Author: Richard

Girls taking pictures of themselves at a sports event??? WTFLOL!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=cjMsl18D6Jg

Look at these fkkn bitches taking pictures… OF THEMSELVES! What, did they want to savor a moment in life or something?? What, did they think this was supposed to be a social event of some kind? Something fun that they might want to re-live in some capacity with visual reminders of themselves in that moment? Um. No, bishes – y’all r spose to look straight ahead and that’s it.
Guess we gotta Life-splain to these twits that when you’re in a sports arena you’re supposed to exclusively watch the event area in front of you and partake in nothing else at any time.

A group of selfie-obsessed Arizona sorority girls were shamed at a baseball game by two MLB announcers for snapping photos of themselves for at least two minutes straight.

About a dozen unsuspecting Alpha Chi Omega sorority girls were caught on camera putting on their best duck faces as they posed with hot dogs, churros, and just about anything near them.

“Oh, hold on! Take a selfie with a hot dog. Selfie with a churro. Selfie just of a selfie!” one announcer teases.

As I’ve noted many times before, Selfie-shaming is for Losers. It’s a transparent attempted bludgeon used by weak minds to drag down others they perceive as a threat to their own low self esteem.

Here are 8 or so reasons why this is entirely the wrong angle for this story:

TURNING PHOTOGRAPHY INTO PATHOLOGY
The girls are described as “selfie-obsessed” for snapping pictures of themselves at the game. This is stupid. Doing something more than once does not create an obsession. That label is only being applied here to create a mocking narrative that is illegitimate – which you can easily verify by trying to apply it to any other strive for excellence. What if there was open-seating at the stadium and the group was observed to take several minutes surveying the available options of areas to sit? Would they be “perfect view obsessed” girls? or just normal people trying to achieve something. What about people who stop watching the field and leave the stands to go to the snack bar and purchase food and drinks? They can’t go an hour without munching and slurping something instead of just watching the game in front of them? Is anyone called “food obsessed” for doing this? They very well could have been when this was new territory for game-watchers in 1905 or whatever* when there was a peanut & popcorn stand behind the bleachers and not much else (*precise moment in history when concessions became a mainstay in sporting arenas was not researched for this article). Some people, who were used to not leaving the stands to go eat, could easily view that unnecessary action to be eye-roll worthy. “Just watch the friggin game. You don’t need a cup of salty snack right now. geez” is no different than the attempted shaming of these girls taking photographs and no more stupid than it either.

THE ACCUSERS ARE THE DRAMA QUEENS
The commentary on social media and critical reporting of the instance frames the girls as dramatic clowns but in reality it’s the commentary that is being unduly hysterical. As noted above, in an attempt to paint the act as excessive, the description above from Melissa Chan in the NY Daily News  calls the girls “selfie obsessed” for taking pictures of themselves for “two minutes straight”. I assure you all: 2 minutes is the shortest photoshoot in history. Definitely not an “obsession”. They also didn’t pose with “just about anything near them” – they took pictures of themselves and their friends and included the food they were eating… For Christ sake, they didn’t pick up debris off the floor and pose with it or go overboard in any way whatsoever. They commemorated an event in their lives with photographs. Could we stop pretending that that’s a big deal?

THEY WERE LITERALLY ASKED TO DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING…
Taking photos of yourself is not a shameful thing to do, but there is a wrinkle in this story that makes the attempted shaming of these girls 10 times as horrible: they were invited to do exactly what they were doing…
The commentary from the announcers making fun of the girls taking the pictures comes literally directly after those same announcers read a promo asking attendees of the game to tweet their fan photos… What in the actual fkk kind of scam is this? “Hey everyone! Please join in the fun and do this thing! [wait 1.5 seconds] – Hey everyone! Look at these friggin ridiculous monkeys doing that thing we asked them to do! LOL! What a buncha maroons!”. This is like when a magician invites an audience member up on stage to “be a part of a trick” but really just ends up making an ass out of the participant because they’re not a talented enough performer to actually make them a part of the act so instead have to rely on them being the butt of their joke. Not cool. Step up your game, fools.

HEY LOSERS: THIS ISN’T 1865. PICTURES ARE FUN AND FREE.
“Loogit the one on the right” and the other guy adds “do you have to make faces when you take selfies?”. Well no, bro – you don’t HAVE to do anything while engaging in self photography. I get that you guys are old as balls but are you really dating yourself to bygone era’s where you have to pose for a photo stonefaced because it takes several minutes for the exposure of the picture to imprint on the film? Are all your family albums recreations of American Gothic, you boring hack? Then they mock the volume of pictures being taken with a bit voicing the girls alleged internal monologues with comments like “uhp – better angle”, “check it” when one of them verifies the quality of the photo just taken, and “that’s the best one of the 300 pictures I’ve taken myself today!”. Maybe y’all haven’t heard the news but: digital photographs are free, bro. If they were $10 a shot, there might be validity to some astonishment in the opulent waste of a crowd frittering this limited commodity away, but nope – it’s just tapping a pane of glass and capturing a moment in your life. What you’re mocking is attention to detail and strives for excellence, not any kind of spoiled entitlement or abuse of excess. There is no virtue in limiting the moments you capture of yourself at no expense to anyone. You’re a friggin idiot if you don’t take a half dozen snaps of the same photo with minor nuances, not a hero.

THE [FAKE] TECHNOLOGICAL MENACE STEALING OUR YOUTHS!
In a delightfully goofy case of the old trope that dictates “technology I grew up with is okay but technology kids are growing up with is SCARY”, the commentary on the girls takes an unintentionally hypocritical turn. Referring to the girls looking at the screens of their picture taking devices, the announcer says “welcome to parenting in 2015. they’re just completely transfixed by the technology” – ignoring that he is broadcasting those comments onto a screen in which millions of viewers are “completely transfixed” themselves… We are all watching screens, bro. You’re spying on teenage girls through screens, they’re taking photos through screens, people at home are watching you watch them through screens – on screens. Shaming someone for being transfixed by technology while you are doing the exact same transfixation of technology – just with a different subject through the lens – is an insane level of lack of self awareness.

WHAT EXACTLY IS THE MESSAGE HERE, AGAIN?
While using a camera to record a bunch of girls, the commentary we are supposed to accept is that girls using cameras to record themselves is a ridiculous mock-worthy event. There’s just nothing that makes sense about what they’re saying – which reveals that they’re not saying the things they’re saying for the reasons alleged, and rather are just using those alleged reasons as excuses to take down a target due to ulterior internal issues.

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO WATCH THE GAME!” is a stupid comment all over a large percentage of the social media reposts of people justifying the shaming. First of all: you’re supposed to pay attention to whatever is interesting. You have no obligation to watch a sporting match that is boring – but there is zero evidence that a game was even going on. As far as I can tell, this is all taking place during a break or downtime of some kind, having just come back from a commercial break apparently. That’s the whole reason the video even exists, you dummies – the announcers had nothing on the field to announce on, so the cameras trolled the stands for commentary fodder. Anyone criticizing these girls for not being fully engrossed in the sport allegedly happening in front of them should be quintuply criticizing the announcers for ignoring the same game at the same moment in time. It’s the announcers job to talk about the game, and it is sorority girls’ job to take pictures of themselves in everything they do before they aren’t cute in pictures anymore. The girls did their jobs here – the chauvinist announcers did not.

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO TALK TO EACH OTHER” is the other criticism of these silly chicks who thought they were attending this event to enjoy in ways that came natural them instead of following the Code of Baseball or something. NOPE – baseball is for conversations, apparently as one of the announcers says that “the beauty of baseball is you can sit next to your neighbor and have a conversation. OR you could completely ignore them”. Because evidently taking pictures with people, laughing with them, and talking to them, is “completely ignoring” them. The brief moments any of the girls are not engaging with each other by doing something on their personal screens are frequently broken up by the group activities of laughing and chatting during photographing of themselves. And remember that this is not a 2 minute montage of time lapse video from the entire game showing these girls doing nothing but taking pictures of themselves and not saying a word to each other – this is only a 2 minute span of linear time during a nothing-of-note-happening-on-field segment of the stupid baseball game. If you can’t take 2 minutes to disengage from the non-action on the field or the lulls in conversation with your neighbor, then attending a game isn’t fun – it’s punishment. What crime are these young women accused of that they would deserve such a sentence?

CONFISCATE THE PHONES!
The last comment the announcers make is to jokingly advocate banning phones from the stadium to prevent people from taking pictures of themselves. Wtf is that about? Why should the stadium have a monopoly on recording media of fans that – don’t forget – it solicits to record media themselves? What is the joke here? There isn’t one. It feels like there’s one because of the underlying feeling but when the surface of that feeling is breached even to the slightest degree, the facade fails. The real reason for scorn is not “I don’t want people to take breaks from watching baseball” – it’s – “I don’t want people doing things that make me uncomfortable about the fact that no one wants to look at pictures of me and/or that I don’t have the confidence that would make me want to save images of myself having fun.”

~

The truth is that all this is just misdirected jealousy. Selfie shaming is a retaliation to specious feelings of inadequacy brought on by the public display of people having enough self worth to think pictures of themselves have some kind of value and thus should be taken. People who have no such value in their image feel shamed by those who do and seek to tear them down publicly so that the public learns to devalue self-image in general, thereby protecting those who don’t have it.

In reality, there’s obviously nothing wrong with photographing yourself and it doesn’t inherently speak to any poor character traits, which means that it deserves no scorn or ridicule on its own.

~~

UPDATE: In response for being unjustly mocked on tv for no good reason, the girls were offered free tickets to a game. Their response is so boss that it made this entire post worth it just for that alone. Basically they said “thank you but we would like to donate those tickets to a charity instead”. Boom. Here’s the full statement:

Alpha Chi Omega at Arizona State University would like to thank the Arizona Diamondbacks and Fox Sports for reaching out to the chapter after last night’s game and subsequent media frenzy. We appreciate their generous offer of tickets to tonight’s game. However, instead of chapter members attending the game, we have asked the Diamondbacks and Fox Sports to provide tickets to a future game for families at A New Leaf, a local non-profit that helps support victims of domestic violence.

Today, October 1, marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If everyone who viewed this statement took the time to make a donation in recognition of domestic violence awareness, which is Alpha Chi Omega’s national philanthropy, we would be so grateful! We are happy to have the opportunity to shed some positive light on such a sensitive subject. All proceeds will go directly to A New Leaf to help struggling Arizona families get back on their feet by providing housing, food, childcare and more. You can donate using the link below. We appreciate your support!

http://donate.billhighway.com/DVAwareness

All-Day McBreakfast doesn’t include the most McBreakfastiest item on the menu!

McDonalds is going through some tough times and for some reason all day breakfast is a part of the turn-around strategy, which I don’t understand at either end. I don’t get how serving breakfast menu items is both something that hasn’t been done already given how seemingly easy it is, yet also is fixated to be a profit boosting turnaround tactic. I get that the more menu items that have to be out and either prepared or ready to be prepared means the possibility of more food product waste as ready-made items go unbought in their freshness window while having them made to order (mostly heating pre-cooked items) creates its own problems but neither seem like problems all that hard for a corporation like McDonalds to tackle and solve.

But finally after much public discussion about the possibility, McDonalds has decided to serve breakfast all day. Or at least some of it.

I went to McDonalds today for some breakfast at not-breakfast-time to feel like a baller and jump on this 2015 magic so advanced that Back to the Future (a movie that thought we would have flying cars and hover boards in 2015) didn’t even predict and I ordered a McGriddle. The Spanish accented woman at the counter replied “AH?” so I repeated the word “Mic-Griddle” and she paused with confusion… Which is more than a little odd because – to give away the ending to this story: McGriddles aren’t on the all-day-breakfast menu – but certainly this woman knows what a friggin McGriddle *is*, right? You’ve heard this word before, have you not, madam? I get that it’s not available right now but why are you not immediately telling me *that* instead of acting like this Milk-Greedle thing I speak of is a foreign product? I didn’t order a Grand Slam or a Whopper – I asked for the only breakfast item that has the surname of the establishment in its actual name, and you don’t know what I’m talking about?…

Eventually she put it together and told me “no. we only do thees” and pointed to a placemat menu on the counter with breakfast items that does not include the MC-gridz.

This is insane… Every fast food place that does breakfast has a breakfast sandwich with a biscuit on its menu and McDonalds does too. But the McGriddle is a breakfast sandwich that only McDonalds offers (hence the Mc) and in their big push to remind customers that they are a different and unique place to go – they’ve axed their one proprietary product from the list of options. Madness.

You can get a stack of pancakes and sausage all day, but you can’t get a breakfast sandwich with syrup flavored pancake buns all day.

Wtf are you doing, McDonalds? I don’t even know who you are anymore.

Republican jerks endlessly heckling former Congressman Anthony Weiner

Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner currently holds no public office, is not a written or television pundit anywhere and is generally out of political life outside of merely commenting on it as a civilian. So why are some Republican outlets still hecktoring him years after he was a threat to them? Have you people no decency?

Fine. Potential poor choice of words since decency is what gave Weiner his scarlet letter in the first place but that doesn’t excuse the surrounding details of his situation: mainly the fact that he isn’t in a position in power or influence anymore, so making him the object of ridicule is punching-down in a distasteful way in my opinion.

For those of you who forgot or never knew: Congressman Weiner accidentally publicly tweeted a picture of an erection visible through his underwear when he meant to send it privately to a girl he was e-flirty with via sexy pics and messages. He denied it at first and then came clean about it when that strategy failed and blah blah blah. Okay – fine. We get it. It’s funny cuz of his name, cuz it’s definitely a skeezy thing to do while married and usually a skeezy thing to do even if not and all that jazz – okay. He resigned. A couple years afterward he ran for mayor of NYC and didn’t win the primary.

Yet for the past several years that he has been out of office I will randomly see hit pieces on the former congressman in Conservative media and they are always 100% gratuitous and bizarre.

Today it’s gotten so bad that they’re even hassling him over tweeting about traffic in NYC.

https://twitter.com/anthonyweiner/status/645223162293157888
https://twitter.com/anthonyweiner/status/645225736408838144
https://twitter.com/anthonyweiner/status/645232567508185089

Sounds like fair and rationale criticism to me. Also sounds like a guy tweeting about traffic… So under what circumstances are you the cool guy in an exchange where someone says “well THIS sure seems to be a dumb use of public resources that is inconveniencing the citizens of the city” and you respond with “oh yea? REMEMBER WHEN YOU SEND DICKPICS TO GIRLS ON THE INTERNET? BURN!”

Wtf, people…

Worse is the adoption of this one photo of Weiner scowling that has become the go-to clipart in hit pieces on him, similar to the Bill O’Reilly cry-face.

I admit that I always liked Congressman Weiner so maybe i’m being blind to what is fair dialog and treatment of a public figure in such circumstances but I think it’s gratuitous to randomly keep recycling a sexting scandal when the dude talks about anything as non-related as unnecessary street closures.

Pick your battles, Republicans. Save your fire for the bullies, not the Weiners.

Dear Whiny People… A full dissection of Nichole Arbours “Dear Fat People” Video

After going viral on both Youtube and Facebook Video, the following piece of media has generated outrage and accusations against its author and the sentiments she expresses. But are they merited? *In my best Tootsie-Pop Owl voice* ~ Lehtz, Fiihnd Out…

Here are some things you may have failed to see…

The first 3 seconds of the video makes fun of herself.
The video starts with a cold open in where Arbour refers to the streak of pinkish purple in her blonde locks as her “Ke$ha hair” and lifts a strand further down that appears stiff, saying “you don’t know if this is hair spray or semen”.
This entire post could end with that. Every Social Justice Warrior who thinks that in attacking this video they are crusading against an oppressive bully-culture is revealed to be a self-important fraud after just 3.5 seconds of the damn thing. You lost before you started. You are rallying your troops around a woman comedically making light about her sense of style and after-sex hygiene who also says it is unhealthy to be unhealthy. You are constructing a strawman bully to take down for your own agenda and not because this is an actually pervasive figure guilty of unfair demonization. When you claim villainy in people making jokes about themselves while also making jokes about certain unhealthy choices, you are mocking your own cause.

Within 6 seconds she called out her overly sensitive future critics
With just the words “Dear Fat People” she notes that “people are already mad about this video”. That would be a lame pre-emptive defense about taking heat for being controversial over something non-controversial if it didn’t pan out exactly that way and more, far beyond what anyone could have expected. Congratulations, whiners! Your predictable overreactions have become such a cliche trope that you are living self-fulfilling prophecies of Outrage Culture.

Her “Fat People running” comedy bit is legit
When I heard the outcry over this video I naturally assumed it was another fitness lifestyle person evangelizing the virtues and benefits of not remaining unhealthy. In reality, as if the previously mentioned tipoffs weren’t enough, it is shown within 20 seconds of the video that this is a comedy routine. That doesn’t mean you have to think it’s funny – it just means you have to know that it’s comedy. When you treat jokes from an entertainer like they’re serious hateful attacks from a position of authority then you’re being a douche. Jokes with a message behind them should have that message rebutted in a manner of levity equal to the offense. In the first 20 seconds of the video, Arbour goes on a tangent about how Frankenstein is slow and thus non-menacing to someone who can run “at a reasonable pace” and segways into how the zombies from The Walking Dead are allegedly also easy to avoid if not for writer and producer plot devices. You have no excuse for treating this monologue like its a Presidential Address to the nation.

“Fat shaming is not a thing. Fat people made that up”
Finally at around 35 seconds, we have at least something that could potentially be disputed regarding overweight humans. Arbour says “fat shaming is not a thing”. This is essentially the thesis of the video and yet the vast majority of its critics refer to it as a “fat shaming video” when the video purports to be a video dispelling the myth of fat shaming. Arbour explains her position but the critics think they don’t need to explain theirs for some reason. So lets just examine her argument… Arbour says Fat shaming is a made-up construct invented by fat people in contradistinction to legitimate Victim Cards in a deck she says includes Race, Disability, & Gay. These “Cards” are legitimate plays according to Arbour because each of the 3 groups face hurdles in life they didn’t choose and cannot change, unlike fat people whom overwhelmingly either chose their state of health, can change their state of health, or both. Unless…

Who she’s NOT talking about is explicitly stated in the first minute
In 1 minute of the 6 minute video, Arbour states that people with a little more “cushion for the pushin” or with specific health conditions need not apply to her criticism. So why have so many applied? The fact that so many people crave victimhood status is a servicing illustration to Arbours point, not a debunking of it. There is no excuse for being chubby or suffering from a medical issue that causes fat accumulation and thinking you are being in any way derided. The woman slows her speech like she’s talking to a kindergarden Special Needs class and makes an O with her hand to illustrate that she is only pinpointing the 35% of North Americans who are O-bese – i.e. – people making life decisions regarding food intake and movement/exercise that are negatively affecting their health by adding large amounts of calories that they are not burning.

“Big boned” isn’t a thing
Arbour quips that “there are no fkking skeletons that look like the Michelin Man”. Amusing line. Problem? If so, then Science is your enemy, not this comedy delivering blonde girl.

“Fat shaming” is really just “shaming bad habits until they fkking stop”
Fitting into her earlier point about how “fat shaming” at large is not a thing, Arbour explains that what people wrongfully call fat shaming (a phrase with connotations of personal condemning) is actually the shaming of bad behaviors that result in life threatening actions (something every reasonable human is called by logical society to do).

Shop-aholics vs Over-eaters who don’t exercise
Still less than 2 minutes into the 6 minute video, Arbour delivers some jokes about Shopaholics (people with a compulsion to buy things in unhealthy quantities) are more sympathetic victims than Food&sloth-aholics (people who take poor care of their bodies via a compulsion to eat large quantities of junk food paired with sedentary activity). Recalling her setup about legitimate handicapping, she jokes that obese parking should be further, not closer to the store to encourage the calorie burning that obese people need to save their lives. So so far, Arbours alleged “shaming” and “bullying” has been to advocate better behavior with the intention of saving peoples lives (also known as “neither shaming nor bullying”).

People destroying their bodies are doing something horrible
2:20m – Arbour says if you have a pack of Smarties candies and you mash one up and make it “not good” then it’s no big D cuz you have a whole pack left, while the case with your body is that you have only 1 and if you eff it up then you’re screwed. It’s an odd analogy fitting with the light hearted comedic delivery of the rest of the video and it’s 0% inaccurate. Regardless of candy analogies, there is no disputing the fact that at the time of this writing and the time of Arbours recording, human beings have only one body as an option. In the future, depending on how this head transplant thing goes and how thoroughly we are able to download our brains to plug into new mechanical, organic, or cyborg/mixed vessels – Arbours claim is 100% true.
So more than a quarter of the way through the video and we have yet to experience anything inaccurate, nasty/mean, or “shaming”.

Being “body positive” means “being positive to your body”
Lampooning the phrase “body positive” as it’s used in regards to glorifying unhealthy bodies, Arbour suggests the alternative of labeling positive things positive. By illustrating absurdity by being absurd, Arbour takes the action to its logical extension by pointing out that #MethLove and #TeamSmoker campaigns are not positive. Putting a hashtag next to something does not change the objective reality that it is physically bad – it just makes something that is physically bad, culturally good. And this is the real heart of the body positive issue… it operates under the hippie philosophy that if anyones choices are not celebrated then they are a victim and hippies love fighting against societal majorities by using victim martyrs. So the victims get conned by feeling better about killing themselves and ruining their lives while the hippie feels like a hero for fighting against the boogie men of logical critical analysis of health by falsely labeling it with hate smears and fiction of oppression.

What about the family?
Around the 3 minute halfway mark of the video, Arbour notes that the health conditions and early deaths caused by obesity take an unfair toll on the family and loved ones of the obese. She calls out the selfish behavior of someone allowing their addiction to unhealthy food rob them from their loved ones. People who seek pleasure for themselves regardless of the pain it causes others are typically known as jerks. Most jerks are jerks because of problems, yes, no one fails to grasp that. But as an evolved society we are compassionate to peoples problems when they seek help – not when they embrace their problems and make them other peoples problem. That action should be condemned, not celebrated as a personal choice. If you are a hermit with only enemies then it is a personal choice how you destroy your life with food and inaction. If you have anyone – even one person in your life who loves you – then you are being a jerk by destroying your life whether it’s with food, alcohol, drugs, or whatever. That’s *my* point, not Arbours, but Arbours point that killing yourself with food is a dick-move to your loved ones is objectively true. I could think of a bunch of ways that and every other objective truth could be used to bully, ridicule, shame, or otherwise gratuitously attack an individual or group of people, but so far this video has done no such thing.

Fat Privilege
3:10 – Telling a story of obese people getting to cut a long security line at the airport because their knees were hurting from standing too long, Arbour again illustrates the absurdity of the situation sarcastically responding “oh, I showed up an hour early like I was supposed to, but you overeat, so let me help you”. Sorry, but Arbour isn’t the jerk in that situation. She could be if she was the TSA agent in charge of the line and refused to expedite the obese persons time they spent in pain or discomfort (assuming the suffering was legitimate) but the person in this story wasn’t given pain or discomfort by any 3rd party – they alleviated their pain and discomfort at the expense of others. This is known as “being a jerk”. Arbour sarcastically pointing out that she and others miss out on preferential treatment due to not destroying their bodies, is just logic.

Description of gross fat people
In a world where obesity exists and unpalatable things exist, there is going to be some cross-over. Arbour describes a distinct smell and type of “standing sweat” fat (presumably, people with a weight problem so strong that merely being upright without assistance has the equivalent effect of lifting and carrying around various numbers of 20lb lifting-weights)

Privilege ridicule
“So what?” to the fact that the fat family got to skip in line and be carted to their destination while Arbour sweats “like a pig” under a time crunch – she notes that while suffering that imbalance, if she were to “play an ugly chick in a movie” then she’s more likely than them to win an Oscar.

Obesity as a disability to the obese and an inconvenience to the healthy
4:15 – Arbour says that in her recent travel story she was seated on the plane next to one of the kids from the fat family whom was referred to as being disabled and his fat was spilling out of the airline seat and onto Arbour.

“Genetics plays a part, to a degree” in obesity
Accurate and necessary observation.
4:50 and I’m still waiting to hear something offensive, bullying, or false…

“I’m really fkking selfish: I want you around”
5 minutes in and this supposed shaming bully is admitting to caring about all the obese people watching her that even though she doesn’t know them, she cares enough to want them to be alive. The people calling this video shaming and bullying are taking a giant dump over those words and cheapening actual harassment, personal ridicule, and culture affecting acts of punching down.

“Actually, I will love you no matter what…”
5:33 – After expressing light hearted self deprecation concern in teasing both herself and her appearance along with those who overheat to unhealthy degrees and then saying she is only lampooning the unhealthy behavior because she cares about the unhealthy who may only be getting feedback from enablers, this “bully” then says “actually, I’ll love you no matter what [size or weight you are]” and this hippie Victim Culture drenched elitist nunnery still goes around painting this woman as an intolerant bully.

The video ends without a single slice of fat-shaming…

Kid makes a clock that looks like a bomb and dummies cry racism

Dear hippie friends lauding this story on Facebook: You are being played and you should have known better…

14 years after the terrorist mass murders of 9/11 by radical Muslim extremists and the hippie American Left has been desperately searching for anti-Muslim retaliation or violence or bigotry and come up with failure and empty hands.

Despite Islamists using bombs and other weapons to murder civilian targets across the world, the tolerance and objectivism inherent in American traditionalism just kept failing to make any false deductions between a peaceful Muslim and an Islamist. Then in 2015, a kid brings a bomb-looking thing to his school and the cops are called and we are supposed to make some kind of “see?? Don’t go thinking all muslims are bomb using terrorists!” conclusion just because the kids name is Ahmed Muhammed? Since when is it okay to accuse people of oppressive race or ethnic bias without any evidence other than your own confirmation bias? Or more importantly – What about the part where the item he had, literally, objectively, unequivocally looks like a bomb you dummies?

I used to like debunking these but the joy is gone from the process. It’s just annoying at this point that people actually fall victim to such obvious logical errors just because of emotion based confirmation bias.

Nothing wrong happened in this story except what the kid did: He should have known better than to bring a suspicious looking thing like that to school. Okay, big deal, who cares? He wasn’t expelled from school for it (though creating bomb scares is usually an offense academia punishes), he wasn’t beaten or abused by any students or authority figures for it, he wasn’t even arrested as is often falsely reported (he was detained by police while they investigated) – yet this story is all over social media as some kind of example vindicating hippie victimhood mentality.

Everything about this message is wrong.
Acting as if some major oppressive weight was reigned upon this kid, Hippies are overcompensating as always by making him out to be a hero. That’s bananas. He didn’t do anything wrong except make a dumb decision so he shouldn’t be penalized but the kid does not deserve praise because he didn’t do anything special, either. People posting this story are trying to make the guy out to be a wiz kid genius unable to flourish in the field of science because of the oppressive stigma of his name and what thousands of people do in the name of his religion.

Idk what the kids grades, science fair history, or invention portfolio looks like but color me “not impressed” by this “clock” (which looks to me like just an assembly from a kit of some kind). Instead of being praised he should have been told that what he did was not smart. The moral of the story is that you shouldn’t bring knowingly suspicious looking wired electronics to school unless it’s part of a project and when police question you in lawful and reasonable suspicion of a crime, you can’t be illusive with your responses and expect a good outcome.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s not even science. It’s common sense.

PS: the answer to the above image is below. This is the “clock” in question:

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, everything I said was right and more. Much much more. In fact, this whole thing now appears to be a complete hoax, intentionally devised to illicit exactly the kind of knee-jerk hippie confirmation bias that it succeeded in stirring among the dummies I called out. Some major additions to the story:

1- While the public was lead to believe that Ahmed was some kind of science enthusiast wiz-kid building robots on his own only to be unfairly oppressed, he evidently just popped open the casing of a cheap nightstand style digital clock and put the guts of it in a supplies case (explained here and re-created below):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bnhqqVDdF4

2- Ahmed admitted that he knew the device looked suspiciously dangerous:

“I closed it with a cable, so… because, I didn’t want to lock it to make it seem like a threat so I just used simple cable…. so it won’t look that much suspicious”.

This was obviously a screw-up that gave away his intent because to a 14 year old it sounds like a good defense to argue that you were trying to do exactly the opposite of what you’re being accused of, when in reality, no one actually thinks that a closed pencil case looks like a “suspicious threat”, adding a cable to the case makes it look more-not-less suspicious, and of course leaving it unlocked for people to discover unlabeled electronic wiring inside said suspicious looking cabled case is not at all the assistance to tamping down threatening appearance like he claimed. Kindov destroys the whole “racism” argument that the bomb connection was only made because of his name and religious/ethnic background when the kid himself agreed with the premise of how the device appears.

3- No one freaked out about the watch until started beeping in class, leading to the discovery of the wired contraption Ahmed admitted looked like a suspicious threat. Even though the teacher he showed the clock to instructed him to keep it under wraps for exactly the reason of it’s threatening appearance, Ahmed admitted to plugging the clock in the classroom (presumably so the timer would go off), which lead to the whole bomb investigation. 

4- Turns out that his family has a history of this kind of victim-attention-grabbing stunt-doing and they used their kid. Ahmeds dadMohamed Elhassan Mohamed ran for President of Sudan (run by a dictatorship so i’m not sure what that’s all about) twice and participated in a media stunt against the Koran by serving as it’s public defender on trial for it to be burned.

So what did we learn? Repeat after me, class: “Never believe dumb-hippie talking point memes without further investigation or use of basic common sense”.

Dumb people think that “Jews” is a swear word or something

Leave it to dumb hippies and the people they’ve brainwashed to turn a conservative woman’s criticism of Republicans into something anti-Jewish.

Ann Coulter correctly pointed out that the CNN Republican primary debate at the Reagan Library exhibited way too much time wasted pandering to the 70% of Americans who support Israel, as Coulter does. I made the same observation in especially the following moment Ann articulated in this tweet:

She followed that observation up with the question it begs:

I chuckled when someone told me of this tweet and agreed with the sentiment only to find out the next day that I was allegedly supporting some kind of hateful anti-semitism. Huh? Even disregarding that Coulter agrees with the candidates in their support for Israel – How could making a statement about time-allocation on debate issues be hateful? Not how *is* it, but how *could* it even? This is nuts, I thought to myself. More dumb hippies just looking for excuses to try and smear people they disagree with. But then I heard other Israel supporters I respect, like Michael Medved and Dennis Prager, both criticize the Tweet as horrible and I was further confused. I still am, as I continue to try and see the critical perspective by replacing the components with other issues or demographics. Take any issue that under 10% of the population cares passionately about while over 70% of the population supports and over 80% of Republicans support – and how can one justify such repeated and blatant pandering to that issue over and over even in contexts that have nothing to do with it?

Evidently its the phrase “f—ing Jews” that is what dense people claim makes this comment ugly – but why?

What if the candidates constantly pandered to Lutherans or stock traders in every other debate answer, whether Lutheranism or the stock market was even mentioned?

“How many f—ing Lutherans do these people think there are in the United States?”
“How many f—ing Stock Brokers do these people think there are in the United States?”

Offensive and hateful towards Lutherans and stock brokers? How could anyone possibly conclude anything near such a thing?

The only possible explanation is hypersensitivity brainwash + ignorance along the same lines as people being offended by the phrase “God damn it” because they think it damns God and thus is a disrespect to their Creator when it is clearly a call for God to do the damning upon something if you’d just take 2 seconds to think critically and use 2nd Grade English skills to deconstruct the phrase. Likewise, I assume people just hear “f—-ing Jews” and have a Pavlovian response to some kind of hate.

How sad that it’s come to this.

Woman Driver steps out onto road, casually strolls while still-moving car glides into oncoming traffic

Driving in souther California is annoying because of the traffic, bad drivers, and illegal immigrants populating the roads as it is but it’s an extra annoying day when people just slow down and exit their still running car, leaving it to continue rolling down the road and over the divider and into the oncoming traffic lanes, hitting several cars in the process. What in the actual balls, SoCal?

The only thing better than the fact that this was captured on video by a dashcam is the haunting foreign language serenade underscoring this bizarre event as it unfolds in real time.

Notice that the woman isn’t running in distress or to the side of the road at all… When she exits she casually continues walking the direction her now driverless vehicle is continuing. Betch needs one of those treadmill keys that cuts the power if you fall off or a surfboard tether or SOMEthing.

No information on why the eff she did this.

The driver of the Hyundai was identified as 22-year-old Jasmine Lacey. She was taken to a hospital for “a non injury-related reason,” according to the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Lacey was never charged with a crime. The drivers of the two SUVs suffered minor injuries.

The only theories I can come up with that make sense to me are 1- the obvious “on drugs, or suffering from other mental incapacitating ailment” (in which case I guess we need to fight the auto-unions with the same diligence as those do when going after the NRA when drugged or mentally sick people gain access to firearms and do horrible things with them) or 2- she was in a captive situation and assigned a task that would put her deeper in the hole of an already shady situation (like a drug run or some other forced errand) and “getting into a car accident” was a non-“calling the police” way to get law enforcement involved in her plight. In that case – she shouldn’t have endangered other peoples lives and made sure the car was pointing toward something stationary without humans around before pulling the stunt.

What’s your theory?…

Tip: Buy Disney

I’ve never written a stock tip post before but I feel like I’m observing what seems to be obvious to me and yet Googling all the main points in the article yielded zero results. So, while I have to warn you that I could not find Forbes, MarketWatch, the Wall Street Journal, the New York times – or anyone else to make these recommendations and then cite them as the source – I will reveal why me as my own source is making these claims…

From September 2015 (the time of this writing) for at least a year, Walt Disney Company stock is going to be a good bet, says I.

1- FRANCHISING BOOM (alternative title: FRANCH & MERCH)

The studio excels at 2 things that they’re doing more and more of: Franchise Building and merchandising. Since the 1950s, Disney has been Boss at extending their intellectual property as far as it will stretch and plastering it all over any physical products that could possibly be conceived of.

Especially recently, the company has been franchising in a way I am seeking to emulate in my own productions. No one does franchising better than Disney. They milk characters and storylines into movie, television, sequel, and product gold on a level akin to printing their own currency. This makes the company a great long term play for its existing properties but a quintuple or more of a good bet for the following reasons –

2- GROWTH:

The previous 5 years especially has shown huge growth and while that doesn’t necessarily mean future growth (as shown above) for most entertainment companies, I will explain why I think Disney is a major exception

 

3- MARVEL:

Disney bought Marvel a few years ago and it has been pumping out movies that have been fan and critic hits with no sign of stopping as they keep increasing their cinematic universe with more films. An excellent example of the Marvel longevity is that this years Ant-Man movie – hardly one that is even on the radar of most movie goers – is set to earn almost half a billion worldwide. Upcoming in the franchise is a super fan-favorite storyline to be covered in “Captain America, Civil War” (the 3rd Cap movie), and a 2-parter Avengers 3 & 4. They will be huge hits at the box office and spawn tons of profitable merchandise and media offshoots.

 

4- STAR WARS:

Disney bought Star Wars several years ago as well for a few billion and they will certainly earn that back probably with just their first movie. There is no possible way that the new Star Wars movie, “The Force Awakens” will not be record-breakingly huge. It has even more curiosity among the hundreds of millions of people familiar with the franchise than the previous set of movies had and far more good will from the fans and is going to make box office billions worldwide. It is released in December but again, it’s all about the franchise: Star Wars merchandise, themepark attractions (With a new “star wars land” being added to Disneyland & Disneyworld Themeparks) and a planned new Star Wars movie to be released almost every year after this one – the franchise is going to rocket beyond it’s already firm position in its field.

If you are skeptical of this, then you need to go back and re-read what I said about Ant-Man… *ANT-MAN* for Christ sake. Star Wars is going to slay. Watch…

 

5- ATTRACTIONS:

The Shanghai Disneyland park opens in 2016 and will include full theme park, hotel and resort attractions that Disney excels at. It will not be a failure.

6-BONUS REASON: NOW IS THE TIME TO BUY!:

DIS stock is down over 16% in the past 2 months evidently because of problems with it’s ESPN property and concern over cord cutters but that nonsense is a short term problem and ESPN is in no long term danger of losing its dominance in the field of live sports or sports television in general. That aspect will soon correct itself and the stock price will at minimum return to highs seen earlier in the year and as I explained above, much more according to my forecasting.

At the time of this writing, I am buying stock in Disney at $100 a share. The companys high-point of this year was $120. So you tell me… Do you think, given the stuff I listed above, that Disney will under any circumstances possibly NOT reach that high point again in the coming year?…

I think it will far surpass it, given the above, so I’m betting big on Disney and urging others to do the same for these reasons.

Finally, someone gets electronics storing travel clothes right

I’ve been underwhelmed with similar “pockets for your electronics” clothes items that think they’re amazingly clever for including basic additions to normal fashion that would have been cool at the turn of the millennium but 10+ years later are yawn-worthy. Like – oh, you have a blazer with an oversized pocket to put an iPad in? okay I guess. A hoodie with a cloth tunnel to feed your earbuds wire through? eh… not really interested.

Finally it appears that someone has assembled all the right nooks and cubbies into normal looking neutrally stylish clothes.

The crowdfunded campaign on Kickstarter sought $20,000 and currently have almost $8 Million in pre-ordered sales so I’m not the only one who thinks they did something right.

From a marketing perspective, the campaign does what I have been saying needs to be done for utility clothing items like this and that is to bill them as utility items with demonstrations. Too often these types of products try to be stylish first and “look how you can fit stuff in it” second. That’s lame. People will buy a hoodie with a million secret compartments for the million-secret-compartments and then it looking and functioning nice will be secondary – not the reverse scenario where a new non-label hoodie is in need and “oh look, it has unconventional pockets…”. Billing itself for travel is key to the success. Travel makes us feel helpless, unprepared, and cumbersome in our availability of stuff we want on our person. I have a somewhat similar product design going through a review process currently making a similar utility appeal. These things have a subconscious super hero feel to them: sit in comfort with your built-in neck pillow reverse airbag, lower your eye-mask like Iron Mans face plate, whip out your drink from your Batman utility pocket, and pop in your ear buds from within your Captain America helmet. The video does a great job of showing off ease and function in an “always be prepared” style of Awesome.

I laughed out loud at that zipper pen stylus scene tho…

“looking for one of these?… *gets laid immediately*”

It also looks like this kind of techno dance music is the go-to score for crowd funded tech. It’s fun and gets you excited by strategically rolling out the features at a linear pace that tells a story and reels you in with the perfect “but wait, theres MORE” info-mercial tactics. The Lily cam I bought (see: pre-ordered) a few months ago hooked me with the same hypnotizing must-havezes.

5 Reasons a Biden vs Romney 2016 Election is the best matchup for both sides

As I’ve said before, I like Joe Biden and would like him to run for President.

But, in the interest of fair disclosure: I also would like Joe to run because I want Mitt Romney to run and a Biden vs Romney election would give me peace about the country since both men pass the authenticity and decency tests I filter political picks through.

Non-dangerous candidates running against each other with mostly the same end-goals who just differ on policies arriving at those goals takes the terror out of the election but I like the matchup as a matter of interest in the news as well since it levels the star-power playing field, forcing a discussion on actual substance.

Substance hasn’t been at issue in national elections for decades. 2008’s McCain vs Obama was all about the star power of Obama and McCains VP pick Sarah Palin for their “first” status and rockstar appeal and Obama vs Romney similarly focused the race the perceived personalities of the two candidates instead of Obamas record and Romneys ideology.

Romney vs Biden is a race between two rich white guys in their 70s.
Biden – a career politician whose first run for the presidency was in the 80s, then again in the 2007 Democrat primary Barack Obama won and current sitting Vice President at the time of the election
vs
Romney – a private sector businessman who has been flirting with politics since the 90s, having unsuccessfully run against Ted Kennedy for senate and later serving 1 term as Governor of Massachusetts, running for president in the 2007 primary and again in 2012, becoming the Presidential nominee but losing to the Obama/Biden ticket.

This match-up creates a dynamic where issues and ideology can take the spotlight in place of the identity-politics of the previous examples. It also raises several interesting points…

 


1-  IT’S THE REMATCH AMERICA DESERVES

Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, and Republican Mitt Romney all ran for president in 2008 and failed to get their parties nomination for the race that elected Barack Obama to the presidency.

A Hillary Clinton vs Mitt Romney race would mean 2 candidates who both ran directly against Barack Obama (Clinton in 08, Romney in ’12) and lost so it’s more of a story about candidates getting another bite at the apple (Hillary to win the nomination and Romney to win the presidency after the nomination). While Hillary served for 1 term in the Obama administration as secretary of state and thus would not only put on electoral trial the administration of her husband but also that of Obama’s, her lack of any actual life accomplishments or significant role in history other than “being around men making history” is a problem.

There is a better matchup…

Joe Biden vs Mitt Romney would be a rematch of the Obama Administration vs a potential Romney administration. This is a much more interesting divide than “Republican ideals of smaller government vs ‘first woman president'”.

Barack Obama was the first president to win reelection with less states and less votes than he was initially elected into office with and he largely won through demonizing his opponent and sliding by unchallenged by a sympathetic media to some majorly false promises, predictions, and attacks. America deserves to revisit these attacks straight against the VP of an administration that scored debate points on things like “the sequester will not happen” (it did, after Obamas reelection), or that Romney’s regard of Russia as a geopolitical foe was ridiculous “cold war (ie: backwards/outdated)” thinking only to then, after safely being re-elected, have to face Russia as – oops – a geopolitical foe in a list of troublesome ways.

Not that anyone besides insiders and nerds like me even remember any of those moments today and are hungry for a straightening of the public record – but rather because everyone following the election remembered them at the time and then forgot them. That’s kindov cheating, don’t you think? When you get positive buzz that translates to more support which translates to more votes that translate to a victory and then later the roots of it all not only turn out to be false but turn out to reveal that your opponent was right… that’s some shady ass sh*t, bruh. A Romney vs Obamas-2nd-in-command race would force some record setting and give the VP an opportunity to defend his boss and party’s terrible judgement and let the people decide.

Advantage: Romney

 

2- IT’S A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

For the Democrats, a Romney nomination kills the starpower momentum on the Republican side. At the time of this writing, the top Republican primary candidates are Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, and Marco Rubio. In the same order: A celebrity billionaire, a black neurosurgeon, a former tech CEO, and a 1 term cuban-American senator from Florida. In any of those matchups except Trump (whom everyone knows will not be the nominee), the Democrats are at a “personal story” disadvantage because all of those top contenders are non-career politicians and have compelling personal stories while the Democrats current top candidates – Hillary Clinton and the as-yet-undeclared Vice President Biden are both life long politicians, gray haired and white as mountain snow.

Hillary faces a disadvantage among all of those candidates because they are all fresh faces with earnestness in their character while Hillary is an old face (politically) with the words “dishonest’ and “liar” most commonly associated with her and her “first woman president” story is undermined by Rubio being Cuban-American, and Carsons “first black president” credential (succeeding the nations first half-black/darker skinned president, Barack Obama).

All that makes Biden a better choice since the choice would be between 2 lifetime politician older white candidates – better to go with the one with actual accomplishments in his record and who has authenticity and honesty attached to his name than an accomplishment-less candidate thought to be serially dishonest.

For the Republicans, however, those names I mentioned win the scorecard on personal story and fresh face charisma, but lose on experience, which can be easily exploited by a Biden campaign. Their solution ought to be to run one of those candidates or one like them as their Vice Presidential nominee and one most-like them but without their baggage in their top slot. The only option that ticks all those boxes is one Mitt Romney. A candidate who has already been vetted, is popular among donors, is not a career politician, and is a good debater.

Advantage: Biden

 

3- BOTH MEN WOULD SURELY PICK NON-WHITE MALE RUNNING MATES

It would be both mens 3rd run at the Presidency and I highly suspect both would choose non-white-male running mates which would be great for political engagement and general dialog.

Advantage: Draw

 

4- IT IS BOTH MENS LAST CHANCE AT THIS WHOLE ‘PRESIDENT’ THING

They are both too old and have gone around the block too many times. 2 runs for president is generally the maximum. Reagan and Nixon are the only ones to successfully run 3 times and only Nixon ran as the losing nominee (to JFK), coming back to run again and win the nomination and the presidency years later. For both Romney and Biden, this is their back to back #3. Biden is still living on the White House grounds, for gosh sake, and Romney was the GOP nominee for the last election that Biden won his VP reelection in. They’re both too old to ever make their 3rd try after 2016. This is it. Both men want the job. Both men have tried for it. Both men have this one and only last chance bid for the position… That’s exciting. That’s a story. That’s some Reality Show level stakes. And frankly, both men deserve to make their case on why they should lead this country before its too late.

Advantage: Draw
5- IT WOULD “END” ARGUMENTS ON BOTH SIDES

End is of course in quotations because obviously no political argument ever truly “ends” regardless of the amount of facts involved. But for all intents and purposes, both sides would be able to make various claims about a victory in this unique matchup alone that don’t work for other match-ups.

Democrats – Think that Romney really is the evil corporate uncaring monster the Obama 2012 campaign claimed? Lets see if America still thinks so…

Republicans – Think the Obama administration really is an America ruining pestilence across the land that the American people were bamboozled into? Lets put its VP up for the job and see if America really thinks so…

The victor of these divides come with more than a victorious election, but with a history proving set of “see I told you so”s under their belt that raises the stakes for both sides.

Advantage: Draw

 

But whatever – that aspect of this isn’t important. The thesis here is that Joe Biden is presidential material, a mountain among midgets, and deserves a national spotlight as a nominee for the nations highest office. Mitt Romney, likewise, was the best nominee either party has seen in decades and got cheated out of a victory he objectively deserved by metrics regarding the ideology of the electorate and the number of key campaign arguments the winning side made that later turned out to be false.

This is the matchup that America may not want or care for, but it’s the race the country needs and deserves.