and use the labs correctly. Republicans are not conservative, and Democrats are not liberal, those are parties with platforms, and they're suppose to be opposing platforms, within reason.

The parties have abused the names of the ideologies so much as to convince the public that they are the same thing as the party that claims to abide by them. The irony is that the parties do not abide by the ideals they even claim to.

Democrats are very conservative lately, trying to pull government out of many aspects of our lives, especially in areas governed by emotion. Where as Republicans have become very liberal, attempting to regulate things which the government never had any right to do anyway, especially in areas that even public opinion should have no effect.

Gay marriage is one great example, and the abuse of labels here is so thorough it's lunacy. The liberal ideal would be to regulate who can or cannot be married with an iron fist, no exceptions, regardless of the reasons.

The conservative ideal on this topic would simply be … the government has no business on who you marry only on upholding the contract involved to the letter of the law as a method of maintaining fairness. Contracts are a legal agreement between two parties, in marriage it's a merging of assets and responsibilities between two individuals, in business speak it's simply called a merger.

The "institution" is really just a myth, there was never such a thing and religions that claim to be the reason for it are all lying. It has always been a legal contract and it will always be one no matter what claim is made, we could call it a merging and it would be the same thing.

Another is abortion, again the liberal ideal would be to regulate it, even a little, in the laws. The conservative ideal is to allow the medical professionals the responsibility of regulating it, as this is part of their job, and only involve the law when a dispute occurs.

Actually, that's the simplistic method of determining if it's truly liberal or conservative, liberal means more, conservative means less, "government" is implied when used for politics. So it's more or less government influence, and it's that simple.

Republican and Democrat are parties, and they shift between liberal and conservative, religious and secular, etc based on which politicians are in charge. The names are based on nothing more than selling points, Democrat was originally an anarchist label and Republican was a label representing organization.

There you have it, the reason USA voters are mostly inbred idiots incapable of thinking in three dimensions on anything. I am an atheist conservative who currently supports Democrats and their current platform, and this is in no way a contradiction.

Conservative or Liberal - Just Say Liberal

So there is this odd misuse of words in the USA, this is so widely spread that some people even call being an atheist a religion. But let's focus on the one word that bothers me most, conservative.

The word liberal is also misused as a result, but that happens less often. Conservative has nothing to do with religious delusion, it has to do with quantity, actually.

The basic use of the word means "to use or apply small amounts." The original conservative political ideology was people who preferred less government influence in personal lives, liberal meant more.

Eventually a platform was built and a standard ideology was adopted in various parts of Europe, none of which had anything to do with religion. It was not until the USA formed that religion was injected, forcefully, into the ideology.

You see, religion is not a conservative ideal in any way, it is liberal, very liberal. No conservative would support punishment for thoughts, and religion demands just that.

The reason thought crimes oppose pure conservatism is that it demands liberal amounts of control, monitoring, and punishment. Any punishment for a thought is, by existing, liberal.

The fact of the matter is that for a set of laws to be conservative they can only contain crimes that directly harm other people. All other laws require more government intervention, thus anything more than that is liberal.

Recently this was pointed out to the fake conservatives called the GOP, and thus they tried to blur the definition of "personhood" to essentially justify their very contradictory platform. This is not conservative, this is very liberal, as liberal as the KKK who wants the government to dictate how people sleep.

The problem is that religion has hijacked the GOP, and turned it into a right winged liberal party then lied to it's constituents and told them it was still conservative. Worse, the supporters were so stupid that they believed the lie, even today when we can see true liberal and conservative parties in other countries, none of which are like our GOP.

The problem is the censoring and manipulation of the media by our government, the true reason for the FCC being formed. Censoring is, in itself, a very liberal idea, and one I oppose vehemently. This has created a circus in place of news, and thus we were never given facts on television or radio.

People who support the GOP still actually rely on media's lies in place of actual facts, so sad and so fucking stupid! They are total morons, idiots, the kind of people we should be locking up and sterilizing.

So to summarize, conservative ideology cannot include religion, only liberals can include such overbearing ideals. Left and right are the best descriptives, and this part is so fantastic that it's nearly orgasmic to consider.

Growing up, using the left hand to write with was considered taboo, before my generation they would actually force kids to use only the right hand. Later we discovered that left handed people think with the right side of the brain, the creative side.

The Republicans and Democrats are like that taboo, the left was originally the basis for many bad ideas. Then it was discovered that the right was really the basis for the bad ideas while the left was a force for progress, much like the way we saw handedness.

So drop the liberal and conservative from the discussion, they're both liberal, just in different ways.

The Question Of Verifications - The Rules Of Facts

One of our biggest problems, as a species, is our lack of verifying information and resources. This habit was not a natural one, and has no genetic traits to cause it, it is something we learned.

You can easily guess how we were taught this, so let's look at what I mean in more detail. Often there is a news story, or talk show "expert," which mentions some finding or discovery that has little to no evidence involved.

Another common story us the misrepresentation of the facts, when a mistake is made they ignore the correction and just run with it as some sort of miracle or mystery. Ultimately these stories ruin the wonder and beauty of the world by keeling people from asking more questions about it.

The reason this is done by media is to placate the masses, to prevent them from asking the questions allows the media to, essentially, control what people think and thus engineer their personalities and behaviors. Rather beneficial to those who are running things, as conspiratorial as this sounds, we know this has been happening for a while now.

Now the part about engineering society this way may sound farfetched to those unfamiliar with psychology and neurology. What we know and remember defines how we respond to stimuli, these are what influence the neural pathways in the difference engine portions of our brain, in other words, the personality.

When information is handed to us without any any external stimuli, it becomes a null pathway, meaning your brain will produce less emotion and use less logic when a similar bit of information or memory is presented. Essentially, you ignore it.

Until an emotional response is tied to information it is dead weight, preventing us from exploring it further, preventing us from growing and experiencing the world. We require actually experiencing the information to begin to ask questions again, thus tragedy rarely evoked an emotional response until it affected us directly.

This is also why science requires lab time when studying any subject, you must experience the tests and experiments to associate emotional responses that permit, and encourage, further exploration. Leading us back to the topic at hand, why so many people in the USA are so complacent and unwilling to even verify the sources, much less the actual evidence.

By quelling our curiosity in this manner, people will recite "studies" or "cases" they hear about in media without realizing they are either misrepresenting the data, or lacking most of the important information. This creates a black hole of knowledge as they condition their children to do the same simply by not accepting when the child just happens to have more information than they do.

Today children are exposed to an excess of information, and, in a trail by fire fashion, they are forced to learn how to verify sources, information, even tests and experiments. Skills their parents see as dangerous or evil, so the kids pretend to be like the parents until they move out.

This is the great effect of the Information Age, our youth are measurably more intelligent than all of us before them, and only because they learn this one ability and use it without hesitation. The benefit is that us older folks have a bright future as our children thrust us into the future, the drawback is that it's scary in spite of how much fun it is.

So my challenge to all adults today, let your kids learn and explore the world, then let those kids teach you. I have learned a lot by observing the behavior of children in the last decade, and what I have witnessed fills me with hope for our future, which I will be able to see because those same kids are now solving the problems my generation refused to even acknowledge.

The Year Nears It's End - Summary Of Observations

One trend I still see, which started back in the late nineties of bulky and overpriced cellphones, is the notion that homeless people with smartphones means they are wasting taxpayer dollars. When it started it was almost understandable, cellphones were expensive, but when thinking clearly it begs the question: how else would a homeless person get a phone call for a job?

The problem is in the thinking that homeless people are inherently lazy, or unwilling to work at all. This is a stereotype started by the media, if you have been paying attention then you know the media is controlled by the wealthiest people, the very people who pay no taxes at all and collect welfare masked as "subsidies."

In the eighties, and most of the nineties, the media controlled all the information, they literally controlled how society thought. Today they still control the majority, who are delusionally ignorant, but are slowly losing their poisonous influence in information. This is thanks to the internet.

So now they still decry poor people, in other words the very people who listen and obey the media, owning anything beyond old technology. Anyone with half a brain knows why this is a very stupid stereotype, anyone who has had to pull themselves out of the gutter knows why this is a dangerous one.

First, again I ask, without a phone of any sort how are homeless and poor people going to get calls for jobs? A homeless person has to have a mobile phone, they don't have a home for the cables required for a landline!

The poor person is forced to run through appointments, almost daily, just to keep their home and feed themselves, spending little time at home as it is, then if they are going to interviews they have less time at home. Most often they cannot afford a car, so they have to walk or take the bus, both are very time consuming. Essentially, being poor is a full tine job which pays less than liveable wages and has zero chance of promotions.

Okay, that was the basic logic of the situation, and now the part that shows why media, Republicans, inbred hillbillies, and most religious people, are total idiots. The numbers.

I had a landline with internet access, internet is now required to apply for most jobs today, so it is as essential as a phone, perhaps more so as many businesses worth their name allow for email communication. The total I was paying, when I finally got fed up with the ever increasing cost, was almost 80 USD.

I found offers online for unlimited data, voice, and the nearly obsolete text, starting at 30 USD per month, prepaid. You could pay for that with change from your couch, but what about the phones, those must be expensive, right?

Wrong, so very wrong. The prices of technology have been effect by a very rare phenomenon, and inversion of value. Due to the false nostalgia and novelty of the old phones, I have seen phones that were considered junk in the 80s on sale, yes on sale, for 100+ USD. Most poor people cannot afford that, without saving up for a few months, even today.

The inversion effect made modern technology cheaper, smartphones for 100 USD were comparable to desktop computers costing 500 USD, and many times you could sign up for service and get the phone for free, or in small payments. My smartphone, I got to see if I wanted to even bother with the transition, cost me 15 USD and was delivered in three days at no additional charge.

My smartphone is not top of the line, but it's only last year's model so it's not an antique yet either. My unlimited plan is 55 USD for 2gb at 4g and the rest at 2g per month, that includes taxes.

Now let all that sink in a moment, wireless is becoming more affordable than the landlines for one important reason, one that neither the Democrats nor Republicans like. Lack of regulation and a huge amount of competition is keeping wireless services at prices everyone can afford, and allow homeless people a chance to drag themselves out of the gutters they have been swept to by a society which cares only about appearances.

The so called conservatives in the USA often say too much regulation stifles competition, which is correct, but then they vote for the ban (ie regulation) happy Republicans. Republicans are not conservatives, they are right wing liberals, they prefer government control based on an archaic ideology.

Democrats are becoming more conservative these days, as they vote against many bans, though a single party government is a bad idea. The problem is that there is no opposition, the third parties are often too specialized to be viable replacements for the Republicans, and we cannot afford to keep the Republicans any longer.

Personally, this seems almost orchestrated, in the same manner that the media was controlling information before the internet. What scares me is: if this is orchestrated then the very people who are openly pulling the string of the Republican puppets are the ones who want people to vote Democrat.

To close, the ignorance enforced by religion has allowed our society to be manipulated so easily as to make everything appear to be a conspiracy, even the mundane things like the price of a cup of coffee. But when you are in a mudslide, you have little choice but to grasp the nearest root and cling to it in hopes of not being washed away again.

Republicans Are Not Conservatives

The Republican party in the USA has not been conservative for many decades. Let's look at the ADA first, yes, the Americans with Disabilities Act was a Republican policy that the first George Bush signed in 1990.

This particular law was so intrusive that it opened the doors for many frivolous lawsuits, from people with disabilities, like me. This created a fear in companies, so they started not hiring disabled people as often, using things like credit scores as an excuse. Anyone disabled for a long time will have a horrible credit score, it comes with the disability.

The ADA was never a conservative policy, it was a Republican one. This act alone has caused a lot of USA citizens to fall through the cracks and vanish, even today many still cannot find any real help, and most of us do want to work but this deadly label hangs on us regardless of what we do. Republican supporters love living on the government dole though, it is an art form to them, attack what they enjoy doing to make themselves look superior.

The ADA is just one of many examples, several examples fit into one category; oppressive copyrights. Many voters here are under the misconception that cheaper labor costs are what have made China our source for products. This is not true, those labor costs are balanced out by the expensive shipping costs to get it to the USA.

What makes China appealing for companies is that they don't have the excessively strict copyright laws the USA has. Now both parties are guilty of supporting the laws in the USA that make it impossible to make key components or use vital procedures to make products here, but the Republicans are the ones who should be fighting to balance out these laws and keep them sane.

Conservatives know that oppressive copyrights can destroy an economy, and all true conservatives will oppose copyrights to balance out the liberal desires to protect a person's right to be paid for their work. The Republicans do not do this, because they are funded by some corporations in the USA that produce entertainment.

Yep, Disney and FOX, for example, are two corporations constantly pushing for stricter copyrights. Most music labels and Hollywood do as well. So what damage does this do?

Consider someone finds and formulates a cure for cancer that depends on a particular method of refinement. Getting their money for research back was a good way to encourage such research, so the basic copyright law of a few years was helpful in encouraging advancement. After those few years other companies can produce it and the cost will fall as the supply increases.

That was the idea behind copyright laws, but with the changes made by our government that one company has exclusive rights for that procedure forever. This means that those who need a cure for cancer must pay the company whatever price they decide to charge, for as long as that company exists. Apple and Microsoft take advantage of these copyright laws as well, thus the price hike before Google came up with a marketing strategy for Linux that broke their monopolies.

The Republican funders have a vested interest in copyright laws, they can now produce unpopular garbage and still get paid for the prime entertainment they produced several decades ago.

Social Media, Activism, and Justice - Our Greatest Achievement

Social media has altered the face of the global society in so many profound ways, yet I still hear and see people saying negative things about it. Not to say there are no flaws in this form of communication, but whenever I rarely hear or see a valid flaw being mentioned.

So what good is sharing cat photos, posting what you are eating, or just saying hi? A lot more than one may think. Any successful business person will tell you that it is not what you know, but who you know, that determines your success. What you know only determines how much you can potentially contribute to your species and society.

While I was growing up we were constantly reminded of this, one teacher I had even explained that one should learn for the sake of learning, but socialize with the goal of succeeding. I only recently discovered that this was the key to being influential.

The big problem was, when I was in high school, we had no way to connect outside of our neighborhood, and thus became victims of circumstance. Needless to say, I was never very successful.

Today we have an excess of contacts now, people from across the globe and in different societies connecting in ways we never dreamed possible in the past. I have also admitted we have a problem of information overload many times, the next generations are becoming far more capable of adapting to this though.

The benefits really do outweigh the flaws, and a few select people cannot stand the benefits. The largest group are religious leaders, who only stay wealthy when people are ignorant. These religious leaders are even willing to make, and maintain, hundreds of fake follower accounts to spread misinformation. With how much followers pay these con men for working only one day a year, they have plenty of time.

Many in the governments do not like this connection to information either, now everyone in the USA knows the USA is not the best country, and many of the troglodytes in  power were only able to keep power so long as we didn't know any better. So they do everything they can to undermine the flow of information, even restricting those who have access to the internet.

The mainstream media and many outdated corporations are also against this freedom of information, competition they can't compete against. These dinosaurs are dying fast though, and soon they shall be extinct.

So why all the hatred for social media specifically? Activism. Yes, activism has become stronger by social media, and the proof is in the pudding, as they say.

Since activists started utilizing social media, our societies are changing for the better at an unfathomable of rate. Sane environmentalism has cleaned up much of the environment, from better innovations because of more minds working on problems, to demonstrating what information is bad. Even China is now seeing the need to change their ways, and that was a huge stumbling block for a long time.

People wrongly prosecuted or persecuted are getting aid that they need to fight back, like an atheist wrongly placed into a psychiatric hospital for being an atheist or the transgendered teen wrongfully imprisoned. These are but two of the successes I have seen in the last three months, yes, in less than three months we saw justice for these two when in the past it would take years.

The trick of it is to hit corporations and leaders where it hurts, their pocket books. Someone recently asked what good petitions are, they were trying to justify their own bloodlust and desire for war, but the answer is simple, political activism creates lasting effects while violence merely perpetuates violence.

Sea World is one of the recent targets of social media, and the results are encouraging. People are telling companies that support the business of nonhuman species being used for entertainment that their customers won't use their products or services if they do not stop. Many major corporations are pulling support for Sea World now.

With social media we are enacting long term changes without violence or destruction of the very things we want to protect. This is the greatest achievement of humanity to date, organizing our information and choosing our leaders instead of blindly following those we have been told to follow. We get information that would otherwise be hidden from us, from science to business records.

So the next time you hear or see anyone claiming social media is a bad thing, ask them what they have to hide.

Animal Rights Cannot Trump the Environment - So Called Sea Shepherds

There is a problem with Greenpeace that I don't like, they don't do enough to actually battle pollution. Recently though, I discovered another group I cannot stand, worse than Greenpeace, they call themselves Sea Shepherds.

Now, you may be asking what is wrong with them, like Greenpeace, they ignore the forest for the tree, forgetting that the very thing they are trying to save needs a clean environment to survive in. Unlike Greenpeace, "Sea Shepherds" also use the fight for animal rights to wage wars, yes, actually destroying ships at sea.

A ship in operation releases a ton of pollution, and companies are seeking alternatives to reduce this. A sunken ship releases even more pollution into the oceans for longer, and more steady, periods of time.

Any marine biologist can attest to this, a sunken ship also disrupts currents and alters delicate sea environs. So what these so called Sea Shepherds are doing is guaranteeing there is no future for the very animals they claim to be saving.

The idiocy does not stop there, they show no concern about the animals we have in jails for our entertainment either. Something many of us animal rights activists are fighting against, and have been battling for a very long time, and making progress on thanks to social media.

Yep, social media is causing more change than any act of violence has ever effected. The reason, overlooked by the terrorist type activists, is that businesses will do what earns a profit, even if it means buying more ships and defending themselves more violently. With social media we destroy the value of what they sell, forcing them to look into more sane products.

So the so called Sea Shepherds' claim that petitions from Greenpeace have no effect are not only baseless, but complete lies. Petitions, combined with social media campaigns, causes long lasting changes for the better. The old adage of "hit 'em where it hurts" illustrates this.

So I have essentially come to the conclusion that these so called Sea Shepherds merely want war, and that is something we do not need as a planet. Yes, as a planet.

The entire ecosystem is as important, not any one single species is necessary for the whole, but the whole is necessary for any individual species. This is why fighting for a better environment is more important than fighting for one species at this time, and why destroying the environment for one species is just plain evil.

There, I said it, the so called Sea Shepherds are evil to the core. Selfish and arrogant, thinking only of themselves and looking for an excuse to harm another animal just for the sake of looking cool.

This does not mean I endorse Greenpeace, but between the two, Greenpeace does some actual good.

The Biggest Issues Are Our Smallest Problems

Seattle is one of the least green cities in the USA, in spite of claims made by our tourism industry. Today I want to take the time to explain this in depth, as well as warn tourists what not to expect when visiting this area.

Western Washington is very egocentric these days, people here think it's the best state in spite of some major, and often hidden, flaws. I spent most of my life in Western Washington, as I was growing up I saw a very different region. When we were on the piers we looked out over the Sound to watch the mountains, on clear days you could make out the tall trees.

Today, anything past the shoreline on the other side is shrouded in gray, details lost to the smog. What makes this matter worse is that the city governments continue to claim they are working to keep it all green. None of the policies are actually effective ones, as if they are only pandering for votes.

For example, in Seattle the solution to too much traffic became "let's build a tunnel so more traffic can pass through without having to see how ugly the city has become." I watch the vehicles pass by and most are SUVs or other large vehicles with only one person in them. Mass transit here is fading because Metro and Sound Transit are too greedy.

So our air quality suffers, so much that in less than a week my windowsill is covered in black soot from the cars alone. City and state officials still claim it's not that bad here, some even add insult to injury by claiming we are the most green state in the union.

Now, the nitty gritty stuff. Most businesses here still ban nonhuman animals from their stores based on the state's outdated health regulations. The homeless are often corralled into out if site locations and centers, but we still have a huge problem with people being unable to afford even closet sized apartments.

The cost of living in Western Washington is three time higher than our government reports to the federal government. Most of the homeless in Seattle work. You read that right, many have two jobs but still cannot afford a place to live, especially with the prices of food here and our severely defunded food stamp program ran by a bunch of corrupt and lazy morons who care as much about the people they're suppose to help as one does about dog shut stuck to the bottom of one's shoe.

Why did I revisit all this? Because it's a huge problem with a lot of cities and states in the USA, denial. Many city and state governments want tourism to make up for their bad budgets, but all that does is create a vicious cycle where the citizens wind up with a bigger deficit and the cost of living sky rockets.

By lying about the problems, most cities in the USA are creating a vacuum of poverty, sickness, and pollution. The solution must now come from the people, stop touring. It's that easy, if you want to tour, go to Europe, Canada, or Mexico. Force the local governments to acknowledge the problems they are hiding from, force them to consider actually improving commerce in these cities to build a sustainable economy.

In the USA, we have a tradition of only taking care of issues when they scream at us for attention, look how well that worked for Detroit.

And Then This Happened

Student Faces Major Trouble Over Knife Found In What He Says Is His Father's Old Car

I found this story in my Twitter feed, was bored and monitoring it for whatever caught my eye. As I read it, it is a very short article so take the time to do so now, I found so many examples of what's wrong with our cultures today.

The first clue to one of our biggest problems is the "random search" of a car driven by a high school student. Have we really reach the level of paranoia in which this is considered acceptable by society? To invade a child's privacy in such a manner does not give them much reason to respect the privacy, or lives, of anyone else. We are teaching them that people don't matter, is that what we really want them to learn?

They once tried to propose this in my school once, and my school was pretty violent at the time, the 80s were really violent compared to today. The student body, with the support of parents and many teachers, protested this notion so strongly that the board had no choice, they didn't employ such an archaic policy for us. Today the students have been beaten down by the authorities as to accept this policy, and that scares me more than the kids with knives. This scares me even more than kids with knives who intend to actually harm someone, because that's so rare now I haven't encountered one in more than a decade.

The implications of this are made worse by the fact that society does not question it, at all. A long time ago someone famous once said something very profound, if we are willing to sacrifice even our basic liberties for an illusion of security, we deserve neither. Of course I added my touch to the phrase, because security is truly an illusion, no government agency can really effectively protect it's people, that's just not possible. This is because our biggest threats are ourselves, no one else. No one can protect you from yourself. So giving these agencies the power to do what they want simply so we can pretend they are protecting us is ludicrous.

Okay, so back to the story before I go on and on. The next part that stands out was that it was not even his property, he was borrowing it. So not only was his privacy infringed on, his father's privacy was also trampled under the boot of an obviously authoritarian party. The reason for them being authoritarian is that they are taking what is unlikely to occur as justification for enforcing their authority. The reasons for the tool being present are perfectly valid on their own, however, even without those reasons, a knife is a tool far more than a weapon. If you want to get technical, retractable pens are more useful as weapons, those can be turned into dangerous projectiles with only simple modifications.

This entire situation only demonstrates why paranoia is so bad for us. Originally, in the 90s, they made a claim that violence was on the rise, which it was actually on a steep decline in that era. They attempted to blame video games for this, Super Mario was convincing kids to kill everyone around them, after they grew up and did a ton of drugs and alcohol of course. But we now know this was all nothing more than alarmists seeking a way to attack something they just didn't understand.

Today violence, the world over actually, is at an all time low. Mind you, we still have a lot of work to do, but not in the USA. Our violent crimes have been in check for a very long time now, I can remember when you had to carry a weapon at night, in rural Washington, just because us kids would rob you blind .... for fun. Now, I can walk down the streets of downtown Seattle without seeing any crime at all. We need to take back our paranoia, and focus on important matters, like helping other countries who do still have problems with serious violence.

Now here is where the story really takes a turn for WTF. They are considering punishing this student for something their father did, which was completely innocent and practically expected. This means he's guilty until proven innocent. Now remind me, what is it our justice system is based on? Oh, that's right, innocent until proven guilty. This is one of many stories that show our culture has completely discarded the basic foundation of our justice, the one thing that made the USA better than most other countries, the only saving grace in our government, and we are discarding it for a false sense of security from threats that don't even exist.

Parents, teachers, authorities in the USA, you are all wrong. Stop ignoring that fact, you are wrong, we have lost our soul here, the one thing that made this country great, the only reason I even liked the USA, you are destroying. This is not my country, my country had a sense of justice, equality, and freedom, not authoritarian dictators who want to tell you what to do.

It's A Boy - Maybe Not

Gender in humans has been something pretty skewed by ideology that we have lost sight of the most important aspects of life. Everyone from street people to medical doctors still insist they know better than everyone else. The reality is that we really don't know.

The first life forms on the planet, the ones we got our genetic start from, are all capable of asexual reproduction, they did not need to have any form of physical attraction for each other. But does that mean they had no genders or sexuality? Well, no, these early organisms likely had the same variations in gender and sexuality we see in the more complex life forms today, they just didn't need them, and had no brains to act on the genetically determined attractions.

As life forms became more complex, colonies of these earlier life forms evolving to work with other colonies, we call these "organs" now, genetic material needed more variation to keep the organisms alive. Enter sexual reproduction, as an option. The earliest life forms didn't need to reproduce sexually, they didn't require the sharing of genetic material, it was an option though. The life forms that did utilize this option, however, became more common, their populations grew faster and they adapted better to their environments.

Essentially, natural selection had more traits to select from because of the organisms that were mixing their genetic material with similar organisms, resulting in more variation, more life, and more chances for survival. This eventually produced more stable methods of reproduction, bisexual and orgy style methods being the most suitable for producing stable, and capable, offspring.

But life is like a weed in a garden, once it starts, there's almost no way to stop it. So organisms spread through the planet, covering it's surface completely. Plant life terraformed the planet so that other life forms could crawl on the dry portions as well. Life was booming, and the only real threat to life was other life. So the original methods of reproduction were no longer necessary, they actually had a drawback in that many species were quickly overpopulating portions of the planet. When plants do, they create too much oxygen and the atmosphere itself can become explosive as a result.

This eventually produced a collection of species that reproduced in a less efficient method, mono-sexual. A dichotomous gender system, one male, one female. This system slowed their growth, allowing the resources to be more easily divided among them, increasing their fitness within the world. But these species came from those who had other methods of reproduction, and thus the genetic material needed to drive reproduction included those of various other methods as well. This proves to be a huge benefit, because it slowed down the reproductive rates even more, allowing even more resources to be available for any individual of a species.

Fast forward to today, skipping the Triassic and other eras, and you now have modern species, humans being one of them. At first humanity embraced our primitive natures, even today we are very primitive actually. This prevented us from over populating our environment, allowing the resources to be more plentiful for each individual is what helped to make us a strong species.

It was all moving along swimmingly for a while, several million years went by and our species was improving in ways no other species had managed to improve. We learned to not only utilize our environment, but how to change it, what we now call genetic modification. Our methods were sloppy at first, but we were so very young then. But our population growth was not excessive, it was "just right" for our species, because not everyone was breeding, and people were dying at very young ages.

Then the worse thing could happen, people decided they didn't want to be animals anymore, which was not going to magically change us into something else. So they found ways to enforce this dichotomous gender system, using social engineering, we call it religion now. This caused more people to reproduce, more people to breed, and our population began exploding. Our only saving grace was that illness claimed more of us when our populations reached critical levels.

Then we figured out how to keep ourselves alive much longer, medicine, clean water, and other advances. We lost control of our population completely, yet people still hold onto this idea, the one idea that started this mess in the first place, that everyone should breed. This has not only created some serious social problems, psychological problems in children, and over all insanity in the general population .... it has ultimately caused us to become our own biggest threat.

Luckily, we are still intelligent, somewhat, enough to realize that these problems hurt each other socially and psychologically. So we are making strides in correcting the presumption that humans only exist to breed, however, most will still deny the bigger threat to our species. Over population of any species is a bad thing, not because it will stamp out other life forms, those will evolve into better life forms as a result, actually. It's a threat to our species because the resources for each individual will be reduced to a level that requires us to kill each other more than we do already.

We have worked for peace in our species, trying to end all wars, yet right now war is the most humane method of keeping our population in check. I would rather us be able to afford peace in the world, than to see the gender system remain a dichotomy just because of some ignorant humans who cannot mature beyond childish superstitions.

Comsumerism - Ignorance Abound

I am known to beat a dead horse quite a bit, and this is almost an exception to that rule. However, the entire reason the USA will not become a Capitalist society is because of how inundated our culture is with religious nonsense. If a child is not offered the chances to make decisions as they learn, they will not learn to make decisions well as an adult, this holds true for society as well. For too long people have been given answers to questions that benefit only those in power, and people became too use to having someone else watch out for them.

This phenomenon has been the primary reason Capitalism cannot take root in the USA, people are slow to learn how to make smart decisions and thus still need someone else to tell them what to do. This "someone" is often a government agency, such as the FDA. This has opened a path for criminals to take advantage of people, instead of being smart and looking up information to validate claims and businesses, people just accept what information is handed them as fact.

In true Capitalism, the consumer has the power, businesses must please the consumer or fail due to a lack of profit, and failed businesses just get replaced by better ones. The consumers make the ultimate decision in which businesses are healthy, and which are bad, making for a very powerful, and stable, form of society. The problem is that this requires the consumers to become educated, to know what they are buying, why, and how it's made and sold. It means the consumer must ignore the figurehead "masters" and be responsible for their own decisions.

This is a difficult task, because people are still stuck on "now now now," they want quick answers, quick results, and even quicker paybacks. In the past we had little time, as a species, to think on matters, and having someone who looked out for us was of some benefit. But in this day, everyone has access to all the information required for any intelligent decision. This means we can ... relax. For the first time in history we are able to actually learn, study, and analyze every decision, every product, every service we need or want.

So I challenge anyone who reads this, ignore the advertisements, ignore the government's opinion, ignore the opinions of others, and investigate everything you buy. Turn to scientific research, to actual facts and figures. Turn to the things that can actually inform you on matters, the opinion of a perfect stranger can often be more valuable than that of a friend for such matters, because the friend will worry more about your relationship than the facts, while a perfect stranger will just tell you what they think.

Scientific papers are the most valuable sources of information, and now, thanks to the internet, you can buy these papers or acquire them from friends at the click of a link. The thing about scientific papers is that they go through a rigorous method of peer review, make sure you check for that specifically to make certain it's valid. This process eliminates errors, almost flawlessly, in the data, making the information more accurate and thus more valuable.

Try it yourself, you will find that many of the products you have been ignoring due to false information are some of the best products you could have been using. You will find that many of the companies you have been avoiding are some of the best companies as well.