"The Progress and Regress Pokémon are a set of custom Pokémon that I have designed to bridge RationalWiki with the Pokémon fandom, promoting the values that RationalWiki stands for and rebuking the chicanery that RationalWiki opposes." -luigifan18

I. RationalWiki

RationalWiki is the libtarded version of Conservapedia, which is the conservatarded version of Wikipedia, which is libtarded^[1][2][3]. Here's a represenative sample of their articles:

• GoDaddy - Apparently goDaddy is a hitler nazi klan organization now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

• Mall ninjas - In this brave new retelling YOU are the soyboy fedora tipper, and they are the unbothered gigachad calmly explaining the importance of common sense gun control.

• Alt-Right glossery - 280 entries long

• Wingnut welfare - Wingnut welfare is when a right-wing journ*list gets paid. Note that 100% of left-leaning journ*lists are good faith truth spreaders who do it out of love for humanity.

• Encyclopædia Dramatica - Direct assault on our forefathers

Encyclopædia Dramatica (ED) is an extremely hateful troll wiki whose stated mission is to document Internet culture, memes and "drama" for the lulz. It is also happy to document everything the userbase thinks is wrong with the Internet, but proudly does so in a style that exemplifies the very things wrong with the Internet. Unsurprisingly, it is filled with homophobic, racist, misogynistic, transphobic/enbyphobic and (perhaps most infamously of all) antisemitic content.

II. Pokémon - Progress & Regress

In this rom there are progress and regress pokemon. Each pokemon easily defeats one pokemon from the other side, and is easily defeated by another pokemon of the other side.

Here's 12 of the 23 pokemon, featuring consept "art" by me

Note: Every pokemon has types, abilities, a name origin, far too detailed move stats, and up to of 4 different theme songs (most of which are from the band Disturbed). Read some of it urself

Thread theme (Azureality's theme)

III. RationalWiki, discuss

EDIT 3: ISEF removed him from the winner's page and are revoking the 50k! Will they make any changes for next year? No one knows!

EDIT 2: His lab at USC has removed him from the lab members page

EDIT: Nice job r-slurs, you made him take his Linkedin account down.

This is starting to be picked up by the small chuddie internet personalities, so get in while it's still hot! Here's the summary. Very long so buckle up kids :

• Regeneron ISEF is this big science fair for high school nerds that's been around since the 1950s. It's considered the most prestigious science fair for high schoolers and 80+ countries participate. Winners usually get an all-expense paid trip & stay & activities (like a Universal Studios day etc) at the location which rotates every year (this year was in California). Not only is it but there's money involved! The top winner gets $75k (life changing money for poor countries like UK) and the 2 runner ups get 50k. Plus lots of special awards, prizes, etc. And the top winners are basically guaranteed to get into Harvard/MIT/Stanford.

• To get to ISEF in the US, you have to win your local state fair and get nominated to ISEF, so its pretty selective. You undergo several rounds of judging locally and then a day of judging at the ISEF itself. Judges are supposed to at minimum have a PhD or 6 years of experience in whatever category they are judging.

ruh-roh

• This year the 50k winner is this 17 yr old kid who did his project on "machine-learning research to identify microbial genetic sequences that can be modified to biodegrade plastic." Besides saving the world, he is apparently a neuroscience research fellow at USC. His dad is a wealthy Silicon Valley VC dude from India, and his older sister goes to USC studying quantitative bio

• Note that his category is "Environmental Engineering" and the competition was hosted in California this year.

• A few days after winning, a mysterious, anonymous document began to circulate in the ISEF community claiming Pai fabricated most of his project. The letter asks ISEF to investigate & fix their system for the future. Even I got sent this document from a friend, despite being a winner like 15 years ago. The document is 36 pages long and very detailed. It's worth skimming through because of how hilarious & obvious this fraud was: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e4vjzp6JgClCFXkbNOweXZnoRnGWcM6vHeglDH1DmGM/edit It regularly has 50-100 people looking at it at all times of the day.

  

• • TLDR: very obvious and extensive fraud. Kid took images of research done, mirrored them and claimed them as his own. Said he invented a rasberry pi based device and had pics of it, was invented by someone else 3 years ago and this kid just used those pics (didn't even re-make the device!). All his data is extremely sketch, some results are straight up impossible, & numbers pulled out of butt. On top of the fraud, the kid is a complete dumbass. Spelling errors everywhere, he doesn't understand basic concepts of ML/AI, and he stole half his project from the ISEF winner 3 years ago. No idea how ISEF let this through...

• At some point, a few reddit posts were made, the biggest one on /r/ApplyingToCollege. Ofc, the kid got absolutely blasted in the comments as the evidence is pretty much darning. Many parents chimed in saying they were pissed (understandably) bc their little einstein worked so hard and got fricked. Being Reddit, it is likely that this is when the Open Letter started getting sent to internet personalities, schools' admissions offices, Society4Science, the kid's school in California, etc

Reddit link (note 50% deleted, we'll get to that in a bit):

Archive (couldn't find one that had the original post, if you find it, let me know and I'll update): https://undelete.pullpush.io/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/

• A few hours after the original reddit post, a post from a "friend" of the ISEF kid was also posted in /r/A2C. It's honestly too hilarious to summarize appropriately. Let's just say, this "friend" sounds a lot like a mad sexy Indian dude parent

Deleted post: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/

Web Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20240520162210/https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cwhf7k/accused_of_chaeting_at_major_science_fair/?rdt=50206

Notice the spelling errors, probably just a coincidence that our accused finalist also made several spelling errors in his $55k winning project

• Of course, a popular post should NEVER be allowed to stay up so our A2C jannies got straight to work and deleted the original post as well as this one, banned several accounts, deleted comments, etc. Oh you expected the jannies to explain why they deleted it? you're not entitled to other people's labor, chud: https://old.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/1cw3vgc/winner_of_regeneron_young_scientist_award_50k/

• On the sidelines, lots of drama is happening in various Groomercords associated w/ college admissions & ISEF. As I am not a , I have not joined them and don't know the details. But I have heard from my younger siblings' friends that a bunch of kids from Pai's school (CCA a bougie San Diego school with enough resources to literally have a lab at their school) "raided" a server (aka spammed the shit out of it) making fun of the kid/enjoyed being the center of attention.

• Other Reddit posts on smaller subs are also gaining traction: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/1cwpfcg/biggest_high_school_science_fair_had_academic/

  

• Now if this was just a Reddit story, eh whatever. But never underestimate the ability of a to find random stories that fit their narrative https://www.karlstack.com/p/exclusive-scandal-at-americas-top

• On top of this reporting, it began blowing up on Twitter (blowing up being relative to how much a children's science fair can be expected to blow up). Several huge accounts (100k+ followers) chimed in and Twitter commenters began showing off their r-slurredness as usual and creating some tasty drama.

(see screenshots in comment)

• The lab the kid worked at had originally made a post celebrating, but started getting mean comments and have since deleted it. https://x.com/WallySeldom/status/1792656953421992082

• Don't forget: ISEF is a global competition. So our BING CHILLING friends also started talking about it.

https://bbs.wenxuecity.com/znjy/6853039.html

https://huaren.us/showtopic.html?topicid=3018297

(See comments for screenshots)

• So, what has Society For Science and Regeneron ISEF done now that everyone knows & this is getting public attention? Disabled their YouTube comments of course!

• Ok, just kidding, they also apparently sent out an email to all Fair Directors (people who run the local fairs) saying they are "investigating" idk, from looking at the Open Letter document, seems like some kids did all the investigating for you dumbasses. And this isn't soft plagiarism/exaggerating, this is the kind of shit that gets your paper retracted as a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute tenured professor, so not sure what's left to investigate.

• What happens next? You decide! Some are worried that this kid might kill himself (seems unlikely given that he still has his socials up, posted about it on Linkedin, his family members and him are full denying that he cheated, etc). Some say frick dem kids and want him/his parents to go to jail. It seems the only way this can escalate further is if it makes it into the national news (any chuds want to send an anonymous tip to InfoWars ). I'll conclude with a quote from the kid himself, as these were his candid thoughts after winning $55k for a fraudulent project. You may think that he would be thankful, excited to see how his research will be implemented, wants to keep working on plastic waste research- you'd be wrong!

I'm looking forward to my future and how this ISEF award can really help me out

Wow, regardless of what happens, I too am excited to see this kid's future: he clearly has already mastered the art of research in 2024 and is well on his way to academia! Best of luck little

Also I have more screenshots but I hit the upload limit. Fricking

I previously wrote about the history of psychedelic literature in Europe. I thought I'd round it out by briefly discussing American psychedelic literature. Hope you enjoy it.

In the Beginning....

According to Michael Boon, Silas Wier Mitchell is considered one of the earliest Western writers to describe mescaline. This claim is also made by McKenna, who argues that “in 1897 Philadelphia novelist and physician Silas Weir Mitchell became the first gringo to describe peyote intoxication”. As McKenna points out in more informal terms, Mitchell was an American writer and physician, and he is partially known for prescribing the rest treatment to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who would later write of it in The Yellow Wallpaper.

In 1896, Mitchell wrote an essay describing his experiences with peyote. In the essay, he describes hallucinations that gave him a sense of profundity and includes imagery of nature and the universe that evokes the transcendent. Colour is a recurring theme in his report. When he closed his eyes, he saw huge, fruit-like stones that were “green, purple, red, and orange; never clear yellow and never blue”. He acknowledges his inability to describe the intensity of these “gorgeous colour-fruits” and claims that all the colours he had seen before were “dull as compared to these”. Much of the imagery he sees is related to nature and is described in ways that are fantastical and imaginative. He mentions hallucinations of “soft golden clouds” and “things, like green birds”.

Not all the imagery described is natural. He also hallucinates manmade structures that evoke death and the divine. This appears in the form of an ancient Egyptian tomb that he sees. Themes of death introduced by the tomb are amplified by the “funerary orations” he hears, and the themes of the divine are further highlighted by the “priests in ornate headdress” that circumambulate the tomb. His senses and his perception of reality are also affected by his ingestion of peyote. He describes seeing a huge bird claw of stone from which hung a fragment of a substance that seemed to represent “Time as well as [the] immensity of Space”.

According to Boon, Mitchell's writing represents “one of the first explorations of visual abstraction in modern culture”. However, Mitchell's writing is not entirely novel and features literary elements that are common within European psychedelic literature. For example, he makes liberal use of colour in much the same way that Hoffmann and Benjamin do. Furthermore, Mitchell's writing also evokes the divine, a Romantic element, much like the European poet Gautier does. Lastly, Mitchell's psychedelic writing features death. As previously discussed, European writers such as Hoffman and Jünger also feature death in their psychedelic writing, using the concept to symbolise a “Great Transition” as Jünger describes it. Similarly, the death theme occurs to Mitchell as he transitions to a state of altered consciousness where contradictions and surrealism blend with familiar elements of his life. He is whisked away from his old life and sees himself reincarnated as a “fur-capped Mongol huntsman, cold-eyed and cruel, bow in hand, striking down a running rabbit from the back of a racing, gaunt half-wild stallion”.

From comparing Mitchell to the aforementioned European writers, recurring patterns regarding the use of the death and rebirth theme becomes apparent. For psychedelic writers, death is symbolic of a psychological transition that leads to rebirth. However, at the time in which Mitchell writes, this concept has yet to be fleshed out from a psychoanalytical perspective. As American psychedelic writers are further explored, the recurring theme of death and rebirth being used symbolically to represent psychological transition will become more ubiquitous and defined as psychedelics become an unignorable issue within politics, art, science, and other sectors of civil life.

Cannabis

Although mescaline is strongly associated with American psychedelic literature, several other psychedelics are also significant influences. Cannabis, for instance, makes multiple appearances in American psychedelic literature. While it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how cannabis was introduced to North America, Suman Chandra et al argue that evidence points to the fact that “Louis Hébert (1575–1627), the apothecary (pharmacist) of Samuel de Champlain (1580–1635), a French navigator, cartographer, and explorer, introduced cannabis to American settlers in 1606”. Originally, the cannabis plant was used to produce hemp, which can be used to make a wide variety of resources including textiles, rope, and paper to name a few. However, between 1840 and 1900, cannabis was used for medicinal purposes in North America and was administered to cure ailments such as “tetanus, epilepsy, rheumatism, rabies, and as a muscle relaxant”. For some time, cannabis-infused medicine was freely sold in North American pharmacies, but this would not last for long.

Boon claims that the “first American writer to report on his own experiences with cannabis was the travel writer and diplomat Bayard Taylor” who writes about it in his text titled The Lands of Saracen (1855). Cannabis was not always tolerated in the USA and, as Boon notes, the end of the nineteenth century brought with it “a wave of paranoia about the drug”. Consequently, “a number of anti-cannabis laws were passed in at the state level in the early twentieth century”. Boon argues that these laws were motivated by fears of Mexican immigrants and blacks committing crimes under the influence of cannabis. A large influence in the criminalisation of cannabis was Harry Anslinger, the commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, who referenced the assumed link between the words ‘hashish' and ‘assassin' to argue for a link between cannabis and crime and largely ignored scientific work on the drug. As previously discussed, this etymological link is likely false. Nevertheless, he played a role in the “passing of the 1937 law against cannabis products”.

One of the ways that cannabis gained popularity in the USA was through its association with music, namely jazz. As Boon notes, “marijuana was used in black communities, especially in New Orleans, where it was associated with the jazz culture of the brothels”. Furthermore, by “the 1930s, there were a number of jazz songs about marijuana”. The love of cannabis did not stay in New Orleans, however. In Harlem, there emerged ‘tea-pads' where “people went to get high and listen to a record player, or jukebox”. Because of this association of jazz with cannabis, “one of the narcotics bureau's first targets was jazz musicians”.

LSD

LSD is another psychedelic drug that plays a prominent role in American psychedelic literature. It had as much, if not more, of a social impact in the USA as it had in Europe. In the 1950s and 1960s, LSD gained popularity among therapists and psychologists in the USA. Therapists claimed that when low doses of LSD were administered to their patients, “their patients' Ego defences relaxed, allowing them to bring up and discuss difficult or repressed material with relative ease”. By the end of the 1960s, “psychoanalytic LSD therapy was routine practice in the tonier precincts of Los Angeles, such as Beverly Hills”, and received plenty of positive attention.

With the increasing popularity of psychedelics in the USA came charismatic figures who associated themselves with these substances. Al Hubbard is one of those figures, and he occupies a prominent position in the history of psychedelics. Hubbard was born in Kansas and, although it is difficult to confirm many facts about his life, “his FBI file suggests he had links to the CIA during the 1950s”. In 1952, he “obtained some LSD, and had a literally life-changing experience”. Following this event, he developed a messianic complex, believing that “it was up to him to bring the new gospel of LSD, and the chemical itself, to as many people as he possibly could”. Using his government connections, he was able to acquire copious amounts of LSD from Sandoz and it is believed that he introduced an estimated “six thousand people to LSD between 1951 and 1966, in an avowed effort to shift the course of human history”.

He developed a form of psychedelic therapy that took patients out of the clinical settings of hospitals and instead put them in more comfortable locations with “pictures and music, flowers and diamonds”, to prime “patients for a mystical revelation”. Changing the setting has the potential to alter how an individual experiences a psychedelic session because, as Grof explains, “people in LSD psychotherapy often manifest seemingly inappropriate and highly exaggerated reactions to various environmental stimuli”. Hence, “it makes a great difference whether the session takes place in a busy laboratory milieu, in a comfortable homelike environment, in a sterile medical setting with white coats and syringes, or in a place of great natural beauty”.

Shamans

Pollan argues that Hubbard understood that the cognitive disruptions brought on by psychedelics could be effective for “breaking destructive patterns of thought and proposing new perspectives in their place”, hence his “greatest contribution to modern psychedelic therapy was to introduce the tried-and-true cowtools of shamanism, or at least a Westernized version of it”. Broadly defined, shamans are figures who “enter trance to provide services”, usually of a spiritual nature. Some definitions include restrictive criteria, such as requiring the practitioner to make use of “death-and-rebirth initiations, soul journey trances, and animal helper spirits”. The trance the shaman enters “represents a temporary state that appears psychologically”, and associated behaviours during trance include, but are not limited to, “trembling, shuddering, horripilation, swooning, falling to the ground, yawning, lethargy, convulsions, foaming at the mouth, protruding eyes, large extrusions of the tongue, paralysis of a limb, [etc.]”. The cultural narratives of the society of the shaman will determine how the trance is interpreted. For example, as Singh explains, some cultures might frame the trance state as spirit possession, soul journeying, or a combination of these and many other possibilities. Typically, an individual must undergo an initiation to become a shaman. Initiations usually involve rituals that feature “death and rebirth, ritual surgery, magical surgery of body parts”, or dramatic experiences.

Despite the scepticism the lens of Western rationality exercises over shamanism, the concept gained a foothold within America's psychedelic culture. This is partially due to the aforementioned North American tribes who had incorporated psychedelic plants into shamanic rituals for many years. However, figures such as Hubbard were also pivotal in expanding the school of thought which viewed psychedelics in a manner that shamans would – as cowtools to evoke emotional and psychological change for one's betterment.

Conclusion

America has a long history of psychedelic literature that continues with figures such as Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Terrence McKenna. However, they deserve posts of their own. Tune in next time when I delve into the Beat Generation. Writing = no cutting.

Wyatt, 23, Kansas City Missouri

Career:

• "So I do Private Security, basically people pay me to fight for 'em" timestamp

• "I just fight hobos or I just watch people and call the cops"

• 40 to 45 hours a week depending, $20.60 an hour

  • "So I make about 70 to 80 thousand a year" timestamp

    • VA bucks from a medical thing - $3'758 a month

    • Doesn't want to give deets on what these are

• Works overnights

• Served in the military timestamp

• Job deets timestamp

  • Bring your own equipment policies?

  • Didn't know what the median income was, thought he was making big bucks

Financials/Personal Life

• Does not like to cook, something about his schedule

  • Why does he not just wake up and get groceries timestamp

    • "I don't really want to do it, sleep's important to me. I'd rather sleep."

• Self-scored 7/10 financial score

• Owns a house and car

  • VA home loan thing

• So how'd you get into so much debt in the first place timestamp

  • Got addicted to strippers, was blowing 80%-90% of his income on them while enlisted?

    • Refuses to admit if he had s*x with them doesn't want to catch a felony

    • Claims he stopped 3 or 4 years ago. Story time on why - timestamp

      • He lost his military id and "starved for 2 weeks" because he'd blown all his money on strippers and had none

  • Caleb claims not to be a virgin

  • Way easier to pay for fake attention than to approach real women

  • Went into debt "Yeah so I had a credit card"

    • $8'000

  • Paid off this stripper debt at some point

• Credit Card 1 (Navy Federal) ($7'092/$7'500) timestamp

  • $380 new purchases last month

  • $105 interest

  • 175 minimum payment

  • "So I don't really know what I purchase on that"

  • Thinking about leveraging on his home to pay off credit card debts?

  • "So usually I take the approach of stockpiling my cash, I really don't want to pay off my debts"

    • Tries to explain why he's spending so much timestamp

  • He's paypigging to twitchs timestamp

    • $120 in Twitch subs

    • $250 in Twitch donos

    • Claims to be a Sigma Male because he can just go to a strip club

    • "Three separate instances" "Crashes a streamer's UI with memberships"

      • Total $1500

      • Host attempts to understand what he is talking about timestamp

    • Meant to do this out of his checking account?

• Credit Card 2 (Amazon Chase) (3'756) timestamp

  • Computer parts, books,

  • "6600 Motherboard", some RAM,

    • Thinks he could get $800 for selling components

  • $16.11 new purchases

  • 112 paid off

  • 79.10 interest accrued

  • 116 minimum payments

• Car timestamp

  • 2018 Dodge Durango

  • $33'677 balance

  • 11% interest rate

  • $884 minimum payment

  • car is worth maybe 14'000

  • Purchased a BRZ, then wrecked it while closing the house and decided to purchase the house instead of fixing the car?

    • Got rear-ended, engine "self-destructed" after he got it back from the mechanic, he'd never changed the oil?

  • "Only vehicle that would hold that amount of negative equity on it so that was my only choice"

  • $2'000 of 'basic maintenance' last month timestamp

    • Brakes, tires

• Why did he want to buy the house timestamp

  • G*rmans brought bedbugs into his apartment

  • He was sleeping on the floor they were crawling on him

• Student Loan timestamp

  • "LentKey"

  • Went to college before getting the VA benefits?

  • Used GI Bill to help pay for living expenses

  • Quit going to college after 2 years

  • Studied Business Administration

  • 5'500 initially

  • $25 minimum payment

  • 6'700 owed

  • 10.39% interest

• Mortgage timestamp

  • 100'000 appraisal on the house

    • Thought it would be around 165'000

  • Would not be able to get a loan on it large enough to pay off debts

  • Put $1'000 of materials into it

    • Leaking roof, fire damage on the exterior, redid the sidewalk

  • Was getting fliers in the mail about leveraging his house reminds me of a thing

• What's your credit score? timestamp

  • Thinks it's 700

  • "So I can't take any more debt because I've reached my limit"

• Gets told to go through his own transaction history to mark all the stupid bullshit timestamp

  • It's all bullshit

  • He has never budgeted

  • holy shit he's paypigging so much

  • Crunchy roll

  • Steam games

  • Lots of vending machines, so much money to the vending machine

  • Pays for Quora

  • Pays for Grammarly

  • Pays to Groomercord, $100

  • Mobile games "tech tree"

    • Other mobile games ton of them

  • Paying for AI assistants because he likes to write in free time

    • AI helps with editing?

  • Plays EVE Online, $20 subscription

  • "VoiceMod" "I don't know what that is"

  • What does his daily routine look like timestamp

    • Beyond bleak.

• "So a friend of a friend I pay 300 for his number just to troll" timestamp

  • He calls up people to pretend to be tech support? I really didn't understand this. Don't people just use throwaway number services for this stuff for free?

Shots across the bow at Reddit

• Timestamp

INTRODUCTION:

Oscar was an afrikaans boy who had his legs amputated at the ripe young age of 11, because of some congenital birth defect, where his feet and lower legs were malformed, and missing bones. This obvious debilitation would have profound impact on his life, and as you can imagine the very absence of his lower legs would motivate him to aspire to overcome his disability.

He was born 22 November 1986, basically like me a "Skuldige" baby, or an Apartheid baby - somebody born before the end of the Union of SA, where we often joke that those born prior to Democratization still will have to carry the stain of their forefather's sins.

He was born in what was then known as the Transvaal province, now modern day Gauteng. From a very young age of 11-13 already he would start playing sports like tennis and water-polo. And even effing Rugby!

https://archive.ph/PM10N#selection-541.24-545.117

How did he manage to do so? With special fiber-glass legs.

https://www.wired.com/2007/03/blade/

Basically these peglegs worn on the knee-high stumps of the amputee, and fastened via strong bands or buckles, or even to the shorts. But instead of pegs, these are light and strong fiber-glass with spring and elasticity to an extent, so that the bows of these flipper like limps can extend and retract upon movement.

These fiber-glass legs had been experimented by various companies with various biomechanical designs, and had finally come to the optimal design of this weird boomerang shaped bow legs. They appeared to be the easiest to transit with for knee-amputees, but required extensive training, especially for those not born with their defect. It was said to be training to try and train oneself to ride two unicycles at once, but the mobilization it provided for people was worth it to many disabled amputees.

Of course many disabled peeps still preferred the traditional aluminum or fiber-glass peg legs, which had solid metal/plastic limbs and feet beneath them, and the Cheetah fiber-glass prototype didn't work well with overweight disabled people as you can imagine, as they needed the solid inflexible traditional metallic peg legs.

Of course the initial prototype for the Cheetah bow-shaped fiber-glass legs were imperfect and still in its development phase from its inception in the 1990s, but over time, when the 2000s were reached, they became more sophisticated and durable, and capable of enduring rigorous pressures of of not just everyday basic walking movement, but even hardcore sports!

Basically our boy Oscar would literally develop his teenage years in tandem with the invention of the Cheetah fiber-glass legs and similar products, and as they became more sophisticated and hardy, so did Oscar become more hardcore as an athlete and in his youngest years, to his manhood would become massively intimate with these artificial legs.

Oscar also had the "Advantage" of having lost his lower legs since birth, compared to other disabeld amputees who had to learn to use the fiber-glass legs from adulthood, and tended to be very clumsy and not nimble on them, even if not fat, whereas Oscar developed in his formative years without legs, and in tandem with the development of the fiber-glass legs in great intimacy!

Thus his Cheetah legs were to him an extension of self, rather than a hinderence!

RISING STAR:

https://www.paralympic.org/oscar-pistorius

Up until 2005, Oscar would rapidly rise throughout his childhood to his young adulthood, as a paraolympic champion Nationally, and eventually Internationally. Because of his unique condition, he basically far outshadowed other amputees and disabled peeps, and was basically the fastest man alive with a leg disability, in the Southern Hemisphere.

CONTROVERSY OVER BIOMEHCANICS OF PROSTHESES:

But our boy Oscar wasn't satisfied with just winning glory in the Paraolympics and soon began to apply to regular olympics, as he was basically functionally just as able-bodied as normal athletes with his spectacular fiber-glass legs. Judges couldn't do shit, so he ended upon qualified to compete on national sprints, and eventually came to wiping the floor against many athletes on the international stage

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oscar-Pistorius

Soon the sore-loser squad began to b-word and moan about being cucked by a filthy african and displayed their vile racism by insinuating that Oscar's very unique biomechanics of his fiber-glass feet gave him an unintentional advantage.

========

At an elite invitational competition in Rome in July 2007, Pistorius first competed internationally against nondisabled athletes, improving his best time in the 400 meters to 46.90 seconds. His impressive performances caught the attention of the international track-and-field governing body, which asked him to participate in a series of tests. The results indicated that Pistorius's high-tech prosthetic legs imparted an unfair advantage, enabling him to expend less energy than other athletes running at the same speed.

========

KRAUTS RUIN EVERYTHING:

It was believed that because of the absence of his lower legs and feet, he was physically lighter for the same bodytype, and that the construction of the sophisticated fiber-glass legs gave him an energy conservation advantage in the same vein as riding a bicycle instead of jogging. I was accused, and not without merit, that the biomechanics gave Oscar a weird window in which he conserved a great deal of energy over normal athletes unintentionally.

This gave way to an argument similarly as that of Biological Men competing in races with Biological Women, except people were relatively even split at the time over the validity of this argument, and that sports and olympics were inherently unequal in nature, and that freaks of nature tended to always win the prize anyway.

Opposition argued that though the peg-legs were needed for Oscar to compete, they were still unintentionally a cheating tool, and athletes are not allowed to enhance themselves via non-disclosed equipment.

https://www.sportcal.com/pressreleases/independent-scientific-study-concludes-that-cheetah-prosthetics-offer-clear-mechanical-advantages/

Some filthy Kraut (death to Krauts ) went full Hitler and made a scientific study in which he showcased how the unique biomechanics of Oscar's situation gave him a strong energy conservation advantage. Thus this filthy Kraut cucked a poor competing african!!!111

====(from article)

The IAAF has received the results of an independent scientific study carried out by Professor Peter Brüggemann at the German Sport University in Cologne. This study made a biomechanical and physiological analysis of long sprint running by a double transtibial amputee athlete Oscar Pistorius (RSA) using “cheetah” prosthetics, and also compared this athlete with five able-boded athletes who are capable of similar levels of performance at 400m.

The tests, which took place on Monday 12 and Tuesday 13 November in the Institute of Biomechanics and Orthopaedics, were initiated by the IAAF with the approval and participation of Oscar in order to see whether the prosthetics used by him should be considered as technical aids which give him an advantage over other athletes not using them, in contravention of IAAF competition rule 144.2

[Basically Long boring science-hippy words follow which showcases proof in favour of the Hypothesis that the biomechanics of Oscar's fiber-glass peglegs gave him a clear energy conservation aid]

IAAF Council as been able to review the full report and has decided that the prosthetic blades known as “cheetahs” should be considered as technical aids in clear contravention of IAAF Rule 144.2. As a result, Oscar Pistorius is not ineligible to compete in competitions organised under IAAF Rules.

=====(end article)

APPEAL:

So basically in 2008 the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Council banned him from nondisabled competition. Many peeps however denounced this study as flawed, or as abelist or racist against africans

Of course in the Sports and athlete world this caused much dramarama, and many strags in the early internet days would over the complex issue over whether the J-shaped bow fiber-glass legs of Oscar was valid or counter as aiding equipment which imparted an unfair advantage against normal athletes.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/jan/14/athletics.andybull

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233029154_Should_Oscar_Pistorius_be_Excluded_from_the_2008_Olympic_Games

United Nations on disabled rights strags made lots of word salads about the issue and the complexity of competing rights in international rulings or some shit.

Anyways Oscar and his agents would make an appeal later that year, to a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) appeals panel to revoke the ban, and succeeded! somehow

"After a two-day hearing, on 16 May 2008, CAS upheld Pistorius's appeal and the IAAF council decision was revoked with immediate effect. The CAS panel unanimously determined that Brüggemann tested Pistorius's biomechanics only at full-speed when he was running in a straight line (unlike a real 400-metre race); that the report did not consider the disadvantages that Pistorius has at the start and acceleration phases of the race; and that overall there was no evidence that he had any net advantage over non-disabled athletes."

https://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympics/athletics/7243481.stm

Anyways, long boring sneed short, Oscar was in the clear for competing internationally for running, especially the 400m sprint, and he vowed to make himself perfect for his next chance, 4 years away in the 2012 Olympics.

In the ensuing years oscar would still decorate himself with glory and medals, nationally and internationally for paraolympics nad regular olympics, in the meantime, he would achieve international status and household evening-dinner-conversation infamy for both the national and international stage. The name of Oscar Pistorius would become as widely known as Usain Bolt, or Roger Federer.

People would regard him as a star and view him as a very inspirational celebrity. He would come to be regarded as the ultimate underdog, a man born without legs, who through motivation and endurance trained himself to not only overcome his disability, but to also excel even at sports.

Peeps in RSA viewed him as an underdog who was falsely accused by the Olympic regulatory bodies to have an advantage, and unfairly banned him from competing in nondisabled olympics, because his international rivals were sore losers who hated Kangs In fact the drama of the 2008 ban of the IAAF is what spearheaded Oscar into frontpage news in South African newspapers (remember those antiques??). From 2008-2012 Oscar was one of the few Safricans Burgers could name outside of Nelson Mandela.

Regardless of this being the actual truth of the events, Oscar would gather a strong following both in SA and abroad. Basically he was living the life of a successful athlete!

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/feb/14/oscar-pistorius-golden-boy-edge-steel

THE HEIGHTS OF SUCCESS!! 2012 SUMMER OCLYMPICS:

In January 2011, a slimmer, trimmer Pistorius won three IPC Athletics World titles in New Zealand but was beaten for the first time in seven years in the 100 metres by Jerome Singleton. Oscar would compete in a myriad of competitions and perform gloriously, but he wasn't as dominant as he had been 4 years prior, and faced very strong competition.

In 2011, Oscar would go to superhuman efforts to qualify for the 2012 Olympics which were held in London, and he did!

"At the 2012 Summer Olympic Games on 4 August 2012, Pistorius became the debut amputee runner to compete at an Olympic Games. In the 400-metre race, he took second place in the first heat of five runners, finishing with a time of 45.44 seconds (his best time that season) to advance to the semi-finals on 5 August. He ran in the second semi-final, where he finished eighth and last with a time of 46.54 seconds. he South African relay team eventually finished eighth out of the field of nine in the final on 10 August. However, it established a season's best time for the team of 3 minutes 3.46 seconds, with Pistorius running the final leg in 45.9 seconds."

Yes unfortunately no glorious winning end for the climax of our underdog sports movie but just like Coach Carter, the journey along the way was what molded our protagonist athlete into a better and inspirational person. Though no medal was earned that Summer Olympics, oscar would win the height of his fame, as magazines and articles abounded about the inspirational underdog South African amputee who rose to such international success in spite of his disability.

Oscar was even more famous that the 3 frontrunners who actually won medals in those same races! Anyways though the Safrican runner teams performed mediocrely Oscar would proceed to demolish that 2012 Summer Paraolympics, and basically win everything which mattered, proving he was the fastest legless man on earth

Afterwards Oscar had sponsorships out the butt, and standing in lines stretching all the way back to Antarctica.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120811151754/http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/london/track/story/2012-08-10/4x400-relay-oscar-pistorius-south-afric/56946372/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20120901094008/http://www.csudhnews.com/2012/08/op-students-pistorius/

Össur, BT, Nike, Oakley and Thierry Mugler, and other famous international sport companies which I'm not gonna pretend to even know what equipment or clothes they provide.

It seems in all aspects of life Oscar had achieved success, 2012 would be the height of his life unfortunately.

GIRLFRIEND:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reeva_Steenkamp

Afrikaner Oscar would fall in love with the Safrican Bonglish girl Reeva Steenkamp. She was a minor advert star and TV presenter in SA media. She and Oscar began dating in around November 2012, and sloppy gossip magazines would follow their privacy with the usual paparazzi bullshit.

They seemed very happy and appear to be destine to marry that year or the next.

Yet on Valentines Day 2013 or the day after, South Africans would wake up in shock to find in Bold letters on their newspapers, that Oscar had fatally shot Reeva Steenkamp, and had turned himself in to the police.

The shooting occurred inside Pistorius's home, a walled complex near Pretoria. He claimed that he had mistaken her for a burglar he thought was hidden inside a locked bathroom and that the shooting was accidental. Pistorius was charged with murder and released on bail.

His trial would only FINALLY began in March 2014, a full fricking year later in our aggrieved and slow moving legal system. In the mean time Oscar would drop from Hero to Zero near instantly.

Immense drama would follow this case nationally, as his large and loyal following was split upon the debate about his guilt. International Sports News networks also followed the happenings of this case, as Oscar had become one of the most famous athletes in the 2012 Summer Olympics. Hoards of gossip magazines and forums and newspapers speculated at this sudden horrifying change in fortune for Oscar, and why in God's name he had shot and killed his girlfriend, whom the SA paparazzi had previously documented to be of the more wholesome and loving relationships for RSA celebrities.

This murder would dominate SA radio for months, to the extent that many Boomers who listened to radio would often clamor about being sick of hearing about the Oscar-Reeva murder. Oscar would fall from graces drastically, as all his sponsors of the previous year would drop him like a brick, and he became radioactive.

The family of Reeva Steenkamp, whom had accepted him lovingly as their stepson, had turned against him with the most scorned anger feasible, and were often behind all of the prosecution's highest demand of punishment in the days to come.

It was a tragic shitshow.

MURDER SPECULATION:

https://www.biography.com/crime/oscar-pistorius-rise-fall-olympics-murder-girlfriend

=====(from article)

By the summer of 2012, few public figures were more widely admired than South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius.

The "Blade Runner" had captured the world's attention by becoming the first double-amputee to compete against able-bodied runners in the Summer Olympics, his show of speed on a set of J-shaped prostheses providing undeniable proof of how the human will could triumph over adversity.

And while the story of his ascent was stunning, so too was the news that he had killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp the following February, setting up a fall from grace that one South African judge would later deem a "human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions."

A few weeks later, in the early morning hours of Valentine's Day 2013, the high life for Pistorius came crashing down when he fired four gunshots at the locked bathroom door of his home in Pretoria, killing his girlfriend inside.

The highly-publicized trial began in March 2014 with a neighbor's testimony of hearing Pistorius and Steenkamp screaming at each other, followed by the shots. In his defense, the Paralympian claimed he fired at the bathroom door in the belief that an intruder was lurking inside, only to belatedly realize it was his lover.

Although the once-saintly image of Pistorius had since been eclipsed by accounts of him being violent and controlling, it seemed he would be spared the worst punishment by a sympathetic court. Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa chided him for his negligence with a firearm but ultimately found him guilty of culpable homicide – roughly equivalent to manslaughter – and sentenced him to five years behind bars in October 2014.

====(end article)

Many believed Oscar was dead drunk when he fired his gun into Reeva, and many more believed that they were having an argument while drunk and Oscar went full r-slur.

A lot of details of the case were contradictory and unsatisfying. Neighbours speaking out against Oscar claimed to have heard shouts akin to domestic disputes prior to the gunfire, but their testaments were wonky and didn't align with the timeline of events. The story itself was also weird as it appeared Oscar had zero reason to deliberately kill his GF, but on the other hand, his excuse of claiming he though he heard a burglar in his BATHROON was also a shitty cover story and believed to be unlikely. Who shoots into their own bathroom?

Now South Africa's courts and justice system is dysfunctionally corrupt and sleazy, but the massive international attention made even the ANC weary to give corrupt officials oversight of this case, and appointed surprisingly competent judges and overseers. Additionally this crime was not racial in nature, as it was between two mayos killing each other, thus no wingcuckery made the court of this case have any additional bullshit as it usually is involved.

Compare this trial to the Jacob Zuma of 2006/2007, it's night and day. It actually looked like a functional country, or so my lawcel friends would say. So must drama of the case was related to the crime itself, and the dramatic and cataclysmic fall from grace of the accused Oscar.

SENTENCE:

However, the family of Reeva Steenkamp still felt blood boil in their veins, and campaigned to have Oscar's sentence increased.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/04/oscar-pistorius-prosecutors-appeal-against-verdict

On 4 November 2014, prosecutors applied to the sentencing judge for permission to appeal the culpable homicide verdict, stating that the five-year prison term was "shockingly light, inappropriate and would not have been imposed by any reasonable court"

Extremely long boring story shorter, over the next 3 years appeals would go on from the prosecution to overturn Oscar's 5 year sentence into a longer one. And basically while Oscar began serving his time in 2014.

==="In October 2015, however, Pistorius was released, and the remainder of his sentence was to be served under house arrest. On December 3 of that year, a five-judge appeals court found that the lower court had not properly applied the rule of dolus eventualis—a South African legal concept that hinges upon whether the accused foresaw the possibility of death as a potential outcome of his actions—and found Pistorius guilty of murder, overturning his previous conviction. In July 2016 he was sentenced to six years in prison, and in November 2017 South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal increased the sentence to 13 years and five months."===

OOF. Imagine serving a few years, thinking you got scot free, then fricking being hauled back into prison after the court said you didn't serve enough time fricker.

===Pistorius was released on parole in January 2024 after serving about nine years of his sentence. In response, Steenkamp's mother, June Steenkamp, said in part through a statement, “There can never be justice if your loved one is never coming back, and no amount of time served will bring Reeva back.”===

Basically after like fricking 5 years of bullpooping in High Court with appeals the case was finally rested, and Oscar was allowed to end his sentence after 9 years on parole (meaning he's sent back immediately to prison if he so much as do a minor criminal activity like speeding even.) He's also banned from doing media interviews lol.

RELEASED:

A metric shitload of media would follow Oscar's release like the predatory fricks journos are.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/africa/oscar-pistorius-released-jail-intl/index.html

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/05/1222863167/oscar-pistorius-release

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-67885713

A lot of black peeps on Safrican social-media bitched that Oscar got out early simply cuz he a whytoid. But looking at his prison records and psych evaluations he was a model prisoner and worked in the library and on the prison farm tractor and wasn't a violent drunk lunatic during his stay in prison, compared the usual dregs of society in their who are massive criminals to be actually fricking caught by our defective police-force and dysfunctional justice and corrective services.

TREVOR NOAH:

Our boi Trevor Noah, the stand-up comedian jokes about Oscar.

He's actually completely unironically genuinely funny when he's not a pro-Demorat wingcuck talkshow-host propagandist

He had great insight into Safrican insecurities and racial drama, and made very good comedy about it. He's a completely different person when he's a Sef-Efrican standup comedian, than when he's sneeding about Black Burger inequality in yanktown.

He had the false believe that his insight into South african peculiarities, culture and historic politics, gave him the same insight into Burgerland, but instead it just made him a racial wingcuck.

TWATTER FUNNIES:

People would Trevor Noah made a joke

But our boi Trevor NEVER apologized and told the soys to eat dirt! For once at least in his life Trevor was a gigachad

Also he made this joke 12 years ago when Twatter was still young and new in Sef-Efrica, hehehe

Anyways that's all I got, GOODNIGHT!

I'm too busy (lazy) to do a real summary/writeup but for some good backstory see this post by @cyberdick :

https://rdrama.net/post/265508/sx-is-biological-fact-nhs-declares

Basically the former president of child medicine in the UK, Hilary Cass, did a formal paper dubbed the Cass review, showing exactly what has been repeatedly shown in every single review or study of giving kids hormones, which is that it literally does no good at most, and moreso can potentially do harm, violating not one but two core principles of medicine according to the Hippopotamus Oath. (source: me, I'm a nurse)

TLDR:

WPATH (World Amplifier for Hypocrisy) has FINALLY responded to the Cass review in a statement that literally amounts to "HILARY CASS ISNT A SPECIALIST OF BULLSHIT PSEUDOSCIENCE I MEAN TRANS MEDICINE! JUST BECAUSE SHE'S A BONEFIDE PHYSICIAN AND THE FORMER HEAD OF PEDIATRICS AND HAS WORKED WITH KIDS ALL HER LIFE DOESN'T MEAN SHE KNOWS HOW TRANS KIDS WORK REEEEEEEEEE"

And that's it lol. That's all the WPATH (men) basically has to say in retort after getting chaos dunked by one doctor (woman). No attacking the heart of the issue which is literally that the trans body of evidence is as real as a pooner peepee or a neovagene.

You love to see it.

jannys in full cope mode basically banning anyone who dares support the verboten science. In my own backyard as a long time activist in the skeptics movement against pseudoscience like chiropractic/acupuncture/homeopathy/naturopathy etc. it appears many people are being banned from the skepticism subreddit over this dilemma, myself included lol. This isn't too surprising sadly, because the skeptics movement was one of the first ones targeted by feminists actually in the early 2010's and then when that failed (see elevatorgate) and g*mergate got purchase, the "movement" was colonized by demasculinized soychugging ex-g*mergate nerds seeking revenge against their oppressors, the fourth-wave feminist foids, and they did so by using recycling foid logic against them by claiming their privilege as their own by ing out , (spoiler alert, it worked! lol)

In any case though it's pretty funny now because of the hypocrisy from the jannys has now come full circle, especially in the skeptics arena. They have fully exhausted the extent of their borrowed foid logic and now have defaulted to blatant shilling of bullshit under the banner of nonstop bitching about there being NO EVIDENCE OF HARM! for giving kids hormones... EXCEPT UH... NO HORMONS CAUSES MORE SUICIDES... ACCORDING TO MY FATHER'S, BROTHER FORMERLY SISTER'S, NEPHEW'S, COUSIN'S, FORMER ROOMATE blah blah blah..

quacktivists have been doing this for years now, as we know. However, now there is CLEAR body of science-based evidence of the harm, how do they respond?

"THE EVIDENCE IS BIASED ASDFKJHDSAKJFEYKHUIRFGSKDJHFGGIHKDSdsakfjhgsdfkjhg"

(a.k.a. magic is real etc. etc. and if you disagree you are banned lol)

See related:

https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1cv87wg/wpath_respond_to_the_cass_review/

https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1ctkhyk/first_they_tried_to_cure_gayness_now_theyre/

https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1chxdew/cass_review_megathread_breakdown_and_trans_issues/

https://old.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1c4sg1q/cass_review_megathread_strict_moderation_enforced/

Additional related threads, but mostly undiluted bathtub-grade cope:

https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1cuzv8m/wpath_criticises_the_cass_report/

https://old.reddit.com/r/BlockedAndReported/comments/1cv6bvl/wpath_criticises_the_cass_review/

https://old.reddit.com/r/transgender/comments/1crkpzb/cass_review_author_says_leading_medical_org_only/

https://old.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1cs2jey/cass_review_to_delay_gic_pilot_green_lighting/

https://old.reddit.com/r/lgbt/comments/1cot6w9/hillary_cass_author_of_the_cass_review_thinks/

https://old.reddit.com/r/EnoughJKRowling/comments/1ck7h95/does_jk_rowling_not_realize_scientific_review/

https://old.reddit.com/r/4tran4/comments/1cj4fc5/the_guardians_diy_hrt_story_just_dropped/

Cass review? More like the Dude Ur Casstrated Review lmao

!thin !LGBT !transphobes don't buy cat spike strips if your cat is frickin' fat and/or trans, it's a scam and won't deter them.

Including, but not limited to: attacking the dirty pole via Twitter, trying to doxx him, demanding him to be fired, making him lock his account and apologize, generalizations against an ethnic group, which some even legit, but in any other case this behavior would be called out as 'phobic' by GCJ...and my favourite - comments promoting mass murder of slavs made by a mayo german and supported by a Genzedong posting Lebron James fan, nationality of which I will not guess and leave it to you.

I have 30+ links and a write up before each one.

Please wait until I add those. Making this post via touchscreen

'lol kitty locked his account' ( totally not a comment I would expect to see in a chud subreddit)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4re41n/?context=8

'he apologized, but frick him, it's all dog whistles' ( again, totally not a comment found when KiA imbeciles attacks someone on Twitter)

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qoje7/?context=8

'Pure racism'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qvhk9/?context=8

Comments I like to call 'yes Poland and Slavic countries are racist and homophobic, but all of them? What if I make similar comments about idk Gazans?' probs get banned

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qziaz/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4rwyz1/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4rbwu4/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qmeu6/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qski0/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qtq0k/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qtutm/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4rern1/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4rjnoo/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4prpsw/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4q0vda/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4ptzul/?context=8

'I've seen more poles against it than Japanese'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4puyfj/?context=8

Reportmaxxing opportunity - mayo german and tankie Lebron James fan ( they actually are, have his face as account pic)

Call for mass genocide of wholesome alcoholic slav plumbers, claims that euros had no culture l until arabs made them wash their asses

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qezbh/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qf2cm/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qf71r/?context=8

An pole teach GCJ about current social and political situation of the country and we get history lesson about left leaning organizations in Poland before and after WWII, critisicm towards Stalins 'militant totally communism' gets downmarseyd

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4ptbnd/?context=8

'post twitter threads - this might be just a big misunderstanding and the dev might not be a chud? Nah, frick him anyway'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4q7mvj/?context=8

'I really hope CDPR fires him' nah it's shit hole Poland, they are all chuds and nothing will happen'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4pqq08/?context=8

'no actual japanese people care about this. And all of your links are just mayos using chat gpt'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4ptlka/?context=8

'This is all just right wing christian dog whistle'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4prry2/?context=8

'He might as well used the nword'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4prry2/?context=8

Few down voted 'he is right though' and 'Yasuke was not a known integral figure in Japanese history' threads plus 'why are you attaking his opinion like some chuds'

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4q1ael/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qe33g/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4q7s92/?context=8

https://old.reddit.com/r/Gamingcirclejerk/comments/1cvkdb8/this_is_a_cdpr_dev_by_the_way/l4qhnky/?context=8

I'll make this an effort post since I know you zoomies know nothing about the Internet or gaming before 2015.

Dyack in the middle

Silicon Knights

Silicon Knights was a Canadian developer who made a few decent games, like Legacy of Kain and the Gamecube remake of Metal Gear Solid. They're mainly remembered for the classic Gamecube horror game Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, which is quite good for its time and is notable for being the only rated-M game ever published directly by Nintendo. They were lead by a guy named Dennis Dyack, a whiny manchild who doomed his company to fail.

Zoomers: This was considered scary in 2002

To give you an idea of their management, here's an image of games in production, games that were cancelled or abandoned before release are marked in yellow. Note the staggering ratio of unreleased/released games:

Anyways, Dyack's passion project for decades had always been a game called Too Human, but every effort to make it had been abortive. After the successes of Eternal Darkness and MGS, Dyack decides the Wii doesn't have shiny enough graphics and makes the bold choice to unshackle his company from a lucrative position as a Nintendo third party so he can truly fulfill his vision on the superior XBawx Please Fix Me. Silicon Knights shacks up with Microsoft and Epic Games and produce an E3 demo (zoomers: people used to go to an annual convention for video game trailers) which is received overwhelmingly negatively.

Dyack is NOT HAPPY and goes on the IGN forums to whine about how the critics will regret their words and deeds:

Unedited clip from Too Human

NeoGAF

Once upon a time there was a gayming website called Gaming Age, with their forum called the Gaming Age Forum (or GAF). Eventually Gaming Age imploded, but the top two jannies (Evillore and Bishoptl) were able to move their community to a new forum, appropriately called NeoGAF. You wouldn't know it these days with GAF being a shambling corpse and its spinoff ResetERA being what it is, but pre-G*merGate GAF was chill and a place where industry figures would show up and sperg out while everyone laughed at them.

Dennis Dyack makes a bet

Once such figure was our hero, Dyack. With his new slop getting trashed by GAFfers, he makes a thread to bet on how it'll turn out:

Right now the man just appears confident in his project. But his next post is a bit more... unhinged, and seems to be setting the bar rather low by making alreay-forgotten games Lair and Haze the standard to beat:

He then goes for an interview on 1up (Zoomers: Now-defunct gaming journo site) and whined about how people saying mean things online is ruining America and how if the NeoGAF mods don't start respecting Denis Dyack and Too Human he's going to call the Internet Police and shut them down!

Dyack then does another interview where he declares that not only is NeoGAF the worst forum in the world, but forums in general are evil and this is why the US military no longer uses writing:

Too Human comes out and scores lower than Haze. In classic GAF fashion the top janny punishes Dyack for losing the bet by writing lots of words and then perma-banning him. Dyack copes by saying g*mers are too stupid to understand his genius.

By this point the capital-G G*mers are pissed at Dyack in a way that prefigures G*merGate in a way. Seething articles are written speculating that angering the G*mers has resulted in him not just being banned from NeoGAF, but divorced from his wife, kicked out of the house, abandoned by his employees, his car towed, banned from every website ever, banned from the city of Niagara and tossed over the waterfall.

He messed with g*mers. G*mers.

The Saga Ends

Denis Dyack has brought Silicon Knights from one of the more respected devs in the industry to basically a joke. Following the failure of Too Human Dyack blamed the Unreal Engine and Epic Games and made the genius decision to sue them. This didn't go their way and by 2012 they owed Epic millions of dollars, had less than five employees, and were legally obligated to destroy all of their unsold games and source code.

In the meantime they had six more projects (including two sequels for Too Human) which were cancelled before they finally released another game, the absolutely awful X-Men Destiny, which turns out to be their last. In desperation, Dyack crawls back to Nintendo and pitches a sequel to their last hit, Eternal Darkness. NeoGAF insider reveals that Nintendo is agreeable until SK loses the lawsuit against Epic, and they decide they'd rather not fork over $10 million in legal fees so SK can survive, which Dyack denied. Former SK staff reveal that this was the case and part of the reason the X-Men game sucked was because Dyack was taking money given by Activision for that game and instead putting it toward Eternal Darkness II.

Years later Dyack attempts to kickstart his own Eternal Darkness successor and makes $300,000 out of the $700,000 target. He has yet to make another game. The end!

Dyack, left

tl;dr

Hello, I recently became aware of some information and I'm going to share it.

It started when I saw this article about the pier that the US recently constructed in Israel in order to "bring aid" to Gaza

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/first-images-american-taxpayers-350-million-completed-gaza-pier

So I asked: why is America doing this?

And I got this answer: "Saudi Arabia and Israel are building a canal to replace the suez. This will let work crews and material land and start construction."

Wow, that's weird. I hadn't heard of this. Could this be true?

Google 'saudi arabia, india, suez replacement'

The first result is this: https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/The-Egyptian-authority-the-Saudi-Indian-corridor-will-not-replace-the-Suez-Canal/

>"There are no alternative routes to the Suez Canal." This was stated by the president of the Egyptian Suez Canal Authority, Admiral Osama Rabie, during a television broadcast.

That's weird, why would he say that?

Rabie was commenting on the Saudi-India Economic Corridor project, part of an agreement reached between Saudi Arabia and India on the sidelines of the summit of G20 in New Delhi.

What?

So the G20 summit was in India, and during this time Saudi Arabia and India made an agreement for an economic project.

Wait a second, when was this?

Early September...

And the Palestinian attack happened in early October.

So this meeting happened one month before the Palestinian attack on Israel. That's fricking weird.

Here's an article that fills in a lot of the details

https://www.eurasiareview.com/17112023-the-ben-gurion-canal-israels-potential-revolutionary-alternative-to-suez-analysis/

tldr: The Suez canal is controlled by Egypt, which is an ally of BRIC's.

Building an alternative would massively frick over Russia and China .. And also Egypt ( sorry @Aevann )

Anyways: on to Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is in the process of building a brand new futuristic city. They're calling it NEOM or some shit like that

https://www.neom.com/en-us/about

WHAT DOES NEOM MEAN?

The name NEOM is derived from two words. Envisioned by His Royal Highness Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince and Chairman of the NEOM Company Board of Directors, the first three letters come from the Ancient Greek prefix neo – meaning 'new'. The 'M' is the first from 'Mustaqbal', an Arabic word meaning 'future'. The M is also the first letter of the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

Okay, cool.

Here's another article

https://www.deccanherald.com/world/all-you-need-to-know-about-neom-saudis-futuristic-desert-city-3017231

Okay, so in order to build NEOM, SA is forcibly evicting people from their land and shooting people who resist.

Where is NEOM?

Huh.

ANYWAYS so back to the beginning.

Remember that big fricking dock we just built in Gaza?

It's rated so that we can basically unload whatever the frick we want on it. Meaning, construction equipment and materials.

So remember that article about the Ben Gurion canal that Israel has been wanting to build for forever?

That had a picture in it

ayyy lmao, that runs up and carefully around Gaza

You know what would be even better? If it went right the frick through it.

lol.

lmao, even.

I made up the dock placement, but you get the point.

It doesn't fricking matter where they put it, it's in gaza and they're unloading shit with it.

Also, this is why they're starving and forcibly relocating people in Gaza right now.

To make way for the Canal.

If this project comes to fruition it is going to circumvent the Suez canal, and by extension, BRICS.

Completely kneecapping China and Russia economically.

This will likely lead to World War 3.

Oh, but first we have to fricking get rid of Palestine.

Good thing they're all fricking starving or whatever and getting forcibly relocated, idk. Aid dock, more like AIDS dock.

Also, if it wasn't completely clear already - There were rumors that the Israeli government had been warned in advance of the 10/6 attack and didn't stop it.

Well, now you know why. Trying to coerce these motherlovers to get out of the way would have been nearly impossible and also VERY EXPENSIVE.

There is no way in heck that the Palestinian government would have just let Israel buy up land and move people to build this thing.

And even if they did, the international community wouldn't have allowed it.

Now that there's a fricking war going on, Israel can just fricking level everything and turn all of the Palestinians into Refugees instead.

Anyone who doesn't make way for Suez Canal 2.0 is getting shot the frick up.

The people in the way? Gone.

The buildings in the way? Also gone.

@Aevann effort post me plz, thank you

p.s. if you still don't believe 9/11 was an inside job. well idk what to tell you.

Hello. Today, I wanted to discuss the origins of psychedelic writing in Europe. I happen to know about this topic due to my heavy interest in drugs. I hope you enjoy it. I can't sleep, so I thought I'd write instead of cutting myself.

In the Beginning...

Michael Boon, in The Road of Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs, investigates the relationship between drugs and writing in the literary canon. He claims that European literary history before Thomas De Quincey “is generally considered a drug-free zone”. Boon posits a contrary theory and argues that drug-inspired writing can be found in works as ancient as Comus (1637) and Paradise Lost (1667).

How could these texts be considered psychedelic? Comus is a 17th-century masque that “tells a tale about the dangers of taking a walk in the woods”. It features a sprite named Comus who attempts to seduce a virginal nymph named Sabrina as she wanders the woods. Comus offers Sabrina a drink, claiming that “one sip of this/Will bathe the swooping spirits in delight/Beyond the bliss of dreams”. Paradise Lost is an epic poem that retells the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. Boon notes that the tree of knowledge described in the poem bears fruits that offer what he calls “gnosis – knowledge of the divine”. After Adam and Eve have eaten the forbidden fruit, God sends the archangel Michael to give Adam a vision of the future of humankind. This is done using plants, namely “euphrasy and rue”. According to Boon, in both Comus and Paradise Lost, Milton is referring to psychoactive substances that have “many of the same qualities we attribute to hashish or LSD”, and rue may be another name for the aforementioned Peganum harmala plant.

Boon argues that several plants in Renaissance literature could be considered psychoactive and that “love potions, poisons, mythical philtres and brews, powerful herbs, magical stones, and secret powders” all play the role of “mediating the space between the imagination, with its vectors of desire, intoxication, death and truth, and the material world”. This is true for the aforementioned Pantagruelion plant which can be considered an “allegorical plant, half-real, half-myth” and is “strongly linked to the history of cannabis”.

Marijuana

Cannabis also appears in early European psychedelic literature. As Boon points out, there is little information regarding “actual cannabis use in Renaissance Europe, although there are references to the psychoactive properties of the plant in writings about witchcraft in travellers' accounts”. According to Boon, “the earliest account of cannabis intoxication to appear in Europe was that of a Moroccan Christian convert named Leo Africanus” in 1510. Africanus travelled great swaths of Africa and wrote about it in his text Descrittione dell'Africa which means ‘Description of Africa'. In this text, he describes his experiences with hashish in Tunisia and claims that anyone who eats “but one ounce falleth a laughing, disporting, and dallying, as if he were half-drunken”. Succeeding Africanus is Rabelais who dedicated three chapters of Gargantua and Pantagruel to a plant called “Pantagruelion”. Boon claims it can be argued that these chapters were a “homage to the psychoactive properties of the good weed” and that “there is little doubt that Pantagruelion is the cannabis plant”.

The tradition of cannabis-inspired writing in Europe is continued by many other writers, including Walter Benjamin who was a German philosopher and essayist who also experimented with hashish. He took the drug for the first time in December 1927, along with Ernst Joël and Fritz Fränkel who were both Berlin doctors. Benjamin wrote an essay titled “Hashish in Marseilles”, in which he details his own subjective experiences with the drug. His descriptions demonstrate that the effects of hashish are not unlike those described by other psychedelically inspired literature. He notes cannabis's effects on consciousness, writing that it produces a “continual alternation of dreaming and waking states, a constant and finally exhausting oscillation between totally different worlds of consciousness”. Benjamin also describes changes in perception and claims that “colours grow brighter, more luminous; objects more beautiful, or else lumpy and threatening…”. States of mild dissociation also occur. As Benjamin explains, one knows one is under the influence of hashish when “his laughter, all his utterances, happen to him like external events”. Benjamin also claims that hashish raises one's sense of humour and situations “can become so compulsively hilarious that the hashish eater for minutes on end is capable of nothing except laughing”. Despite all the effects of hashish, “the memory of the intoxication is surprisingly clear”.

Peyote

Another drug featured in European psychedelic literature is mescaline, which can be derived from several types of cacti, including the peyote cactus and the San Pedro cactus. The drug is mostly associated with Native American tribes and, as such, makes a larger impact on American psychedelic literature. The psychedelic effects of certain cacti have been known by Native Americans for centuries, and archaeological investigations have dated the use of mescaline by indigenous people as far back as “8500 BC”. Some of the earliest reports of peyote use among Native Americans can be found in “Spanish missionary records dating to the late 1600s and early 1700s”. For many centuries, “North American Indians used mescaline as a medicine, amulets and hallucinogenic religious sacrament”. In modern times, mescaline is still used by Native Americans, as seen with the Native American Church (NAC) which has a peyote ritual performed for “individuals to access certain cognitive structures and mechanisms within their brains that effectively expand consciousness, resulting in physical, mental, and spiritual benefits”. The psychic effects of mescaline are not unlike those reported from other common psychedelics such as LSD and psilocybin and include “various distortions, involving sensory perception, space, time, colour, sounds, and shapes, as well as dreamlike feeling[s]”.

Peyote found its way into the hands of European writers such as British psychologist Havelock Ellis who obtained some in 1897, did self-experimentation, and shared it with both William Butler Yeats and Arthur Symons. Scientific research that emerges from Europe struggles to maintain a firm delineation between the subjective and the objective, and the language used to describe the effects of peyote dips into the fantastical. Hence, “in describing mental states produced by mescaline, researchers searched for analogies in religious experience or literature”.

The German solider Ernst Junger speaks at length about mescaline. During his discussions, the inability of scientific language to entirely encapsulate the psychedelic experience reveals itself, and Jünger increasingly relies on figurative language that leans towards being more mystical than scientific. He notes the profound psychedelic effects of the drug, writing that it produces “an effect that is more brutal and demanding than the effect of the opiates; they transport the user not just to the visionary world and its palaces, but also bring him down into the depths of the subterranean crypts”. Outlining the differences between mescaline and other drugs, he demonstrates his reliance on figurative language once again when he claims that “stimulants and narcotics modify time: they expand it or accelerate it. But with mescaline the earth is cloven; the creative power of time returns to the origins”. He also describes his experimentation with mescaline in Stuttgart during January 1950. After consuming mescaline, he “could not write down even one word” and spent “about an hour experiencing mild nausea”. Soon after, the mind-altering effects ensued. Jünger was “immersed in visions, meditations, visual and auditory perceptions of images and compositions, until six in the evening”.

LSD

Jünger was a close friend of Albert Hoffmann who was a Swiss chemist who synthesized LSD. This drug is widely believed to be “one of the most powerful psychoactive drugs known” due to its ability to produce intense effects at exceptionally low doses. Hoffman synthesized LSD “by chemical cleavage of some other ergot alkaloid”, namely ergotamine. Ergot is “produced by a lower fungus (Claviceps purpurea) that grows parasitically on rye and, to a lesser extent, on other species of grain and on wild grasses”. Once synthesized, LSD is a substance that is “odourless, colourless, and tasteless”.

Hoffmann and Jünger experimented with LSD together, and their psychonautic experiences are recorded in Hoffmann's text LSD: My Problem Child. When Hoffmann describes his experiences, he uses the language of fantasy and surrealism that has appeared in the previously discussed psychedelic texts. This is seen primarily with the use of colour, light, and the numerous abstract descriptions he provides. For instance, when discussing a time when he ingested LSD with Jünger and his pharmacologist friend Professor Heribert Konzett, Hoffmann describes red-violet roses that “radiated in portentous brightness” and claims that “Ernst Jünger enjoyed the colour display of oriental images”. Furthermore, themes of spirituality, transcendence, and profundity make themselves apparent. He evokes the divine when discussing music, writing that “the concerto for flute and harp by Mozart was perceived in its celestial beauty as heavenly music”. Hoffmann claims that Professor Konzett experienced “a breath of timelessness, liberation from the past and the future, blessedness through being completely here and now” which suggests a transcendence from immediate reality and its temporal constraints.

Hoffmann argues that LSD can unearth memories that are repressed yet, nevertheless, negatively impact one's psyche. Memories brought to one's conscious awareness “may then become accessible to psychotherapeutic treatment”. This view is shared by Grinspoon et al who claim that “forgotten incidents from the remote past may be released from the unconscious and relived” when LSD is consumed. It was also believed that LSD resembled the symptoms of schizophrenia, hence it could be used to better understand mental illness. As such, clinicians were interested in LSD, hoping that the drug would “help them better understand and empathize with their schizophrenic patients”. In contemporary times, the view that LSD is a substance capable of simulating schizophrenia has since been “seriously attacked by many phenomenologically and psychoanalytically oriented psychiatrists”.

Hoffmann also notes that LSD is a potentially invaluable tool for terminally ill patients. One of the potential benefits Hoffmann lists is pain relief. Hoffmann claims that LSD might be used instead of analgesic medication. However, he does admit that psychedelic treatment for pain might only be effective because “patients under the influence of LSD are psychologically so dissociated from their bodies that physical pain no longer penetrates their consciousness”. The second benefit Hoffman notes is LSD's potential to allay terminally ill patients' dread of mortality and allow patients to accept their imminent death. He claims that there are numerous cases of “patients who gained meaningful insights about life and death on their deathbeds, as freed from pain in LSD ecstasy and reconciled to their fate, they faced their earthly demise fearlessly and in peace”. For psychedelic treatment to be effective, Hoffmann suggests that patients “be prepared and instructed about the kind of experiences and transformations that await them”. Hoffmann's views of LSD represent a shift in the understanding of psychedelics. From their locus in a spiritual realm among shamans and religious rituals, they are brought into the clinical setting and integrated into psychoanalysis. As will be seen, this paradigm shift will have a profound impact on psychedelic literature and the usage of psychedelics.

It did not take long for LSD to find popularity as a recreational drug. Hoffmann laments that the “joy at having fathered LSD was tarnished after more than ten years of uninterrupted scientific research and medicinal use when LSD was swept up in the huge wave of an inebriant mania that began to spread over the Western world, above all the United States, at the end of the 1950s”. He argues that the “rapid rise of nonmedicinal LSD consumption at the beginning of the 1960s was also partly attributable to the fact that the drug laws then current in most countries did not include LSD”. The period Hoffmann refers to, which will be discussed in greater detail at a later point in this chapter, saw the explosion of psychedelic art which encompasses “creations produced under the influence of LSD and other psychedelic drugs, whereby the drugs acted as stimulus and source of inspiration”. Psychedelic art was unique because artists were influenced in their creative work in unconventional ways. Mediums affected by the wave of psychedelic art include visual arts, literature as well as music, as is the case with the Beatles, a highly influential English band who were wildly popular in the 1960s and experimented with psychedelic rock.

Conclusion

To do drugs is awfully human and even the brightest intellectuals among us have indulged. Don't feel bad to light one up or pop a tab. Folks far greater than you have done so for centuries.

Galaga

Galaga isn't one of those games that gets easier with booze

— @RWBY

Just in case it needs explaining Galaga is a space themed shoot ‘em up (also known as shmups) and is among the best known of Namco's arcade games. The game is a fixed shooter with a controllable ship that can be moved horizontally. Stages are completed by defeating all enemy ships, but the game continues until the player is out of lives so the idea is to reach the highest stage possible and of course to have the highest score possible.

The game was quite innovative for the time. The enemy ships would actually track and follow the player and you could autofire by holding down the button, previously impossible in earlier games like Space Invaders. The game's hardware allowed two player projectiles on screen at any time and enemies could attack in more than just one pattern. The game also has a memorable spin on an extra life mechanic — if a boss Galaga abducts a player ship it becomes another enemy, but so long as you have one life remaining (don't try it otherwise lol ) you can shoot down its captor to liberate your past life and have it form a larger double fighter with the current ship.

Galaga went down as one of the all time greatest hits of its generation, but how did it come to be? And why was Japan such a leader in the gaming industry? What did g*mers even have to play before dating sims and rougelikes?

Weebery: Fillmore's Original Sin

The story of Galaga and Otaku shit in general can be indirectly traced back to 1852, the year in which Commodore Matthew Perry led a US Navy expedition to Japan under orders from 13th President of the United States Millard Fillmore. From the 17th century onward, the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate of the Edo Period had pursued a strict policy of xenophobia and isolationism. Common Japanese were not permitted to leave the country. Western traders were permitted to operate only out of an isolated island in the newly constructed port of Nagasaki, and even then the Japanese were weary of foreign political interference and the conversion practices of Jesuit missionaries. In response to the 1637 Shimabara Rebellion, the Tokugawa decided they'd had enough of Catholic nonsense and expelled all Iberians For over a century after only the Protestant Dutch were permitted regular direct access to the port.

As the modern world developed and the great empires of Europe expanded, Japan's isolation became increasingly frustrating to European entrepreneurs hungry for East Asian trade goods. If anything these early industrial westerners had already become weebs of product if not media.

Remembered as "The Arrival of the Black Ships" — a Japanese term for western vessels — Perry's open-tf-up voyage so many centuries later was an unwelcome surprise to the incumbent aristocracy. Having believed they were still keeping pace with western advancements, the hapless Japanese officials of Edo immediately realized that these modern, ironclad vessels of steam power and explosive shelled guns — guns that Perry readily demonstrated to the Japanese "in celebration of American independence" — could easily devastate the capital. Initial reports to the shogun made it clear that it would be completely impossible to defend Edo from the fleet if things turned hostile.

Perry's actions were a textbook example of gunboat diplomacy, as though there weren't any recorded incidents of violence in his expeditions, it didn't take long for the Japanese to agree to virtually all of Fillmore's demands. The United States soon established favorable trade relations, and similar deals with Britain, France, Russia, and so on so forth soon followed. By culture shock and existential threat did Japan's closed-world history come to an end. Indeed they immediately began developing in the exact opposite direction.

And in retrospect Fillmore's actions would begin a relationship between America and Nippon that, while a bit chaotic in nature, would ultimately prove quite permanent.

Following their victory in the Russo-Japanese War Japan went into the 20th century as the world's only non-western nation to be recognized as a great power. Its reputation further solidified following the Allied victory in the First World War, a war in which America and Japan fought side by side against the Kraut menace. This relationship of peace and co-prosperity would continue going forward into the Cold War

Okay so maybe there was that thing in the 40's, but the United States government soon saw reason and realized that a powerful trade partner and bulwark against East Asian communism was much more important than a few million and a battleship or two. I mean, how could we dislike a country that hated Russians as much as we did?

During and even after the American post-war occupation Japan received significant gibs not unlike Europe with the Marshall Plan. This facilitated a second period of rapid industrialization in less than a century, as well as a special economic relationship with the US that continued even after the Nips regained their practical independence.

From ‘45 going through the ‘80s, the "Japanese Economic Miracle" saw the country grow into the world's second largest economy, surpassing every other western country as well as those dirty commies just slightly up and to the left

Contributing factors to the boom include the cooperation of manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, and banks in close-knit groups; the powerful enterprise unions and good relations with government bureaucrats, and the guarantee of lifetime employment in big corporations and highly unionized blue-collar factories.

Japanese companies also benefited from this close international partnership. The US absorbed Japanese exports, subsidized the Japanese economy, transferred technology to Japanese firms, and tolerated controversial Japanese trade practices — a few major lawsuits and Reagan era Japan-Bashing notwithstanding

Partner ventures between Japanese and American companies for the joint distribution of goods and media was also common going as far back as the 60's, with the partnership between Namco and Atari/Midway being just one such example This coupled with the exchange of ideas and breakthroughs in the tech sector allowed the Golden Age of Arcade Games to kick off in both countries at around the same time

And Namco, of course, was the company that developed Galaga

Post-War Companies: Now Family Friendly

Nakamura Seisakusho Co., Ltd was founded in 1955 by Masaya Nakamura. The son of a shotgun repair store owner, Nakamura originally tried and struggled to find work with shipbuilding in post Second World War Japan. Presumably firearm ownership also started to wane in Japanese society, but Nakamura noticed the old man was still making money producing pop guns for children. This inspired him to start a company, his first profits coming from coin operated rocking horses installed on the roof of a department store. The business slowly grew and along with Taito, Rosen Enterprises, and Nihon Goraku Bussan, Nakamura Seisakusho became one of Japan's leading amusement companies. However, Nakamura could not have his rides inside of department stores because other companies already had exclusive privileges. The company began to branch out into any form of entertainment it could.

In the 60's the company secured a partnership with Disney that allowed the use of characters for the rides. This coupled with anime sponsorships — anime itself first getting a real start in the ‘60s — made it a driving force in the 100 yen coin market. Also acquiring its own manufacturing facilities, the company started making more complex proto-game contraptions like Periscope. At this point Nakamura Seisakusho had grown to a whopping ten employees

And in either 1971, ‘72, or ‘77 — different sources keep giving me different dates — the company also shortened its name to the more marketable Namco

(Both Namco and Sega — which formed from Rosen and Nihon Goraku Bussan — claim to have made Periscope. There's no official explanation for this discrepancy)

My first system was an atari 2600 with space invaders. Pixels were the size of your face, man.

— @JohnDevereaux

Across the pond another company was enjoying great success with emerging entertainment media. Created in 1972 in Sunnyvale, California (I didn't know it was an American company before researching this post ) Atari would go on to become another giant of the arcade industry. It also turns out their financial troubles began years before the infamous ET game

If there's some turbo-Luddite out there who needs this explained, Atari is famous for creating Pong and one of the first home consoles. A Japanese division of Atari was established in 1973 but soon ran into problems with mismanagement and embezzlement. Eventually President Kenichi Takumi simply stopped coming into work

Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell received offers from companies like Sega and Nintendo to purchase the division but they tended to be insultingly low Nakamura outbid everyone with an offer of $500,000, but once the deal was agreed upon, he revealed he didn't actually have that much money and would pay in installments. Bushnell still agreed because there weren't any other buyers lined up

The acquisition allowed Namco to distribute Atari games in Japan and it wasn't long before the company started to create arcade games of its own.

Namco's first video game was Gee Bee in 1978, designed by Toru Iwatani. 1979's Galaxian soon followed, but first we need to explain its inspiration.

Space Invaders

ooohhh lol I could have just looked it up this whole time but schmup = shoot em up ok I get it. Back in middle school when we used to get high we called it "space invaders" as in you wanna go play space invaders bro? lol classic stuff

— @PeepeeButtKiss

Released in 1978 by Taito (and licensed to Midway for American distribution) Space Invaders is considered to have marked the dawn of the Golden Age of Arcade Games as well as the shoot ‘em up/space game genres. This archetypical arcade game was the first fixed shooter and established the "multiple life, progressively difficult level paradigm". That it featured combat at all in the form of enemies that shot back was revolutionary. It also introduced being defeated by enemies as a failure state instead of simply having a scripted time limit. Because realistic movements for aircraft couldn't really be done and shooting at people was considered immoral, a space theme in reference to The War of the Worlds was chosen to take advantage of sci-fi hype generated by Space Battleship Yamato and Star Wars

Space Invaders was huge, perhaps the first "blockbuster" game, and adjusted for inflation went on to gross more than fourteen billion by 1982. Its success brought unprecedented mainstream attention to video games in both hemispheres, North American fame coming alongside its release in the states. The Space Invaders Tournament held by Atari in 1980 was the first video game competition and attracted more than 10,000 participants. By 1980, 86% of the 13–20 year old population in the United States had played arcade video games and by 1981 there were more than 35 million g*mers visiting video game arcades in the United States.

As for the Namco was just one of the companies that saw the success of Space Invaders and immediately tried to recreate it. As Galaxian began its earliest development, Nakamura urged the devs to make the best "Post Invaders" game they could

Though not everyone remembers it these days, 1979's Galaxian was Namco's first major hit and a major step up from Space Invaders. It was one of the first video games to feature RGB color graphics and the first ever to use a tile-based hardware system capable of animated multi-color sprites as well as scrolling for the background. It was considered a big deal that the enemies also possessed proper AI that allowed them to home in on the player's ship in response to its movement, as opposed to waiting for the player to be nearby or firing randomly.

“The post-Invaders arcade scene belongs to Namco!” —that was the goal we set, and the pressure riding on us with the development of Galaxian. You could call it the first video game space war visual simulator, with its pioneering use of multi-colored sprites.

Galaxian – 1985 Developer Interview with designer Kazunori Sawano

The success of Galaxian put Namco on the radar. It was the second highest earning game of ‘79 and would again be the second highest for the next year.

Funnily enough, the top earning game of ‘80 was another, more famous Namco title.

I should scarcely have to explain Pac-Man or its incredible popularity. Developed by the aforementioned Iwatani and released in 1980, Namco's next major hit would go down among the most legendary of all time. Pac-Man dethroned Space Invaders and would mark a shift towards mascot driven games, to the point of becoming the mascot of Namco itself. Having noticed that shmups games like Space Invaders and Galaxian were mostly popular with men, Namco designed the game to appeal to women through cutesy graphics and named characters. These changes also made it gaming's first licensing success for Pac-Man's popularity as an individual character led to the creation of a franchise, and arguably, all further gaming multimedia ventures.

In other words gaming has been dead since 1980

The success of such a game inspired Namco to pursue more genres and yet more marketable mascots, but they were still willing to return to moid genres of yore one final time for 1981. So came the actual subject matter of this effortpost.

"Space Invaders"

Namco had produced a large number of Galaxian cabinets and by 1981 the game had become harder to sell. The game that would become its sequel began development as a quick and easy additional game to run on the cabinet's existing hardware and help clear out inventory. Namco dev Shigeru Yokoyama would first create King & Balloon for this purpose, but work on what was to be the second game grew into an entirely new project that required more advanced hardware. The Namco Research and Development Division recommended it become a new game entirely, to be developed on the new Galaga arcade board.

The name was decided on before the genre. At the time Namco had a laid back culture and gave the devs leeway in decision making. It wasn't specifically demanded that the new project be another Space Invaders inspired game, but Yokoyama decided a sequel to Galaxian was appropriate in response to management's original idea. This was to be another great step forward for the formula Space Invaders established, such that even to this day many people erroneously refer to Galaga as "Space Invaders" (Including me as a lad )

An interview I found with Yokoyama details many of Galaga's design decisions,

On the game's earliest conceptualization,

—Did you study Galaxian much in preparation for making Galaga?

Yokoyama: At the time, I was the best video game player at Namco. When I was a student I played a ton of Space Invaders, and I was legitimately good. At the office it was always me sitting in front of the Galaxian cab. (laughs)

—I feel like your experience there is clearly reflected in Galaga. There's a number of things that Galaga seems to have inherited from Galaxian, like how when you kill a boss galaga, the other enemies will stop firing for several seconds.

Yokoyama: Yeah, that is true. Another thing from Galaxian is the way the boss galagas will appear with two red guards, and if you destroy the guards before killing the boss, you get a higher score. That was something we added later in the development process of Galaxian. When a great player puts on a performance, you see, everyone watching goes “ooo!!” And the heart of that performance is scoring. Galaga didn't have those elements at the start either, but we added a lot of stuff like that as we went along.

On the ambition behind Galaga being too much for Galaxian's hardware

—I see, and Galaga is the game where you did everything yourself, including the initial conception.

Yokoyama: That's right. Unfortunately, King & Balloon used the same hardware as Galaxian, so it couldn't do autofire.

In King & Balloon, the enemies steal the King, and that puts you in a state of panic, right? I wanted to reflect that mindset in a game with tons of bullets, but sadly the Galaxian hardware couldn't do that, so we settled on making the bullets faster than they had been in Galaxian. I was also told to make it autofire, but since we weren't using sprites, we couldn't do autofire either.

—I see, interesting. So even at this very early stage of STG, developers were thinking about autofire. And then new hardware came along and you could add it.

Yokoyama: That's right. With new hardware the impossible became possible.

Arcade era companies were more lax than modern ones,

—For Galaga, I understand you worked together with the programmers in coming up with the planning and design documents?

Yokoyama: Yes. First I'd write the spec sheet, making sure that what I wanted to create was technically possible for the programmers. Then the planning and game design docs would get stuffed full of all kinds of ideas… we didn't really have planning meetings back then at Namco. If your boss, or your boss' boss, gave you the OK, you'd just start working on it.

Yokoyama: I've often been asked what the “Namco essence” was, but all of the developers then had very distinct individual personalities—there was no central philosophy of game design. However, the one thing we did all share was a commitment to do things right, down to the last bit. That's why we playtested our games so thoroughly, both with others and by running simulations ourselves. Not wanting to do things half-assed wasn't some principle we had as craftsmen or anything; it was part of putting ourselves in players' shoes and imagining what would be fun for them. I think that helped us stay balanced as developers.

On developing the game's famous double fighter feature,

—In Galaga, your ship can be captured, and then rescued to be combined with your ship for double the firepower. Was that an idea you had from the beginning?

Yokoyama: No, it wasn't. Back then we always went through the process of creating one or two prototypes. With the first Galaga prototype, enemy formations would appear at the top of the screen, and fly down at you in patterns that were different from Galaxian. It was playable, but to be honest, it was kind of uninspired. Galaxian is all about weaving your way through the gaps of the missiles that are fired at you, but it would be boring if we just rehashed that. The first thing we tried, then, was creating enemies with a different attack style. I can't remember the movie now, but there was one out that had these beam weapons…

—Like a tractor beam, or?

Yokoyama: Yeah, a tractor beam. Not the kind of laser that destroys things in one blast, but rather the kind you would use to capture something. I wanted something like that to capture your ship, and then you'd be able to rescue that captive some how.

Yokoyama: At first, when you rescued your ship, it gave you an extra life, but that was just a different spin on extends, so I thought it was boring. That was when I thought of the “dual fighter” idea. Then came the question of whether to make them line up horizontally, or vertically.

Interestingly, Galaga's most famous feature was almost too much for even the newer hardware. The board couldn't handle having two ships on the screen and initially wouldn't let the double ship fire. Yokoyama solved this by making the double ship a single sprite instead of two joined together. The double missile is also actually a single sprite. This allowed the game to squeak past the hardware limitations.

—Oh, so even though it looks like you're firing two missiles in dual fighter mode, it's actually just one sprite? Clever!

It took a while for players to really understand the concept.

Yokoyama: I also remember that at our first location test, at a game center by Nishiogikubo Station, none of the people I saw playing were using the dual fighter ability! Everyone was just dodging. And we had gone to all the trouble of putting that instruction card up! I thought that would have explained it, you know. (laughs)

Inspired by the "cutscenes" from Pac-Man, Galaga was one of the first games to have bonus levels. Not unlike how the enemies speeding up in Space Invaders was actually unintended, Galaga's challenge stages were inspired by a glitch.

Yokoyama: Well, Pac-Man had the “Pac-Man Show” intermission cutscenes, and Rally X had the Challenging Stage, so I knew Galaga was going to need some special showy feature like that. But for awhile I just couldn't come up with anything. I was wracking my brain when our programmer Tetsu Ogawa came to me with a bug he had found, where the enemy formations would appear and then just fly off, without breaking formation. He called me over and said “I wonder if we can find a use for this?” (laughs)

—Hah, so Ogawa thought it was interesting too. (laughs)

Yokoyama: The bug also prevented the enemies from firing. I thought it would be fun to sit there and just blast away at them, so this became the Challenging Stage in Galaga. It was a product of chance.

—But it must have taken a lot of effort to work the the Challenging Stage up into something so elaborate and spectacular.

Yokoyama: At first there was only one pattern they'd fly in, which was the pattern that the bug had originally created. During the course of the development we realized we wanted this to be a game with a lot of replay value, so we decided to add more patterns. I owe a lot of that to Ogawa, who told me he could create more patterns by using some code from another program he had made. Ogawa was a talented programmer, but he also had “game sense”, and many ideas in Galaga were added by him. If I had not linked up with Ogawa, I don't think Galaga would be half the game it was!

In Japan arcade "boards" that resembled tabletops were more common than tall arcade cabinets like what you're probably picturing. Galaga was one of the first to have the controls laid out more horizontally instead of vertically. This would be more common going forward.

Yokoyama: Until Galaga, our cocktail table-style cabinets for Galaxian, Pac-Man, and others had the stick and buttons laid out vertically, flush with the cabinet siding. Galaga was a game where you would need to be firing repeatedly, and I knew the vertical layout would be awkward. The buttons themselves were really stiff and wide on the Galaxian cabinet too, and hard to use. I consulted with cabinet makers and engineers and told them to lay out the buttons horizontally, using a panel that protruded from the table.

—Wow, you had a lot of authority!

Yokoyama: They made a prototype, and when people tried it out, it readily apparent how much easier it was this way. I said we needed to change the buttons too, and we tried out a variety of different ones. There was a lot to choose from there: heavy buttons, light buttons, the amount of spring, and durability too… we ordered a bunch and picked out the one we thought was best.

—Galaga was the first game to use a control panel with everything laid out horizontally. Did you have to change the shape of the tables too?

Yokoyama: The tables we were going to use were already on location, so there was some objection from management about how they were going to retrofit this control panel. They were complaining it would take too much time. Opinions were divided, with some people at Namco agreeing, and others refusing. I then went around to each department at Namco and let the managers try out the new control panel and see for themselves how much easier it was to play.

They agreed it was better and that this panel should be adopted as the new standard. However, sometime after that decision was made I got really chewed out by a furious executive: “there's no way *$#%$ way we can sell these!!!!” He told me to change it back right away, but since I now had a lot of people on my side who thought this new panel was better, we ended up using it after all. Thank goodness I won that battle!

—And ever since then, we've been using this layouts for arcade cabinets.

Yokoyama: Well, that executive was so angry, at the time even I was wondering, “is this a good idea?” (laughs)

Lastly Yokoyama talks about how different the gaming industry was back then.

—Do you have any message for young aspiring game designers today?

Yokoyama: Hmm… that's difficult. (laughs) I'll share something similar to what I said in the self-introduction I gave at a recent management training event. The games I made were done almost entirely by two people: myself and Ogawa. So we knew every last inch of how they worked. We were able to develop those games with total knowledge and control, but the scale of game development has changed today and that kind of thing is no longer possible. But if you have the chance as a young developer to experience that, I recommend it.

Nowadays you can specialize as a programmer, planner, designer, or musician, but originally a “game creator” was simply someone who wanted to make a cetain game, and he knew and did everything involved: design, music, programming, documentation. I think you grow a lot more as a developer that way.

Graphic designer Hiroshi Ono designed many of the sprites, including the player's ship and the Boss Galaga alien. Many of Namco's arcade games during the golden age of arcade video games through the early 1980s featured his pixel art, including Galaga, Dig Dug, and Mappy.

Galaga was released in Japan in September 1981. It was released in North America through Namco's partnership with Midway Games in October of that year. The game was an immediate hit and became one of Namco's most well known. It also had great staying power remaining in the top ten lists of most played arcade games well into the late 80's and past the video game crash of 1983. Galaga remains one of the few arcade games of the era to still be traditionally profitable and to this day it can often be found at a wide variety of arcades alongside much newer machines. (As opposed to niche places that are specifically 80's themed.) Like Pac-Man and its inspiration Space Invaders, Galaga is one of the games people think of when they remember the golden age of arcade games and arcade cabinets in general

Galaga also spawned two lesser known sequels, Galplus and Galaga ‘88. Updated and flashier versions of the game along with the original have also been made available for newer platforms such as PC and Xbox Live Arcade

And if not as well known as Pac-Man, Galaga has also become something of a mascot for Namco and has been referenced frequently by other media.

There have also been fairly random attempts at expanding it into a franchise like Pac-Man, for example the 2019 gacha game (yes really) Galaga Revenge

Closing Thoughts

One time I got a ipa from walmart that was themed after galaga and it tasted comprable to battery acid

— @Modern_Major_Jefferal

At the risk of giving away the femme mystérieuse regarding my age I will admit that the true Golden Age of Arcade Games was before my time. I only played arcade games at malls or birthday parties or wherever and I imagine that's how it still is with little Gen Alpha Galaga was the only 80's game I played a lot of, as all the other arcade games I can remember were much newer

Since then I've tried plenty of classic games in one way or another, but without glasses they aren't always fun in year of our lord 2024. Galaga is the only one I really like. The one I still come back to. It has a charm to it that has stood the test of time and in my opinion it truly is the best game of that era

If you like Pac-Man better you can write your own effortpost on it

There is an ongoing power struggle over who controls NixOS. This is a story of politics, pointless argument, thousands of wasted man-hours, corrupt jannies, and a coup d'état. The primary factions are one of , leftoids, and otherkin, and a faction of neurodivergents, libertarians , and rightoids unified against idpol.

If you don't care about historical details, skip to the section "Assembling the Constitutional Assembly"

Previous Threads

attempts takeover of Nix project

compares the fall of the NixOS drama to Evangelion and references Star Trek because they didn't janny wrongthink right

Historical Timeline of Key Events

2003

• Eelco Dolstra creates Nix, a novel package manager, and NixOS, a Linux Distribution.

2023

• Anduril, an American defense contractor, sponsored NixCon

• Various leftoids disliked that, and complained to the university it was hosted at. The university has a vaguely defined civil clause stating it studies exclusively "peaceful goals [to] serve civilian purposes"

• Less than 48 hours before NixCon was to begin, the university threatened to shut down NixCon, unsure the sponsorship wouldn't violate their civil clause

• Anduril was removed as a sponsor, and Anduril employees could not show Anduril logos or discuss their employer during their scheduled talks

2024

• Anduril sponsored NixCon, this time hosted in Pasadena, California, which had no such clause

• Various leftoids disliked that, and complained on GitHub and social media

• NixCon went on as planned

After NixCon 2024

On the official forums, users argue over whether Anduril makes unsafe, and mods liberally ban people on the "pro-sponsorship" side.

One banned user created a GitHub page of the politically motivated mods

Note: Mods are not the Nix board, but much like reddit mods, are independent, self-selecting, and control the forums.

April 21, 2024 - The "Open Letter"

On April 21, 2024, an "open letter" was posted, accusing Eelco of making Nix vaguely unsafe for "marginalized backgrounds" and of "liking" posts the authors dislike. The letter has an Executive Summary that is 2 pages of solid text, arguing that Eelco's inaction on "concern trolling" and military sponsors constitutes a crisis he must step down over. Of interest, it also has the following paragraph:

Finally, we acknowledge that any changes in Eelco's role, even if prompted by clear misconduct, are going to be interpreted as a bunch of left wing people taking over the project. Although the authors' politics are left-leaning, this is not about Eelco's political views, it is about his actions, how they have shaped the Nix project culturally, and how his actions do not serve the project's interests. We realise how this interpretation will lead to significant moderation load due to the out-of-community brigading activities of certain banned community members, as well as internal community debate.

The letter was signed by 160 people, only 35 of which have contributed to nixpkgs.

On April 23, GitHub user "HelpMeTheShadowPeopleAreStealingMyStuff" made a PR to add a CoC to the open letter, which was accepted.

May 1, 2024 - Eelco steps down

Eelco Dolstra announced his resignation from the Nix Foundation Board, stating the board will appoint a "Constitutional Assembly" to create a new governance structure.

May 2, 2024 - Assembling the Constitutional Assembly

The forum mods posted to GitHub inviting nixpkgs contributors to join a "Zulip" (like slack but worse) created for this process.

The Assembly Code of Conduct

The Zulip instance has a mod-created Code of Conduct that includes this laundry list of protected categories

These guidelines aim to support bootstrapping our governance structure, and as such all who can, should feel safe to participate regardless of background, family status, gender, gender identity and expression, marital status, s*x, sexual orientation , plurality , native language, age, race/ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status , geographic location, education, disability, otherkin status, or other aspects of diversity.

Otherkin are now a protected category! Personally, I think this is purely a bait wedge issue.

The section "Disruptive Behavior" has these examples:

• Bad faith invitations to engage in debate, regardless of the pretense of civility.

• Attempting to use the specific wording of rules documents without referencing or understanding their spirit.

No sweaty, your bad faith behavior is not allowed . Yes sweaty, we will ban you when we feel like it.

The Assembly Jannies

The CoC gives Zulip mods great leeway, so let's look into them.

The Nix forum mods are an independent group that recruits through unanimous agreement by all current mods. Several of them signed the open letter, and, in my experience, their ringleader is joepie.

On joepie's website, he boasts

I manipulate.

In case it hasn't become obvious to you yet, I am a social engineer. Full-time. 24/7. I use manipulation and other psychological tactics in nearly every conversation I have. I will try to change the way you think, and try to solve problems you might not even realize you had.

If you do want to know, just ask. But don't be surprised if my answer, at first, reads like made-up non-sense. Social engineering is very subtle.

The only way to counter manipulation through irrationality, is by manipulating people back into rationality. That is what I do. That is also why I will gladly tell you what I am doing to manipulate you. Manipulation for a good cause doesn't need to be hidden to be effective.

Elsewhere, on mastodon, moderator Raito celebrates the y'alling of the fascists

On lobste.rs, moderator Hexa shared the open letter. The "Paradox of Tolerance" is brought up.

The Zulip discussions

Let's peek over to the Zulip discussion, shall we? I wonder what the very first topic they're considering is...

Ah, 2 jannies and a discussing whether 2/7 or 5/7 of assembly members should be "marginalized".

After some arguments on technical ability, our resident catboy and resident leftoid agree, technical merit doesn't matter. The mods move dissent into a containment thread.

Another mod also does not like merit. What was that saying? Something something, "those who can, do; those who can't, janny"?

nat's favorite pastimes include calling people fascist and racist.

Despite this, users on Zulip are split roughly 55/45 against/for quotas, as this pol.is report shows.

Chris McDonough, by the way, has since declared the entire process an illegitimate and cynical power grab. He is also well-known for prominent contributions to Pyramid, a Python web framework.

One prominent Zulip user was Shea, who generally summarized major discussions and was the most prominent and well-spoken anti-quota participant.

Aaaaand he's gone!

Shea has since written a blog post about this.

A Crisis of Legitimacy

To wrap this up, some final words on legitimacy.

Several people have taken to the NixOS subreddit and to their personal blogs describing the entire process as illegitimate. They are largely correct. As of this forum post, the mods have gone ahead their original plan anyway.

They will have the board select an assembly of 3 long-standing contributors, 2 "marginalized" individuals, and 2 external "experts" who have been quoted as explicitly anti-meritocracy.

If you're keeping count of the votes, that's 4/3 against prominent Nix contributors, and in favor of whoever the board likes.

And that's the current state of this whole affair. The mods have chosen selectorate's composition, and final Assembly applications are being deliberated.

No, it's not about that Indian b-word ruining Scooby Doo, this is far more interesting.

On 5 February 2018, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (Cboe) Volatility Index (VIX), after nearly a year of low market volatility, increased more than 100% in a single day—from 18.44 at open to 37.32 at close. This sudden spike led to sharp losses for short-term volatility investors who had bet that the VIX would remain low. Several high-profile exchange-traded products (ETPs) that deliver short volatility exposure destabilized or collapsed. Questions remain as to what may have led to the crash on a day that eventually came to be dubbed “Volmageddon”.

Short volatility ETPs had grown extremely popular in the preceding few years because they had profited from sustained low market volatility. Leveraged and inverse ETPs experienced rapid 30% annual growth over the previous decade, exceeding the 20% annual growth of the wider ETP space. The underlying VIX futures market for short volatility ETPs was very volatile. The average 90-day trailing volatility of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index was, on average, 64.0% between January 2007 and December 2017, compared with 17.4% for the S&P 500 Index. Also in late 2017, S&P 500 volatility reached historical lows, at approximately 6.8%.

The two most popular examples of inverse VIX ETPs at the time were the VelocityShares Daily Inverse VIX short-term exchange-traded note (XIV) and the ProShares Short VIX short-term futures exchangetraded fund (SVXY). Both ETPs tracked the inverse performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index (henceforth, “VIX Futures Index”).

Following particularly low volatility in 2017, the combined AUM of these funds had rapidly grown to $3.5 billion by early February 2018. In the 5th February price crash VIX rose by 102% and the VIX Futures Index rose by 72%. The two inverse ETPs that tracked the inverse performance of the VIX Futures Index (i.e., the XIV and SVXY) collapsed in the afternoon and suffered abrupt losses. Their prices crashed in the run-up to 4:15 p.m. Eastern time, the daily settlement time of the VIX futures market and the time when ETPs calculate their net asset values (NAVs). The ETP prices continued falling in the after-hours market. By the open of the next day, ETPs had fallen by 97%, according to Bloomberg data.

Many analysts had already argued that the rise of ETFs increased the volatility of the underlying assets as a result of noise. Crowded trades and volatility premium also played a part.

The Value Proposition of Inverse Volatility Products

The VIX approximately tracks the volatility implied by near-term options on the S&P 500 Index. Investing in VIX futures contracts enables investors to take a long or a short position on the future level of the VIX. The VIX Futures Index measures the returns of a portfolio of short-term VIX futures contracts with a weighted average maturity of one month to expiration. Inverse volatility ETPs offer investors the ability to take short positions against future values of the VIX by offering a return equal to the inverse return of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index. Investors in such ETPs profit from unexpected decreases in the VIX and lose from unexpected increases in it. Investors also typically profit in the absence of unexpected changes in the VIX. The reason is that the existence of a volatility risk premium, as well as the negative correlation between VIX movements and stock market movements, implies that futures are typically upwardly biased estimates of future VIX values.

Indeed, by January 2018, the two largest inverse volatility ETPs were the SVXY and the XIV, with total AUM of, respectively, $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion.

The SVXY was structured as an ETF, and the XIV, as an ETN. Both ETNs and ETFs sell shares to outside investors and promise the return performance of an index that they track. An ETF typically purchases and sells assets directly to track an index performance. In contrast, an ETN promises an index's return performance without the mandate to directly invest in assets that are related to the index it tracks. Thus, the ETN is more likely to offer a return profile without tracking error. As such, it relies on the issuer's ability to issue such returns and thus the issuer's creditworthiness. One of the main advantages of an ETN over an ETF for investors is, therefore, that an ETN typically pays out the exact index return rather than the return of the ETF's asset basket. One of its main disadvantages, in turn, is that the ETN is more vulnerable to the issuer's credit risk.

The popularity and interest in inverse and levered volatility ETPs may be surprising considering the view that these products are not well suited for buy-and-hold investors and hedging purposes. A key reason is that inverse ETFs and ETNs must maintain the same “–1×” exposure to their benchmarks every day. Analysts had also proved and showed that the associated daily rebalancing creates compounding mechanics that can lead to poor long-run performance. Accordingly, prospectuses of inverse ETPs specifically note that these products are not appropriate for providing the desired risk exposure for periods longer than a day.

However, these products may provide value to investors through strategies. Many noted that investors may invest in short volatility ETPs because they are seeking to diversify, are reaching for yield, or are chasing positive return performance.

The Ball Gets Rolling

A VIX ETP issuer who sells a short volatility product to investors will typically hedge by taking short posit ions in VIX futures contracts. Doing so ensures the issuer of a neutral position. Normally, the issuer will match the futures exposure with the cash received from investors (or its AUM). Because the fund seeks to deliver returns equal to –1× the benchmark index every day, the issuer needs to rebalance its position each day to ensure that the mark-to-market value of its short futures contracts matches the value of the fund's AUM.

The XIV ETN.

The XIV ETN sought to provide investors with a return mirroring the inverse performance of the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Index (VIX Futures Index).

In early February 2018, the value of the XIV's AUM stood at $1.86 billion. As a counterparty to buyers of the XIV, the XIV issuer effectively had a long exposure to volatility equivalent to a notional amount of $1.86 billion. To hedge the full exposure and remain neutral, the issuer took a short position in VIX futures with a total market value of $1.86 billion. This procedure would ensure that any change in the value of the liability to investors would be offset by markto-market changes in the value of the hedge position. Suppose, for example, that the VIX Futures Index rose by 10%. The value of the XIV's AUM would fall from $1.86 billion to $1.86 billion × (1 – 10%) = $1.674 billion, implying a reduced liability for the issuer. The issuer's short VIX futures position would also suffer mark-to-market losses and fall from $1.86 billion to $1.674 billion. Overall, the issuer's gain from a reduced XIV liability would be offset by an equivalent loss on its hedge position. Going forward, however, the issuer would not be neutral and would need to rebalance its hedge as specifically, the notional exposure of the issuer's short futures position increased from $1.86 billion to $1.86 billion × (1 + 10%) = $2.046 billion, and the issuer would need to reduce the exposure of the short position to $1.674 billion.

The issuer would need to buy futures because the value of its liability became $1.674 billion, not $2.046 billion. In the absence of trade, the issuer would have a mismatch on its balance sheet, with a short position in VIX futures that was too large relative to its XIV liability ($2.046 billion ≠ $1.674 billion).

As a result, the issuer would need to close out existing positions through the purchase of new VIX futures contracts to remain neutral. In our hypothetical scenario, the issuer would need to lower its short volatility exposure by buying VIX futures contracts for an amount of $2.046 billion – $1.674 billion = $372 million.

In case of a drop in volatility, the issuer would need to rebalance its hedged position by selling additional VIX futures contracts.

The SVXY ETF.

Like the XIV ETN, the SVXY ETF sought to provide investors with a return mirroring the inverse performance of the VIX Futures Index. To do so, the fund sold VIX futures with a notional exposure equal to the fund's AUM. For example, in early February 2018, the value of the SVXY's AUM stood at $1.7 billion and the fund was short VIX futures with a notional exposure of $1.7 billion. The value of the fund then fluctuated in line with the mark-to-market gains and losses on the short futures position.

A rise of 10% in the VIX Futures Index. The mark-to-market losses on the fund's short VIX futures positions would equal $1.7 billion × (–10%) = –$170 million, and the fund's NAV would accordingly fall to $1.53 billion. However, the notional exposure of the fund would have increased from $1.7 billion to $1.7 billion × (1 + 10%) = $1.87 billion.

Thus, even though the XIV and the SVXY differ in their structures—an ETN and ETF, respectively—both funds feature a need to rebalance their hedge posit ions each day. The fundamental reason is that both funds are leveraged, in the sense that the notional exposure of the fund does not fluctuate in line with the value of the fund. Ie like leverage from a bank and playing it in the markets your exposure and assets do not move in synchronicity. In this case it even diverges more and more 😴😴😴

Volmageddon

The disproportionately large market share in VIX futures contracts held by leveraged ETPs (e.g., XIV and SVXY) amplified the February 2018 volatility shock through their rebalancing mechanism and contributed to their collapse through a feedback loop,

On 5 February 2018, the VIX increased more than 100%, from 18.44 at open to 37.32 at close. This increase is one of the largest daily jumps in the history of the VIX and came after several years of low volatility.

Concurrently, the VIX Futures Index rose throughout the day.

As discussed in the previous wordsX3 sections, this increase in volatility led to a drop in the value of inverse volatility ETPs' AUM and a simultaneous increase in the notional exposure of their short VIX futures positions. To remain market neutral, the SVXY fund and XIV issuer needed to buy VIX futures contracts to match their short volatility exposure with the reduced value of their fund's AUM. In deep markets with sufficient investors, the purchases of VIX futures contracts by ETP issuers with similar rebalancing needs would have had a minimal impact on the prices of VIX futures.

However, in January 2018, the XIV, the SVXY, and other ETPs with similar rebalancing needs after market hours jointly held a significant portion of the market. The market concentration was so significant that the purchase of VIX futures contracts as a result of rebalancing created further upward pressure on VIX futures prices and a feedback loop that would ultimately reduce the value of the ETPs' AUM significantly. Specifically, the purchase of VIX futures would have significant positive effects on futures prices and lead to further drops in the SVXY's and the XIV's AUM. The result would be the need for more rebalancing that would lead to even further drops in AUM.

Lesson for r-slurs:

Why do they mean by rebalancing. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

You have given me $10 (your net worth) to short shares. I short 10 shares of $1 and receive $10. My liability to you is $10, my assets under management/exposure (since I have to buy them back within a time frame) is $10.

Now let's suppose the share prices rise by 10%. So the 10 shares I have sold now would cost $11 to buy back. Accordingly I would exhaust the $10 I have got from short selling those shares and use $1 of your money. So your assets (my liability) take a hit of 10% (you're only left with $9) 😭😭😭 and my exposure increases to $11. This is why even though I haven't taken any loan, I am leveraged, since my AUM and exposure diverge more and more.

If you want to learn more, DM me, I'll send you some adderall

Anyway,

The ETPs traded from a 9:30 a.m. open to a 4:00 p.m. close, and by 4:00 p.m., the VIX Futures Index had increased by 39%. As noted previously, both ETPs tracked the inverse of the performance of the VIX Futures Index. Therefore, the increase in the VIX Futures Index increased the value of the combined short volatility exposure of the ETPs from $3.5 billion to $4.8 billion (+39%) by 4:00 p.m. At the same time, the AUM of the SVXY went down from $1.68 billion to $1.04 billion and the underlying value of the XIV went down from approximately $1.86 billion to $1.15 billion (–39%). The value of their combined AUM at 4:00 p.m. was, therefore, approximately $2.2 billion ($1.04 billion + $1.15 billion).

By this time, it was apparent that both ETPs would need to trade a significant number of contracts to remain hedged. Indeed, at 4:00 p.m. prices, the total short exposure in VIX futures contracts that the ETPs would need to close out amounted to $4.8 billion – $2.2 billion = $2.6 billion. In light of this, fund managers would have begun rebalancing before 4:15 p.m., the time when the funds calculate their NAVs and when the VIX futures market closes. This additional demand for futures contracts resulting from hedge and leverage rebalancing likely contributed to the significant increase in futures prices between 4:00 p.m., following the market close for the XIV and SVXY, and the close of the VIX futures market.

It didn't help that the needed number of contracts represented a significant fraction of open interest and volume. For example, in January 2018, the VIX futures market recorded a total open interest of 600,000 contracts, with an average daily trading volume of 400,000 contracts recorded over the five days preceding 5 February 2018 (Cboe 2020). Thus, the contracts needed for hedging and leverage rebalancing represented about 23% (93,000/400,000) of the average daily trading volume in volatility futures contracts and nearly 16% of every contract outstanding (93,000/600,000).

The rebalancing activities of other ETPs, such as 2× volatility futures funds, likely contributed additional upward pressure on VIX futures prices.

AI may also have kicked volatility dabblers in the nuts as High-frequency trading (HFT) also potentially contributed to the crash of short volatility ETPs, especially considering that the average holding period for short volatility ETPs is about 0.88 day.

Conclusion

In February 2018, a spike in market volatility led to a one-day loss of more than 90% for investors in inverse volatility ETPs. This even shows how leverage and hedge rebalancing, coupled with large market concentrations, can lead to sudden collapses of levered investment structures and significant losses for outside investors.

Post Script (Not my words)

Uninformed investors might assume that the leverage returns are generated on a continuous basis, so that if an underlying index is up 5% for a month, the double-leveraged ETF will be up 10% for the same month; if the index is up 10% for 6 months, the ETF will be up 20%, and so forth. That is absolutely not the case. The leverage is determined on a daily basis and the returns for any other period usually will not be double or triple the underlying index.

In order for the leveraged funds to achieve appropriate levels of assets so they can provide their implied leverage, they have to rebalance daily. In the case of an ETF providing long 2-times leveraged exposure, they would typically attain exposure to a notional set of assets equal to 2 times their NAV. An example would be an ETF that takes in 100 units in assets that does a swap with a counterparty to provide exposure to 200 units in performing assets. The rebalancing activity of these funds will almost always be in the same direction as the market.

In essence, a leveraged ETF is essentially marked to market every night. It starts with a clean slate the next day, almost as if the previous day had not existed. This process produces daily leverage results. However, over time, the compounding of this reset can potentially vary the performance of the fund versus its underlying benchmark. This can result in either greater or lesser degrees of final leverage over individual holding periods.

!math !r-slurs

!writecel !bookworms IN IN IN!!!!

Introduction

The early 2000's. Occasionally, a piece of fantasy fiction would break out of the nerd ghetto and hit it big--the crossover appeal of Harry Potter, or the hit film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings. But aside from these occasional breaches, the body of fantasy fandom remained siloed into web forums or in-person conventions that were often invisible to outsiders. Genre aficionados passionately discussed and debated authors who were household names to them, yet who most normies had never even heard of--people like George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan... or Robert Stanek.

Who?

Well, it was a different time. Could one novelist toiling in semi-obscurity develop a rabid fandom without attracting the notice of the broader SF/F community? It was almost believable.

Almost.

Writing

Stanek's magnum opus, the Ruin Mist Chronicles, is about three heroes--a spoiled princess, a boy mage, and an elf warrior--who go on adventures or something idk. Even people who've read them don't seem too sure. Perhaps a look at Stanek's prose can tell you why.

With the corporeal form the soul was offered a place of refuge from torment and within this form there remained bits and pieces of what had once been individual discernment, and this caused them to both fear and greet the return to darkness with an unsettling expectancy that chilled Amir

This is how I write during NaNoWriMo tbh.

A sphere of brilliant blue-white light enshrouded a body, radiating, pulsating, when the power grew to its strongest in a dazzling array that when sent racing towards his foe turned night into day as opposing forces met in full fury.

When I want an effect like this I just tell the reader to throw the book and yell "BOOM!"

Ywentir with its protective maze had succumbed by a different means than its ill-fated sister though it too had eventually fallen; yet as Noman well knew, for he had been there, Tsitadel' had never fallen, though its survival had been by the barest of margins and through means perhaps darker than even the dark forces would have levied against it

"Slop" would be too kind a descriptor, this is more "sludge."

While there's no place to neatly fit this in, it bears mentioning that Stanek wrote ~4 of these things and has been rereleasing them with different names and covers for the past 20 years.

If people like this post I'll buy one of these shitters and do an actual review. Stanek's given me enough entertainment over the years that he almost deserves it. The snippets I'm quoting were gathered by Rorschach, the universe's #1 Stanek expert (see acknowledgments).

The Stanek Army

Robert Stanek's success certainly has put the indie book scene on the map. Before him there was no indie book scene like there is with music and movies. Now there is... and his success has been the driving force behind it without doubt. His success also makes him a target of big publishers (and some authors) who don't want indie books to succeed

These days, it's too easy to pretend to be famous. You can buy followers, pay Indians to comment on your Facebook posts, and even rig chatbots to do your bidding. But when the internet was young, this was hard work!

Ansible Magazine, May 2002:

“Amazon Mystery. Authors of fantasies on sale at Amazon.com have noticed a rash of oddly similar customer reviews that rubbish their work and instead recommend, say, George R.R. Martin, Robert Jordan, and Robert Stanek. The number of Big Name commendations varies, but not the plug for self-published author Robert Stanek. Who could possibly be posting these reviews (many since removed by Amazon) under a variety of names? It is a mystery, but Ansible is reminded of how Lionel Fanthorpe's pseudonymous sf would often mention those great classic masters of the genre, Verne, Wells and Fanthorpe.”

Most early internet lolcows had only a few sockpuppets, often with their own unique characters and backstories. Traditional sockpuppets created the impression of depth of support, but not necessarily breadth. Stanek, on the other hand, went for pure quantity. But sheer quantity can become quality in itself. He was doing the work of entire Indian click farms or a horde of GPT bots all by himself.

Amazon deleted most of his fake reviews around 2012, but you can spot some of them on the Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, a lot of his best activity is missing completely--his sockpuppets would beef with people on the Amazon forums, and most of that was never archived.

Stanekian socks were also prolific Wikipedia editors. Most infamously, one inserted the following language into Wikipedia's "literacy" article:

...Illiteracy is one of many themes in The Kingdoms and the Elvesof the Reaches books by Robert Stanek. In the books, many do not know how to read because there are no books for people to read. The only book most people have access to is the Great Book, which discusses the history of the realms and the laws of the land.

Stanek also created a circle of better-developed author "friends" (without pictures, of course) whose blogs were entirely dedicated to peepeeriding him and trashing the dang dirty trolls.

One of those writers Robert Stanek helped was me. After being laid off from my job as a teacher, with a newborn at home and alone after my husband abandoned us, my baby and I were a few unemployment checks away from homelessness.

True quality.

Stanek's pseudonyms even included """Emily Asimov,""" who Stanek would really like you to believe is Isaac Asimov's granddaughter.

Emily shows great promise and skill in her rendering a complex storyline that matches the foundation series. Extremely impressed with reading so far.

Stanekian Web Design

There's really nothing else to say here. I encourage you to check both these out and just drink them in, because that little screenshot does not even remotely do it justice:

• Stanek's Website (must-click)

• Stanek's Website but there's a hyphen in the address and they're different, stg

• Note: If the link does not work, manually delete the "s" from "https" and reload the page. Just do not submit your credit card information to Robert Stanek.

The Stanek Forum

Stanek is definetly better than Jordan, Goodkind and Martin and slightly superior for me even to Brooks and recent Eddings. If you take note of the fact that I'm Eddings-biased, the result will be that Stanek is the best current author of fantasy.

A few months back, @HeyMoon speculated that thanks to AI, it is now plausible to create an entire online community with few/no real users. But back in my day, you had to do it yourself!

Enter the Ruin Mist forum. Back before Reddit smooshed everything, it was pretty common for popular authors to have their own fan forums. And Robert Stanek was no exception.

I'm interested in something. Is Robert Stanek the most successful fantasy author, published by small press?

I hope so. He's a wonderful amazing author

No other indie published fantasy author I know of is as popular as RS. I don't even think there are any indie published authors as popular in any genre.

Robert Stanek's success certainly has put the indie book scene on the map. Before him there was no indie book scene like there is with music and movies. Now there is... and his success has been the driving force behind it without doubt. His success also makes him a target of big publishers (and some authors) who don't want indie books to succeed. Sad considering I read an article a few weeks back saying how 5 US publishers control 83% of the US book market. The world needs more great authors like RS!

Mr. Stanek is certainly alone against myriad of vile enemies - the big publishers, the rival smal press publishers and the vanity press authors. They are all jealous of Mr. Stanek success, despite that this success if good for all of them. But I believe that Mr. Stanek's talent and devotion will prevail. :-/

None of the characters on this forum talk in any depth, including about the Ruin Mist books, and all of them sound alarmingly similar.

tolkien's characters and stanek's which ones you like and why?

Stanek's characters. I can feel them as friends and real people, unlike JRRT'ones, who are... heroes from a book and nothing more.

Stanek's characters are have flaws and personalities and like hopes and desires. I like how Emel and Adrina have a past together and it makes like there current relation more interesting. Same for Myrial and Adrina, Valam and Adrina. Xith has secrets it makes him interesting so does Vilmos.

Tolkien's characters reimnd me of robots wh oare prgrammed to dop things rather than have their own thuogghts.

i dont know i liked both. i do hear you about robots ;D adrina and vilmos seem flesh and blood. not so sure about aragorn and legalos and gimli

According to the ASOIAF forumgoers, Stanek does have one real fan: "Sparhawk," the owner of a small a Bulgarian fantasy magazine. I guess there's someone out there for everyone.

The Museum of Stanekian Art

I don't actually think his line art is terrible, but he really never learned how to shade or color. It's got this distinctive smudgy look and is just impossible to read from any sort of distance.

Of course, Stanek knows he's so good at art that he took the liberty of creating graphic novel adaptations.

Care to buy a print for $200?

Lolcow meltdowns

If you defeat enough of Stanek's thralls, you might just get a shot at the Dark Lord himself.

The people at the sites are likely the same ones who thought it was funny to stalk and harass readers of my books who voiced opinions online. They knew most of my readers are children, and also knew most of the readers they stalked and harassed online were children. They did not care. They did it because they think they can do or say anything online without repercussions. Well, someone someday will give them what they deserve, I'm certain. In prison, people like them usually get shanked.

Despite these indictments Amazon is and remains the most corrupt marketplace on Earth, and this corruption goes from the bottom to the very top of the company, as evidenced by what has happened to my books for the past twenty years whenever I filed official complaints.

They deleted your reviews, huh?

"David Langford did willfully and with malice of forethought cause material and economic harm to Robert Stanek through his online column."

Robert Stanek, Ace Attorney

The individuals who are trying to ruin my reputation have been spreading malicious, untrue rumors about me for the past five years. For the last few years, they've been doing the same to my publisher. As someone who has given all his life to his country and his community, I simply do not understand this continued and prolonged harassment of me personally. Not liking a book is one thing, reaching into every corner of cyberspace to spread malicious, untrue rumors is something else entirely.

I am asking members of the book community to help stop these activities, which appear to be hate crimes against a person who has never professed his politics, religious beliefs, or war stance. There is enough intolerance in the world; there does not need to be such intolerance in the book community. For those who have been a part of these activities, if I've misunderstood your intent, write to me and let me know so. I am not afraid to make a correction to statements that I've determined to be false. I would ask the same of you as well.

Stanek discovers AI

Sadly, nothing gold can stay.

I'd always thought Stanek deep down enjoyed writing his books. Otherwise, why would he have spent 20 years trying to prop them up despite their lack of sales? But unfortunately, the siren song of le AI revolution has ensnared another one. Stanek decided to shit out a 200 page self-help book slathered in AI stank. Fortunately, at least this means we can finally get a conclusion to the Ruin Mist saga.

• "Embrace Chaos, Find Purpose" stands as a bold departure from the conventional narratives often found in personal growth literature, such as those presented in "The Secret" and "The Purpose Driven Life." While these books have their unique strengths and have positively impacted many, our book carves out a distinct path in the realm of self-improvement and personal development. Here's how:

• Rebellious and Unfiltered Approach: Unlike "The Secret," which focuses on the Law of Attraction and positive thinking, "Embrace Chaos, Find Purpose" adopts a more irreverent and unfiltered tone. It challenges readers to confront life's messiness head-on, embracing chaos as a catalyst for growth rather than seeking to control or simply manifest a different reality.

• Active Engagement with Life's Complexities: In contrast to the faith-based and somewhat prescriptive approach of "The Purpose Driven Life," our book emphasizes active engagement with life's complexities. It encourages readers to carve their paths through the chaos of life, fostering a sense of purpose that is deeply personal and evolving.

• Celebration of Individuality and Authenticity: "Embrace Chaos, Find Purpose" places a strong emphasis on individuality and authenticity. It diverges from the more general guidelines of "The Purpose Driven Life" and the universal principles of "The Secret" by encouraging readers to find their unique voice and path, even if it means going against societal norms or expectations.

In the future, if someone ever starts spouting a bullet pointed list at you, start shooting. It's either an AI or a LinkedIn influencer.

Speaking of which, I won't directly link his LinkedIn here due to its well-known glowie properties, this is part of yet another failed Stanek grift.

In 2020, William transitioned into AI research and development, leveraging his expertise to drive strategic innovation and provide visionary insights through his whitepapers and talks. Beyond his technical acumen, he brings a unique blend of creativity as a writer and artist, underscoring his commitment to ethical leadership in the realm of AI.

In the mid 90's, online businesses following William Stanek's original concepts and technological innovations, helped to create the foundations of the commercial Internet. His seminal, early works for Macmillan were the first of their kind and provided the framework for early e-commerce and e-publishing. These same works introduced the concepts and developed frameworks for intranets, extranets, e-books, online magazines, and daily news websites—all concepts years ahead of their time and first published about and developed by William.

While his claims here are obviously full of shit, Stanek does know at least something about technology--his "real job" involves writing manuals for Microsoft products. The rest of his output is just an extremely expensive hobby.

Selected Episodes

Stanek pretends to be friends with Brian Jacques

This one is the Last Supper of Stanek lore. He posted this picture of himself with fantasy novelist Brian Jacques and insinuated that this was a joint book signing. Later, he'd claim the two were besties. Online, everyone accused him of photoshopping himself in. While Stanek did attend the other author's event, he manipulated the image to make himself appear as a cohost rather than a random fan. To this day, his legs have never been found.

The Stanek kids book series

There isn't really much to say about these other than the fact that he shat out like a hundred of them and they're fricking hideous.

Stanek fakes his own death and then just never mentions it again

Goodnight Robert, Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Stars, Air & Noises Everywhere

8/6/2020

After hearing about Robert, I broke down in tears, fits and sobs really, the kind reserved for family because Robert Stanek was like a father to some of us in the writing community, a favorite uncle, Uncle Robert, to others, and a valued mentor to a great, great many. So many writers, hundreds really, owe their start in writing and careers to this guy, and the same is true of thousands who work in Big Tech, on web-based platforms or in web-based businesses. This guy taught them all how to set up those very businesses. This guy who was larger than life. This guy who was so down to earth. This guy who was so humble. This guy who so loved life. This guy who so loved family. This guy who took care of everyone else. This guy who gave and gave and gave over so many decades to so many and never asked for anything in return.

The sneaky obituary never actually claimed he was dead, so maybe Stanek would have us believe this was a fake retirement? But anyway he forgot about it after a couple days and is back to his usual shenanigans. Welcome back, Lord Stanek!

Conclusion

So, why does he do it? After studying Stanek for many years, I don't know. Perhaps originally he just wanted to entertain people. Or perhaps he thought being a fantasy novelist was easy money. But in either case, when that didn't work, he began constructing an elaborate set of lies--far too many to recount in a single post. While a lot of what Stanek does online is fake, the rage seems real. Stanek knows he deserves fame and riches. What happens when he doesn't don't get it?

Something truly special.

Thanks to the advances of technology, it's now pretty easy to fake a vast following. But Robert Stanek did it himself, the hard way, paving the way for a multitude. Right now there are probably hundreds of Stanek-likes out there, but they miss the pure passion it requires to do it all yourself. I know that Robert Stanek is not really a world-famous bestselling author. But he's famous to me.

Acknowledgements

1. The ultimate keeper of Stanek lore is Rorschach, who runs a literary snark site called Conjugal Felicity. The site springs from the "sporking" community (Web 1.0 litcrit for insecure teenage writoids, and how I got into writing). CF has been updated very sporadically in recent years, but Rorschach recently renewed the domain. With his return, it's a perfect time to get into the wonderful world of Stanek. CF has a detailed 9-part article about Stanek's pre-2012 shenanigans, as well as sporkings of several Ruin Mist books. As of press time the site is down yet again, but most of it is viewable on the Wayback Machine.

• Conjugal Felicity

• Rorschach's Stanek articles and sporks

2. The Web 1.0 SFF fandom deserves a major shoutout. Traditional forums and blogs are disappearing and everything has been replaced by Reddit, Groomercord, or nothing. History becomes legend. Legend becomes myth. Already, so much of Stanek lore is forgotten, with original sources lost or deleted. As I dug through the graveyard of the internet to create this post, I felt a sense of profound loss. Love to all the people who hung out with their internet buddies and snarked about books before everything turned to shit.

• The Wertzone

• Ansible

• Westeros

• Trufen

3. Despite the work of my forerunners, it is still impossible to create a definitive Robert Stanek post because the man has been doing this stuff for over 20 years. While some of his shenanigans are lost to the sands of time, there's a veritable trove of unexplored idiocy--books no one's read, blogs no one's seen, angry replies that got deleted. So the ultimate credit goes to Robert Stanek, creator of Ruin Mist!

Nigeria used to be the largest economy in Africa, yet it suffers from abject poverty and poor living conditions for its citizens. It has the GDP to compete with 1st world countries yet it firmly functions as a 3rd world country. What is the reason for this? In this post, I hope to delve a little into it.

Early slave trade in Nigeria

Slave trade in West Africa began in the 1600s, and during this time, the practice formed the backbone of the country's economy. It is estimated that over 3.5. million slaves were shipped from Nigeria to South America and Caribbean colonies. By the late 1800s, Nigeria was part of the "scramble for Africa" which eventually led to Britain granting a royal charter to the National African Company (later renamed the Royal Niger Company) in 1886, giving it the power to “control the political administration and trade policies of any local territories”.

By 1900, the territory owned by the RNC was transferred to the British Crown, and the Northern and Southern Nigerian Protectorates were formed. They were united by the British colonial administrator Frederick Lugard in 1912, forming the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria. This formed tension, as Nigeria encompassed different ethnic groups. North and South Nigeria were united in name alone.

Don't be fooled into thinking Nigerians were happy with what was going on. Slowly but surely, resistance started building up despite the proliferation of English and other European imports. Resistance came from political parties such as the Nigerian Youth Movement which emerged in 1934 and eventually, after WWII, the country gained its independence through the Federal House of Representatives. You would think this would be the end of Nigeria's problems. The country is finally in the hands of the people! Boy, you would be wrong.

Inept governments and military juntas

Following 1960, Nigeria struggled to gain peace as the people were unhappy with the ineptitude and corruption of the government. This led to a military junta in 1966 which resulted in the death of Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balew. With the head of state out of the way, the military seized control of the country.

To quelch ethnic conflict, Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu announced that Biafra (a partially recognized state in West Africa that declared independence from Nigeria and existed from 1967 until 1970) would secede) would secede. This was not a popular decision due to how oil-rich the region was. Armed conflict broke out between Biafra and Nigeria, resulting in the Biafran War which lasted from 1967 to 1970 when the secession was renounced.

Then came the wave of military activity. A Supreme Military Council headed by General Murtala Ramat Muhammad took control of Nigeria in July 1975 and, after a coup d'état, a Supreme Military Council led by Muhammadu Buhari took over in 1983. Nigeria was ruled by several Generals during these two juntas until 1999 when, following a democratic election, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo was voted in as president.

corruption in modern Nigeria

Much like South Africa, Nigeria is plagued by corruption. The bulk of its wealth is distributed among the elite few while the rest of the population is left to suffer in poverty. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that Nigeria is rich in oil which generates high revenues to be stolen.

Corruption in Nigeria since 1999 has occurred within a culture of impunity. This has allowed N23 billion to be stolen by federal ministers through fraudulent activities ranging from embezzlement, payments for jobs not done, over-invoicing, double-debiting, inflation of contract figures to the release of money without the consent of the approving authority in ten major ministries. Consequently, this has led to the Institute of Development Research of the Ahmadu Bello University ranking political parties in Nigeria as the world's third most corrupt institution. During Olusegun Obasanjo's presidency, he was fully in-charge of the petroleum ministry, where high-level corrupt practices took place with impunity, including cases of hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil sold in 2002 not appearing on financial records.

This has resulted in a disillution in the systems of law and order in the country. Just as corruption occurs up high, it trickles down, making daily forms of corruption such as bribing a policeman a norm. A culture of what has been termed "awuf" has arisen in which it is seen as acceptable for one to acquire money through dishonesty, trickery or wiley behavior.

Ultimately, Nigeria is struck with the same double-edged sword that many African countries face. Their nautral resources bring wealth which only serves to attract those who are eager to misuse the funds. Consequently, it is believed by many that the military juntas that have taken place over Nigeria's history were motivated by the desire to gain access to the oil wealth which could have been used to empower the nation as a whole.

Conclusion

So what makes a dystopia? The answer is simple - lies. Corruption all stems from lies from the government, lies from everyday people, and lies from the military. You extinguish lies and you build a better country. I hope you enjoyed this short read. Tune in next time when I discuss Colonol Russell Williams or the megacorporation Samsung or some shit. Writing this stopped me from hurting myself.

Bye!

Aubrey, 27, Johnson City TN (currently in Avon, Colorado)

Personal Life/Education:

• Degree in Business Administration

• Hates office jobs

• Was working as a "scheduling coordinator" making $16 an hour

  • Tries to explain how she got fired timestamp

    • "He wanted to talk to my manager and needless to say, I got fired"

• Relationships timestamp

  • Single but "dating around"

  • Has been engaged but "[she] just wasn't happy so [she] ended it"

    • "he made good money"

• "When did this all start" timestamp

  • "[Her] parents told [her] 'No' a lot."

    • Segment where they call the father to ask him, father dunks on her and she copes

• boyfriend told her to get a cc for gas/food timestamp

  • Then she got a discover card afterwards with a $1000 limit :marseyxd

  • started spending money to feel better?

• "If you're expecting some dude to swoop in and bail you out, that's not gonna to happen" timestamp

• Wants to "travel the world" timestamp

  • Thinking about moving to California this time

• "Tired of living paycheck to paycheck" timestamp

• Admits that she has a fake tan

• mention of she has 1400 insta followers

Career:

• "Worked my my dad for like the past 5 years" timestamp

  • He has a hardwood flooring business

  • Inventory/jobsite management/whatever he wants her to do

  • $19 an hour

• Moved to Colorado to work in a Resort Town

  • Was a lift operator, transitioning into golf course when she returns? Seasonal work?

  • Does not know what she's going to do when it's snowing if she's working at golf course?

  • Employee housing, living cheaply?

    • $600 includes internet, electric, etc

  • Attempt to explain what she will do in off-season timestamp

    • Now she's going home "for like a month and then I might come back"

    • Basically a month vacation

• "Are you lazy?" timestamp

  • She says she's a hard worker (she's not working)

• 590 credit score

• Career Goals timestamp

  • Wants to have her own "mobile bar"

  • She has no bartending experience

• Discussion of her career future timestamp

Financials:

• Self-rated 4/10

  • She's seen 4 episodes

  • She took that financial score test before coming on and got a 1

• Credit Card 1 ($2399) timestamp:

  • Minimum payment $200

  • Missed payment

  • $2200 credit limit

  • 30%

    • She's shocked it's a 30% interest card timestamp

    • She never looked at the interest

  • "It'll be there though, it'll be there that's all I'm saying"

    • she tries to explain why she won't be working next month to try paying this off

  • But my fly-points timestamp

• Credit Card 2 ($3135) (Best Buy) timestamp

  • $199 minimum payment

  • $40 missed payment fee

  • $48 interest accrued

  • Claims she's living paycheck to paycheck (she doesn't make a paycheck)

  • opened this when she was getting a laptop, got a 4k credit line

  • Bought an apple watch, a TV

    • Apple Watch was a christmas gift for her ex-boyfriend?

• Credit Card 3 ($3970) () timestamp

  • Over the limit on this one too

  • Limit is 3'900

  • $298 minimum payment

  • Late fees

  • $96 interest accrued

• Credit Card 4 timestamp

  • Card she got for discount tires

  • Hasn't paid on it

  • Might have been sold off to collections

  • "I get calls all the time and I just ignore them" timestamp

• Credit Card 5 ($8573) (Discover) timestamp

  • "Every month they'll give you like a 5% back on Target or Amazon"

  • $643 minimum payment

  • $130 interest charged

• Credit Card 6 ($1325) timestamp

  • $21 in late fees

  • Interest free until paid off?

  • $51 minimum payment

• Credit Card 7 ($348) timestamp

  • $10 minimum payment

  • 350 credit limit

  • "On the app it closed it so I can't even make a payment on there so I have to call them to do that"

• Car (Eastern Credit Union) ($13350) timestamp

  • 3% interest on this

  • $325 minimum

  • 2018 Mazda CX-5

• Checking Account timestamp

  • $70 in here,

  • Lots and lots of online shopping, fair bit of eating out too

  • A few trips to liquor stores

  • Has a vaping habit

Spending pie chart timestamp

Hypothetical Budget timestamp

• $1812 in minimum payments

There are two types of Gundam fans: Gundam fans, and SEED fans.

-- @Pepperglue

For those of you who aren't huge mecha weebs — in other words those of you who've had s*x before — you probably weren't aware that May 7th and 8th marked the wide US release of Gundam SEED Freedom, the theatrical continuation of SEED Destiny from 2004. After twenty years the Cosmic Era Gundam setting has returned to the silver screens of fathom event weebery, and like it or not I'm going to effortpost about it. But before I get to my movie review towards the bottom of the post, I'll take the time to explain the history of this particular Gundam AU and why this Duke Nukem Forever of a movie is so hype (at least in Japan )

If you don't know what Gundam is, I happen to have an effortpost about it In short — Gundam is a Japanese giant robot franchise that has gone down as one of the most popular and iconic Japanese things ever, of all time. Consider that the Nips have built 1:1 scale models of the thing.

And on that note, the Chinese have built a statue of the Freedom Gundam, the only mobile suit not from the original setting to get 1:1 scale representation.

So what is Gundam SEED anyway?

Gundam Cosmic Era

The original Gundam anime debuted way back in 1979, and though it had a slow start and was actually cancelled prematurely, the franchise continued through strong model kit sales until the relevant television people brought it back for 85's Zeta Gundam This was followed by 86's Gundam ZZ, the last Gundam show of Japan's Shōwa era It was also kinda the last regular UC show in that the adventures of original MC Amuro Ray ended with the theatrical Char's Counterattack. Going into the 90's Gundam's popularity was starting to wane and soft reboots came in the form of Gundam F91 and Victory Gundam — both take place in the same timeline as the originals but advanced far into the future with very few references to their predecessors. F91 didn't even make it as an anime and was barely Frankensteined into a feature film in the editing room. Victory Gundam did air on TV but wasn't well received. It's remembered more for Gundam creator Tomino's depression induced angsty writing than anything else. It was also just really weird.

After Victory it was decided Gundam should be rebooted entirely with completely new settings. The first Alternate Universe was Mobile Fighter G Gundam, a radically different take on the concept in which the Gundams were super robots with kung fu powers and the humans were tournament arc fighters who also had superpowers. The main character was an adult (At twenty I think he's still one of the oldest Gundam MCs) and had the personality of Sasuke and Naruto combined Also the Gundams were ethnic stereotypes

The initial reaction from the veteran Gundam fans was quite hostile But nonetheless the Gundam AUs continued until morale improved After G Gundam came Gundam Wing After War Gundam X and Tomino's very own Turn A Wing is especially notable because while I think it was just considered okay in Japan It went down in history as the first Gundam show to be broadcast in the United States. Wing is what created loads of western Gundam fans and significantly contributed to the rise of weebery in general. That includes some of the people on this very site.

the one that is actually why I am an otaku is Gundam Wing. The birthday I had in second grade was Gundam Wing Related, with my dad attempting to make a Gundam Deathsycthe on the cake.

— @MatsurisAhoge

Going into the post world Sunrise needed another new Gundam show for the new millennium. The success of Wing in the west also made them realize they could milk these new mecha markets for all they were worth This new show would be 2002's Mobile Suit Gundam SEED, the start of an AU known to fans as Cosmic Era. SEED would take the series back to its roots and was also released in the west just under two years after the Japanese broadcast (as opposed to many years later )

Development and Broadcast

SEED Is popular for mech designs and with women.

An early idea for SEED is that it would be like the original Mobile Suit Gundam updated for the 21st century. Whereas the earlier AUs went in their own directions, SEED is similar to ‘79 almost to the point of a retelling. Both settings feature a future in which mankind has colonized Earth's orbit with large space stations. A war breaks out between the space people and the relatively heroic Earth government. The main character is a hapless teenager conscripted to pilot the eponymous Gundam and is kept around in spite of great whining because he's very good at it.

A defining plot point of the Cosmic Era setting is genetic engineering. In SEED's backstory the "Coordinator Boom" allowed people to fine tune designer babies and give them any number of ideal traits, setting them on track to be anything from astronauts to super soldiers to idol singer waifus As the decades went by enough Coordinator generations were created that some began to associate only with other Coordinators and form their own enclaves. Coordinators also developed a culture of selective breeding and arranged marriages between each other so as to keep their desirable genes pure. Eventually a rift formed between Coordinators and "Natural" humans and extremists in the latter tried to suppress them "for the preservation of our pure and blue world" With the governments of Earth turning reactionary and because they didn't have a nation of their own, Coordinators started squatting in humanity's newly built space stations and formed the breakaway government ZAFT. Gundam SEED takes place a year into the full scale war that soon follows.

SEED was directed by Mitsuo Fukuda who had previously worked on Future GPX Cyber Formula and Gear Fighter Dendoh for Sunrise. He was a huge Gundam fan and had asked to work on the newest project. In developing the series with Bandai he was happy to "redo" Gundam ‘79 for the 2000s. He also wanted a more "modern war" setting and in his own words 9/11 was a major influence for the conflict and MC Kira Yamato's pacifist ideals The show's producer suggested Saving Private Ryan as an influence. Apparently the resulting early storyboards were rejected for being too violent

The show's themes of racism, xenophobia, and political conflict were meant to mature the series and allude to the War on Terror. Fukuda created the racial conflict between Naturals and Coordinators as a "human element" to the giant robot action and compared the Earth-ZAFT War — which resulted after the destruction of an entire space colony — to the "unbroken cycle of hatred" between Christians and Muslims since Christ's death As Kira is a coordinator who fights as an Earth pilot, Fukuda compared the concept to an Islamic soldier fighting in the US military

SEED also took strides to focus more on conceptual sci-fi and reinterpreted the original MSG's Star Wars influences Originally Tomino basically ripped off George Lucas' Jedi and had characters with psychic powers called Newtypes, cryptically said to represent the future of humanity in space. Production wise Amuro being a powerful Newtype justified having a random teenager stay in the Gundam's pilot seat rather than a trained soldier. Coordinators in SEED are similar but generally lack supernatural powers. Their differences from normal people being genetic rather than abstract fuels the animosity between the factions and the themes of racial divide. Kira himself is eventually revealed to be a super coordinator to justify his piloting skills and give him sympathetic ties to the Coordinator enemies that Amuro didn't have to Zeon. Besides eugenics SEED also continues the original's themes of creating social divides from sci-fi ideas — for example what it might be like if people lived in space long enough to feel the Earth governments no longer represented them. Having genetics as a theme was itself inspired by all the GMO and cloning whatnot that was popular in early noughties futurology.

Fittingly enough for a ‘79 retelling, art for the mecha was done by MSG veteran Kunio Okawara, the designer for the majority of the mobile suits in the original anime. Kimitoshi Yamane contributed as well, preferring to focus on the ships, planes, and ground vehicles. Apparently Junichi Akutsu also served as a shadow designer for the series, cleaning up some of Okawara's designs for animation and practical model kits. Toshihiko Sahashi was the main composer. Fukuda's wife Chiaki Morosawa was the head scriptwriter.

You'll start to notice as SEED goes on that it gleefully rehashes 0079 with only a thin veneer of paint and a lot less of the charm and deep characterization. SEED does deploy its side characters wrll enough to make the show watchable if a little bland and souless.

— @kongojunglecel

SEED premiered in Japan on October 5th, 2002. Bandai Entertainment licensed the animation on February 15th, 2004 and it soon made its debut in the United States and Canada where, hilariously, it was edited down to a Y7 rating in the name of toy sales. This required about a twentieth of the anime to be cut.

SEED was a huge success and has left a great legacy upon the community of Japan and abroad. Some of the major characters were Top 10 favorite character lists of Newtype magazine 12 years after the initial run and the merchandise sold in the millions. Cosmic Era mobile suits continue to do well in Bandai sales are are a huge reason why the Freedom movie continued development even after so many years. SEED was popular in America too and many millennials and zoomers remember it as the second Gundam show they ever watched after Wing.

This isn't to say there are no criticisms of the show, and if anything the fandom's perception of Cosmic Era has actually declined since the noughties. The complaints about certain things like beam spam, melodrama, stock footage, and Kira Yamato surviving several implausible situations like some sort of Jesus have become memetic at this point. Many also complain about the animation quality. SEED was the first Gundam show and one of the first animes to be animated in an entirely digital format, and unfortunately the growing pains are quite evident. Even several HD remasters since 2002 haven't entirely fixed the issues.

There is also a divide in Cosmic Era perception between the Japanese and Western fandoms. The latter often take issue with SEED being a retread of Universal Century whereas Japan loved this aspect. Japan in general elevates CE to a solid all time second place ranking just behind the original while Americans are more likely to be divided in opinion.

Still, SEED was undeniably popular and so Bandai continued the setting. Personally I think most western fans who hate the show are letting their opinions of the sequel bleed into the original.

Sequelitis and Development Heck

And SEED Destiny takes a giant dumb in it as they bring back Kira "Jesus" Yamato.

SEED Destiny was the next major Gundam installment and represented the first time an AU got a second full length show as a continuation. The majority of the SEED staff returned and it was once again directed by Fukuda. The show is notably inspired by the ‘85 sequel series Zeta Gundam just as its predecessor was inspired by MSG — except when it's not.

The plot follows new protagonist Shinn Asuka, except when it doesn't, and previous characters Kira and Athrun serve as his mentors the way Char and Amuro mentored Zeta MC Kamille — except when they're the focus instead. The show continues the plot and character developments of SEED, except when it forgets. Otherwise the show takes everything from the original up to eleven, including braless space titties

Course it also seems to have twice the stock footage, beam spam, and animation goofs. SEED Destiny is almost universally considered a step down from its predecessor, and while still regarded as decent or alright to many Japanese fans, westerners hate it and still regard it as the scourge of the franchise. The show is disliked for copying Zeta in an awkward way, failing to develop Shinn properly, having a confusing and overly melodramatic plot, and for an unpopular ending that ruined all of Cosmic Era for some people. The director's recut of the original airing notably altered the ending in response to fandom unpopularity. Memetically, Kira's perceived invincibility was so bad some fans actually wanted him to die It's very rare anyone on an English language forum says anything good about SEED Destiny these days. Personally I didn't think it was as bad as people say, but I also acknowledge it represents a great stepdown that soured CE at the height of its popularity.

But in terms of things Bandai cares about SEED Destiny was still a success with solid ratings and DVD sales. Most fans still enjoyed the mobile suit designs at least and SEED Destiny still contributes to the perpetually high sales of Cosmic Era model kits.

If nothing else the show gave us this thing

Though SEED Destiny was wrapped up and Sunrise was already planning it's next AU, Cosmic Era had cemented it's popularity and would continue to a degree in the form of manga, two short OVAs, video games, countless meta references, and continued model kit sales including a few retroactively added designs from the HD remasters. All in all Cosmic Era is arguably the consistently second most popular Gundam setting and is certainly the second most developed.

And so Sunrise announced the tentatively titled Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Movie at Sony Music Anime Fes' 2006, intended to be the first theatrical Gundam movie since F91

Alas this was only the beginning of an eighteen year development that would last well after subsequent Gundam settings came and went. In 2008 it was stated that returning scriptwriter Morosawa had completed the writing for the movie, but also revealed she had been feeling ill since SEED Destiny. She asked for the fans' patience and for years no further official statements were made on the film's development

It doesn't seem like there's more specific reason for the film's near abandonment. I'd wager big daddy Bandai wanted the movie out when SEED Destiny was still fresh, but with the delays and the eventual release of successor series Gundam 00 the resources for the film were given to the new AU instead. 00 did indeed get a movie in Awakening of the Trailblazer while SEED's project remained in hiatus. Morosawa would pass away in 2016

But in spite of all contemporary doubt and the haters, anti-coordinators, and IBO fellators, CE would rise from the dead not unlike its messianic protagonist Takanori Nishikawa, a musician who contributed several songs to both the SEED and SEED Destiny soundtracks, claimed that a staff member at the 2019 Gundam 40th Fes. “Live-Beyond” concert told him production was still underway. In May of 2021, Bandai Namco Group officially announced the "Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Project ignited" initiative during the opening ceremony for the afore-pictured life-size Freedom Gundam statue in Shanghai, and headlining the initiative was the previously announced film project. The official website for the film opened on July 2, 2023, revealing it as Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Freedom

I dislike 00 more than I dislike SEED. At least SEED was indirectly responsible for giving us Cross Ange, and was a massive financial success so it saved the franchise. 00 was just a modernized version of Wing. But all of these shows are masterpieces compared to the utter shitshow that was IBO. That was genuinely one of the worst shows I have seen in my entire life.

— @forgotmyoldacc

First of all, let us give thanks to Bandai that more UC and CE content like The Origin and SEED Freedom has delivered us from the smelly smegma-buttered that was Iron-Blooded Orphans and the masturbatory yuri bait that is Witch From Mercury. Thank you Bandai in the sky and may there ever be yet another Freedom Gundam that needs purchasing.

Skipping ahead to the film's release (In Nipland ) SEED Freedom was immediately popular with fans and in its first three days sold 630,000 tickets and earned 1.06 Billion Yen, the highest three-day opening ever for a Gundam movie. By the next week, it has become the highest grossing Gundam film ever, surpassing Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space in the process with 2.68 billion yen.

As of this May the number has climbed to over 4.5 billion. The movie is planned for international release in 56 countries and territories, with May 7th and 8th being the dates for the widespread US release of the sub and dub respectively.

And now we come to my review

SEED Freedom: Dramneurodivergent Approved

Offical Rating: Autinema (Neurodivergent Cinema ) Definitely take your neurodivergent friends and if you don't have any then take some Gundams and make vroom noises Do not take any dates They won't understand the intricate CE lore and the sappy scenes may make them want to kiss you

Regarding the details,

The Mobile Suits

This is what we all really wanted to see right?

MC Kira Yamato's initial mobile suit, intended as an update to the original Freedom Gundam It's got a solid design and a nice reimagining of the color scheme that sets it apart from its predecessor. However the suit isn't actually Kira's main, climatic battle suit and you can sort of tell from the lack of, I don't know, grandeur to it. Still a nice design and I like that it's more in line with the Freedom than the Strike Freedom.

In typical CE fashion, Kira loses his mech halfway through the movie and basically gets a Dragon Ball powerup for the finale. Interestingly the Mighty Strike Freedom is actually an upgrade package to the aging Strike Freedom rather than a brand new suit. It serves as a nice meta bookend as not only does the movie show a Freedom into Strike Freedom transition yet again, but the Mighty upgrade being an attachment brings to mind his OG Strike Gundam from the very beginning.

If you thought the original Strike Freedom didn't have enough gold and that the Akatsuki had too much, this guy finds a balance and weaves it into the Freedom backpack wings which I liked. The gold is also fitting because this thing gives Kira Super Saiyan powers. Admittedly the laser spam of late CE is a little outside the realm of plausible conceptual sci-fi. Lacus also sits in the cockpit of the Mighty Freedom which brings to mind the Harute from the 00 movie.

And btw the Akatsuki shows up again too

Athrun's MS line continues with the Immortal Justice which funnily enough shows up before him in the movie, temporarily piloted by Shinn. It gets to live the whole way through unlike the Rising.

Shinn and Lunamaria eventually get updated versions of their old suits back. Apparently Shinn was a bad fit for the Justice since the movie treats him like a chump until the previously titular Gundam from the last series is returned, at which point he goes crazy again but as a good guy this time. The Impulse was modelled after its earlier version, the designers noting they'd planned to base it off the Destiny Impulse from MSV before deciding the original would stand out better from Shinn's Destiny. It comes with new backpack upgrades that again bring to mind the old Strike Gundam in a meta way.

Both mobile suits get newly animated sequences directly referencing their old stock footage spam from SEED Destiny. It's funny because that used to piss me off watching the anime. Now it's nostalgic, maybe because it wasn't literally stock footage.

The movie continued SEED Destiny's tradition of updating UC Zeon designs and giving them to teenagers. CE takes on the Gelgoog and Gyan show up,

Along with a Z'Gok piloted by Athrun, reminding the audience he was a sorta Char clone back when. The movie even pokes fun at dat chunkiness as Athrun literally hid his Justice inside of the former at one point. Another scene even has the main characters doing Frogman shit like at Jaburo

The main bad guys call themselves Black Knights and have MS fashioned accordingly. The designs here are a little over the top but in a way the stylized nature shows their technological advancement over more industrialized MS. I was more than reminded of the Cosmo Babylonia knight esque suits from F91, and as the bad guys from both movies style themselves as aristocrats, I doubt it's a coincidence. They even have fluttering energy "capes" like how the F91 mobile suits had energy banners.

The main antagonist flies something like a dark inversion of the Strike Freedom crossed with the suped up Cosmo Babylonia knight suits crossed with a little of Full Frontal's Sinanju. It's an interesting if ostentatious design that if nothing else succeeds at being different from anything else on screen in Cosmic Era. Though it does resemble the over the top designs of the latter manga like the Amaterasu.

And speaking of Unicorn, one thing about the movie that the kind of person who actually reads all this would appreciate are the cameos from earlier Cosmic Era suits not unlike the UC MS porn in Unicorn's battle sequences. Everything from the Windam to the GINN to those furry zoid things makes an appearance at some point, all lovingly rendered in non-stock footage

Even Yzak and Dearka get their old Gundams back

The Writing

I'll try not to spoil too much In terms of quality I'll say it's somewhere between SEED and Destiny. It seems like the staff really wanted a take two on SEED Destiny's storyline because the movie plays out very similarly.

As a Gundam Movie

All the original characters are walking anime tropes. The people you think will be bad are, in fact, bad. An annoying femcel's arc goes where you think it will. One of the main villains is a loli for reasons I didn't pick up on kind of like the little girl from Endless Waltz but actually evil. There are tons of flashbacks to Gilbert and the new villains will actually make him seem well written in comparison.

SEED Freedom handles returning characters well though and went out of its way to patch up a few fandom bugaboos. Kira is solidly the main character so screentime isn't juggled awkwardly between him, Athrun, and Shinn. Kira's character strengths are there but he also takes licks and learns from other characters without being perfect. Amusingly the movie gives him another Jesus moment but only in setting. His survival is obvious to the audience -- nothing like being in an exploding Gundam and somehow escaping off-screen.

Shinn finally gets to be a normal heroic protagonist though his situation is a little unsure and he's often just comedy relief. He does get to go ham once back in the Destiny though and Stella even makes a non-annoying cameo. When he was a little took weak in Destiny, Athrun here is back to being a badass and steals the show. Destiny also made his relationship with Cagalli ambigous for some reason so this movie made sure to pair them again. There's even a scene where Athrun defeats a mind-reading enemy by overloading him with horny thoughts of her

All the secondary characters I could remember were back. Ramius is still milfish Yzak and Dearka get real action scenes this time. The bridge crew from SEED show up a few times. Even the ZAFT captain who was just nervous all the time is recurring. The characters often get nice little snippets of memberberries like Andrew Waltfield showing up alongside a BuCUE and Mu getting a Newtype flash that saves him from attack.

The movie's politics are a little predicatble i.e. yet another flareup between Naturals and Coordinators, but the exposition left just before overstaying its welcome. The final battle was nice and neurodivergent filled with ridiculous power ups, one on one duels, nostalgic references, new mobile suit debuts, anime flavored worldview rants, and a nice Michael Bay's worth of explosions. The in me loved it, though normal people might think it lasts too long.

Course normal people aren't going to a Gundam movie.

But what if I'm a Normie?

This movie won't make sense if you haven't seen Cosmic Era, but hey it does have explosions and laser blasts. It doesn't have exposed tiddies but there are jiggle physics

It was definitely action heavy for a Gundam movie, more so than F91, Trailblazer, CCA, and the also recent Cucuruz Doan's Island.

Production Values

Cosmic Era characters are just kind of drawn weird, but that aside the movie is gorgeous. Mobile Suits are all done in CG so there isn't much nostalgic hand drawn action But they look seamless and merge well with the conventional animation around them. The special effects are dazzling and help to sell the beam spam. It ain't so bad when it's not just flat colors on your old fat-backed noughties TV.

The movie does still contain plenty of regular animation and much of it is greatly detailed. For example Fukuda personally drew a scene where Kira and Lacus ride a motorcycle and went on about the specifics up to the bike's reciprocating engine. Fukuda cited Star Wars and Top Gun as visual influences. Several scenes were fine tuned with the in progress computer imagery being printed to paper frame by frame so that Fukuda could directly correct it before recreating the CG. In a way the movie features CGI directed in the manner of animation, fitting for the movie of Gundam's first digital broadcast.

The music was done by some of the same creatives from the original shows including Takanori Nishikawa. One of the old TM Revolution themes from SEED even returns alongside the Strike Freedom. Also back is Tetsuya Komuro who hadn't worked on a Gundam project since Char's Counterattack.

The English dub features most of the cast from the NYAV Post redub of SEED Destiny. Shinn was replaced however and Mu is actually voiced by his original actor from before the remaster. I watched it in English because I may be but at least I'm not

Final Thoughts

It was good and it proves mecha kino is alive and well. Hopefully the financial success of this movie leads to more AU attention.

Then again I may be biased since I literally only go to the theatre for robot movies

And if you're wondering why I longposted about this, you gotta understand this was eighteen years in the making. It was an EVENT

As you probably know by now, I'm a sick, sick man. I am diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder along with OCD. This has affected my life negatively, but I'm still alive which more than many can say. Today, I'm going to explain the ins and outs of Bipolar Disorder. I hope you enjoy the short read.

What is Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is a mental disorder characterised by mood swings. In other words, the sufferer may have periods of great euphoria followed by an irrational manic-depressive episode. During the upswing, a Bipolar patient will experience the following:

• euphoria

• high motivation

• irritability

• risky behaviour

• heightened sexual activity

I am currently in an upswing and I have very little need for sleep. Five hours or less is enough for now, which is partially why I have time for this shit. I also feel highly productive and cannot stop myself from producing something. I wish I was a genius so I could channel this energy into something other than rdrama posts that 12 people will upmarsey and cause 3 people to block me. After the upswing comes the downswing which consists of depression, suicidal thoughts, a lack of motivation, and self-harm. How much self-harm? It is estimated that 30-40% of folks with Bipolar Disorder will engage in self-harming behaviour. Upswings and downswings are usually not congruent with what is going on in the person's life. For example, someone with a good life may find themselves in a downswing while others may experience a euphoric downswing as they ruin their life.

Quick notes from Holly!

Holly says to take benzos, avoid sleep, play The Last of Us Part 2, and listen to Cocaine 80s. In between these activities, make shitposts on rdrama.

How quickly do these mood swings occur? Well, it depends on what kind of Bipolar disorder one suffers from. With Bipolar I and II, each upswing and downswing can last weeks to months. However, there exists rapid cyclic bipolar which is typically characterised as a series of 4 or more upswings or downswings occurring within a 12-month period. Symptoms typically begin to manifest in one's early twenties, though signs may appear during teen years or it could onset in one's late twenties.

Difference between Bipolar I and Bipolar II

Though Bipolar I and II share many similarities, there are some key differences. Most notably, one can only be diagnosed with Bipolar I if they experience a manic episode. A manic episode is characterized by psychotic symptoms such as visual and audio hallucinations. Other symptoms include:

• racing thoughts

• disinhibited social behaviour

• hypersexuality

• feelings of grandiosity

• pressured speech

For example, someone may feel that they are receiving messages from God, hear divine voices calling their name, believe they can change the world, or are on a special mission. With the propensity for risky behaviour comes increased drug use and risky sexual behaviour. Such individuals typically end up requiring involuntary institutionalization, and they demonstrate decreased activity in the lingual gyrus region of the brain and decreased activity in the inferior frontal cortex. In contrast, Bipolar II patients suffer from hypomania which is more subdued and less likely to ruin someone's life, but is nonetheless still highly disruptive. They do not experience the psychotic aspects of mania and do not usually require hospitalization during a hypomanic episode.

What goes up must come down. When the mania or hypomania is up, we get to the depressive stage. This is usually a period filled with great regret, melancholy, and a downswing in one's mood. This period is usually longer than the hypomanic or manic phase and this is when the self-harm and suicidal ideation slips in. Activities that were once enjoyed now feel dull, and constant sleep is common. During one of my downswings this year, I had to be hospitalized after severe self-harming.

But wait! There's a third option! Some people suffer from mixed affective state. This is when a person experiences an upswing and downswing simultaneously. This is common in patients with rapid cyclic bipolar where the mood swings occur so quickly, they don't have time to resolve.

What causes Bipolar Disorder

It is currently not known precisely what causes Bipolar Disorder though it is estimated that it is 70-90% genetic with a minimal environment factor. For example, an abusive childhood can aggravate the condition or a significant life event such as the loss of a loved one.

Scientists have zoned in on variants within the genes CACNA1C, ODZ4, and NCAN, and polymorphisms in BDNF, DRD4, DAO, and TPH1. The end-result is dysregulation in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex portion of the brain.

Treatment of Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar disorder is treated through a combination of therapy and medication. Currently, I am on lithium (a controversial mood stabilizer) and Abilify (an antipsychotic). Previously I have also been on sodium valproate and serdep. And of course, I have been given a plethora of benzodiazepines. Typical therapy methods include CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) and DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy).

It is difficult to treat Bipolar disorder because those with the illness are often in denial about it and resistant to treatment. This is especially true during manic episodes. Hence, more than 75% of individuals with BD inconsistently take their medications for various reasons.

Bipolar Disorder memes and infographics

Conclusion

I hate being bipolar. It's awesome.

Tune in next time when I discuss the function of the foreskin or the Beat Generation or some shit.

Mathematics is the study of what is true of hypothetical states of things.

Plato, in the Sixth book of the Republic, holds that the essential characteristic of mathematics lies in the peculiar kind and degree of its abstraction, greater than that of physics but less than that of what we now call philosophy; and Aristotle follows his master in this definition. It has ever since been the habit of metaphysicians to extol their own reasonings and conclusions as vastly more abstract and scientific than those of mathematics. It certainly would seem that problems about God, Freedom, and Immortality are more exalted than, for example, the question how many hours, minutes, and seconds would elapse before two couriers travelling under assumed conditions will come together; although I do not know that this has been proved. But that the methods of thought of the metaphysicians are, as a matter of historical fact, in any aspect, not far inferior to those of mathematics is simply an infatuation, a lie.

For all modern mathematicians agree with Plato and Aristotle that mathematics deals exclusively with hypothetical states of things, and asserts no matter of fact whatever; and further, that it is thus alone where the necessity of its conclusions is to be explained.

Now a mathematician is a man whose services are called in when the physicist, or the engineer, or the underwriter, etc. finds himself confronted with an unusually complicated state of relations or wishes to know what relation of a given kind is involved. He states the case to the mathematician. The latter is not at all responsible for the truth of those premises: that he is to accept. The first task before him is to substitute for the intricate.

An imaginary state of things involving a comparatively orderly system of relations, which, while adhering as closely as possible or desirable to the given premises, shall be within his powers as a mathematician to deal with. This he terms his hypothesis. That work done, he proceeds to show that the relations explicitly affirmed in the hypothesis involve, as a part of any imaginary state of things in which they are embodied, certain other relations not explicitly stated.

Thus, the mathematician is not concerned with real truth, but only studies the substance of hypotheses. This distinguishes his science from every other. Logic and metaphysics make no special observations; but they rest upon observations which have been made by common men. Metaphysics rests upon observations of real objects, while logic rests upon observations of real facts about mental products, such as that, not merely according to some arbitrary hypothesis, but in every possible case, every proposition has a denial.

All these are results of common observation, though they are put into scientific and uncommon groupings. But the mathematician observes nothing but the diagrams he himself constructs.

Thus, the distinguishing characteristic of mathematics is that it is the scientific study of hypotheses which it first frames and then traces to their consequences.

Applied mathematics treats of hypotheses in the forms in which they are first suggested by experience, involving more or less of features which have no bearing upon the forms of deduction of consequences from them. Pure mathematics is the result of afterthought by which these irrelevant features are eliminated.

It cannot be said that all framing of hypotheses is mathematics. For that would not distinguish between the mathematician and the poet. But the mathematician is only interested in hypotheses for the forms of inference from them. As for the poet, although much of the interest of a romance lies in tracing out consequences, yet these consequences themselves are more interesting in point of view of the resulting situations than in the way in which they are deducible. Thus, the poetical interest of a mental creation is in the creation itself. But a hypothesis, in so far as it is mathematical, is mere matter for deductive reasoning.

On the other hand, it is an error to make mathematics consist exclusively in the tracing out of necessary consequences. For the framing of the hypothesis of the two-way spread of imaginary quantity, and the hypothesis of Riemann surfaces were certainly mathematical achievements. Mathematics is, therefore, the study of the substance of hypotheses, or mental creations, with a view to the drawing of necessary conclusions.

Aristotle was led into error by his own general philosophy. He makes, too, the serious mistake of supposing metaphysics to be more abstract than mathematics. In that he was wrong, since the former aims at the truth about the real world, which the latter disregards.

De Morgan and Sir William Rowan Hamilton, influenced indirectly, as it would seem, by Kantianism, defined mathematics as the science of Time and Space, algebra being supposed to deal with Time as geometry does with Space.

1st, this definition makes mathematics a positive science, inquiring into matters of fact. For, even if Time and Space are of subjective origin, they are nevertheless objects of which one statement or proposition is true and another false.

For example the science of space is no more a branch of mathematics than is optics. That is to say, just as there are mathematical branches of optics, of which projective geometry is one, but yet optics as a whole is not mathematics, because it is in part an investigation into objective truth. That is to say it cannot be stripped away to make way for hypotheses and build with just reasoning from there on. Physicists are constrained by the objective truth, mathematicians are not.

2nd, this definition erroneously identifies algebra with the science of Time. For it is an essential character of time that its flow takes place in one sense and not in the reverse sense; while the two directions of real quantity are as precisely alike as the two directions along a line in space.

3rd, this definition leaves no room for some of the chief branches of mathematics, such as the doctrine of N-dimensional space, the theory of imaginaries, the calculus of logic, including probabilities, separate from algebra and geometry.

Logic is the science which examines signs, ascertains what is essential to being signs and describes their fundamentally different varieties. In metaphysics, no skill in reasoning can avail, unless that reasoning is based upon the exact generalizations of the logician as premises; and this may truly be said to be an application of logic. But in framing mathematical hypotheses no logic is required.

The framing of a mathematical hypothesis does not, therefore, come within the province of the logician.

It may be objected to the definition of art. That it places mathematics above logic as a more abstract science while on the contrary logic is requisite for the business of drawing necessary conclusions. An application [of] logical theory is only required by way of exception in reasoning, and not at all in mathematical deduction.

We often hear men appeal to the “burden of proof” and other supposed logical principles; and in meta- physics logical theory is the only guide. But reasonings of mathematics such appeals are altogether unnecessary. Many teachers of geometry think that it is desirable that a course in logic should precede the study of the elements. But the reasoning of the elements of geometry is often bad, owing to the fact that the hypothesis is not fully stated.

Mistakes in mathematics occur not infrequently, and not being detected give rise to false doctrine, a mistake in the evaluation of a definite integral by Laplace, in his Mécanique céleste, led to an erroneous doctrine about the motion of the moon which remained undetected for nearly half a century. But after the question had once been raised, all dispute was brought to a close within a year.

Incessant disputations have, indeed, been kept up by a horde of undisciplined minds, but the disputants are one and all men who cannot discuss any mathematical problem without betraying their want of mathematical power and their gross ignorance of mathematics at every step.

But there has never been a single prolonged dispute.

It does not seem worth while to run through the history of science for the sake of the easy demonstration that there is no other extensive branch of knowledge of which the same can be said.

Nor is the reason for this immunity of mathematics far to seek. It arises from the fact that the objects which the mathematician observes and to which his conclusions relate are objects of his mind's own creation. Hence, although his proceeding is not infallible, yet it is so easy to repeat the inductions upon new instances, which can be created at pleasure, that when attention has once been directed to a process of reasoning suspected of being faulty, it is soon put beyond all dispute either as correct or as incorrect.

Hence, considering the immense amount of disputation there has always been concerning the doctrines of logic, and especially concerning those accuracy of reasonings in metaphysics, safest way is to appeal for our logical principles to the science of mathematics, where error can only long go unexploded on condition of its not being suspected.

Mathematics is the most abstract of all the sciences. For it makes no external observations, nor asserts anything as a real fact. When the mathematician deals with facts, they become for him mere “hypotheses”; for with their truth he refuses to concern himself. The whole science of mathematics is a science of hypotheses; so that nothing could be more completely abstracted from concrete reality. Philosophy is not quite so abstract.

It confines itself, however, to the universal phenomena of experience; and these are, generally speaking, sufficiently revealed in the ordinary observations of every-day life. I would even grant that philosophy, in the strictest sense, confines itself to such observations as must be open to every intelligence which can learn from experience.

Mathematics is not a positive science; for the mathematician holds him- self free to say that A is B or that A is not B, the only obligation upon him being, that as long as he says A is B, he is to hold to it, consistently. But logic begins to be a positive science; since there are some things in regard to which the logician is not free to suppose that they are or are not; but acknowledges a compulsion upon him to assert the one and deny the other.

All features that have no bearing upon the relations of the premises to the conclusion are effaced and obliterated. The skeletonization or diagrammatization of the problem serves more purposes than one; but its principal purpose is to strip the significant relations of all disguise. Only one kind of concrete clothing is permitted— namely, such as, whether from habit or from the constitution of the mind, has become so familiar that it decidedly aids in tracing the consequences of the hypothesis.

This the mathematician does without inquiring or caring whether it agrees with the actual facts or not; and, secondly, he proceeds to draw necessary consequences from that hypothesis.

The true difference between the necessary logic of philosophy and mathematics is merely one of degree. It is that, in mathematics, the reasoning is frightfully intricate, while the elementary conceptions are of the last degree of familiarity; in contrast to philosophy, where the reasonings are as simple as they can be, while the elementary conceptions are abstruse and hard to get clearly apprehended.

Mathematics studies nothing but pure hypotheses, and is the only science which never inquires what the actual facts are; while philosophy, although it uses no microscopes or other apparatus of special observation, is really an experimental science, resting on that experience which is common to us all; and this is why the mathematician holds the reasoning of the metaphysician in supreme contempt.

It does not seem to me that mathematics depends in any way upon logic. It reasons, of course. But if the mathematician ever hesitates or errs in his reasoning, logic cannot come to his aid. He would be far more liable to commit similar as well as other errors there. On the contrary, logic cannot possibly attain the solution of its problems without great use of mathematics. Indeed all formal logic is merely mathematics applied to logic.

Those propositions which can be deduced from others by reasoning of the kind that the philosophers extol are set down by mathematicians as “corollaries”. That is to say, they are like those geometrical truths which Euclid did not deem worthy of particular mention, and which his editors inserted with a garland, or corolla, against each in the margin.

In the theorems, or at least in all the major theorems, a different kind of reasoning is demanded. Here, it will not do to confine oneself to general terms. It is necessary to set down, or to imagine, some individual and definite schema. Like in algebra an array of letters of which some are repeated. This schema is constructed so as to conform to a hypothesis set forth in general terms in the thesis of the theorem. Pains are taken so to construct it that there would be something closely similar in every possible state of things to which the hypothetical description in the thesis would be applicable.

How it can be that, although the reasoning is based upon the study of an individual schema, it is nevertheless necessary, that is, applicable to all possible cases, is one of the questions we shall have to consider.

Thinking in general terms is not enough. It is necessary that something should be DONE. In geometry, subsidiary lines are drawn. In algebra permissible transformations are made. Thereupon, the faculty of observation is called into play. Some relation between the parts of the schema is remarked. But would this relation subsist in every possible case? Mere corollarial reasoning will sometimes assure us of this. But, generally speaking, it may be necessary to draw dis- tinct schemata to represent alternative possibilities. Theorematic reasoning invariably depends upon experimentation with individual schemata.

Accordingly, we may say that corollarial, or “philosophical,” reasoning is reasoning with words; while theorematic, or mathematical reasoning proper, is reasoning with specially constructed schemata.

Another characteristic of mathematical thought is that it can have no success where it cannot generalize. One cannot, for example, deny that chess is mathematics, after a fashion; but, the single steps of king, knight, and pawn; the finite number of squares; the peculiar mode of capture by pawns; the queening of pawns; castling; there results a mathematics whose wings are effectually clipped, and which can only run along the ground. Hence it is that a mathematician often finds what a chess-player might call a gambit to his advantage; exchanging a smaller problem that involves exceptions for a larger one free from them.

Among the minor, yet striking characteristics of mathematics, may be mentioned the fleshless and skeletal build of its propositions; the peculiar difficulty, complication, and stress of its reasonings; the perfect exactitude of its results. It is easy to speak with precision upon a general theme. Only, one must commonly surrender all ambition to be certain. It is equally easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

But to reunite, like mathematics, perfect exactitude, and practical infallibility, with unrestricted universality is remarkable. But it is not hard to see that all these characters of mathematics are inevitable consequences of its being the study of hypothetical truth.

It is difficult to decide between the two definitions of mathematics, the one by its method, that of drawing necessary conclusions, the other by its aim and subject matter, as the study of hypothetical states of things. The former makes, or seems to make, the deduction of the consequences of hypotheses the sole business of the mathematician, as such. But it cannot be denied that immense genius has been exercized in the mere framing of such general hypotheses as the field of imaginary quantity and the allied idea of Riemann's surface demonstrates. Even the framing almost always calls for good judgment and knowledge, sometimes for great intellectual power, as in the case of Boole's logical algebra. Shall we exclude this work from the domain of mathematics?

The logician does not care particularly about this or that hypothesis or its consequences, except so far as these things may throw a light upon the nature of reasoning. The mathematician is intensely interested in efficient methods of reasoning, with a view to their possible extension to new problems; but he does not, quâ mathematician, trouble himself minutely to dissect those parts of this method whose correctness is a matter of course.

One studies the science of drawing conclusions, the other the science which draws necessary conclusions.

Logic has to define its aim; and in doing so is even more dependent upon ethics, or the philosophy of aims, by far, than it is, in the methodeutic branch, upon mathematics. We shall soon come to understand how a student of ethics might well be tempted.

There are two characters of mathematics which have not yet been mentioned, because they are not exclusive characteristics of it. One of these, which need not detain us, is that mathematics is distinguished from all other sciences except only ethics, in standing in no need of ethics.

The other character,—and of particular interest it is to us just now,—is that mathematics, along with ethics and logic alone of the sciences, has no need of any appeal to logic.

Just as it is not necessary, in order to talk, to understand the theory of the formation of vowel sounds, so it is not necessary, in order to reason, to be in possession of the theory of reasoning. Otherwise, plainly, the science of logic could never be developed.

A prominent example of note is that in order to obtain a wireless transatlantic telegraph, men should be born. That is to say, it is bound to come sooner or later. But that does not make research into the nature of electricity needless for gaining such a telegraph. So likewise if the study of electricity had been pursued resolutely, even if no special attention had ever been paid to mathematics, the requisite mathematical ideas would surely have been evolved. Faraday, indeed, did evolve them without any acquaintance with mathematics. Still, it would be far more economical to postpone electrical researches, to study mathematics by itself, and then to apply it to electricity, which was Maxwell's way. In this same manner, the various logical difficulties which arise in the course of every science except mathematics, ethics, and logic, will, no doubt, get worked out after a time, even though no special study of logic be made. But it would be far more economical to make first a systematic study of logic. If anybody should ask what are these logical difficulties which arise in all the sciences, he must have read the history of science very irreflectively.

End of Chapter 4, Page 80.

Part 2, sometimes next week

!bookworms !math !r-slurs !classics

@neoconshill please pin

HOW COME ONLY BLACK PEOPLE ARE IN ADVERTS:

It's funny you should mention this as in the early 2000s up until 2005 maybe there would maybe be the majority of adverts still placate whites as the most prominent middle class, and consequent source of disposable income. But as South Africa went on as a Democratic state in which all races were allowed to undergo all types of word - by the time the early 2000s, a burgeoning Black middle class had begun growing, with equivalent disposable income.

And while whites on average would dominate the Upper Middle class bracket throughout the past 20 years, black peeps would become the most numerous, and thus the ever slimy corporate world would pivot their primary marketing base gradually to be predominantly the black masses of South Africa. This was for both local and International companies, including companies run by majority white owned corporations or businesses.

Additionally as the middle of the decade rolled around, it became clear that the ANC would remain as the most absolute dominant political party, and even through corruption and incompetence, the black majority of South Africa seemed ironclad in their unwavering support - thus there came the perception that black peeps would forever more remain in power and the be the dominant powerbase ethnic group of the country. This is significant, because many people thought that the completely lopsided OVERWHELMING victory of the ANC under the Nelson Mandela administration was just a lightning in a bottle, and would consequently equalize as the decades passed.

instead it would remain the status quo for the next 3 decades. Even after Mandela retired after only one term, the ANC would remain dominant. You see many non blacks like Indians and Coloureds would soon begin to realize that black peeps were very comfortable at excluding them from power. While the ANC would never approach anywhere to the discrimination of the Union of SA days, they would still employ discriminatory standards even in places such as the BEE governmentally enforced affirmative action - you will notice BEE is known as Black Economic Empowerment, coloureds and Indians need not apply, in hierarchy of BEE, blacks come before coloureds in job security for example, which is why the Democratic Alliance has held such a stronghold in Cape Town and the Western Cape province for so long.

Point is there was a tangible and evident shift of power into the hands of black peeps - not non-white peeps including Indians and Coloureds. And though it wasn't politically correct to poibt this out, businesses could sense this.

By mid 2000s more and more advertisements from vehicles to porridge and cereal ads, the shift from 50% into the favour of black dominant actors could be seen. Many Afrikaans boomers, including my parents would b-word and moan about this sudden shift, and would have this about how many nogs there were between their ads between their movies!

By the time the 2010s arrived, it became clear that black peeps were the preferred target demographic. Wat is interesting is that compared to the rest of government,, was that there were not top down initiative or mandate that corporations should pivot so sharply into catering towards black peeps near entirely - instead it was all voluntary as they sensed or at least believed that the newly created black middle class would be the most money abundant demographic available. This is not like Blackrock trying to influence its subsidiary companies to become woke, or the Sweet Baby Inc trying to influence companies as to their pholosophy and ideology of diversity.

This was genuinely a grassroots movement gradually over time as companies believed spending their advertisement budgets catered towards blacks would yield the greatest financial return - this was a genuine grassroots slow movement, which is in sharp contrast to the manifestation of BEE in Sports and all governmental and cabinet positions in the country. Of course this did not stop white boomers from bitching when they had soo M### and K####s on screen on their televisions for every fricking ad when I visited uncles or grandparents

Like imagine this meme every time you visit grandma holy shit god help me YES grandma I fricking knowwwwwwwwwww.....

NON-WHITES ALSO B-WORD ABOUT IT:

Of course it wasn't just whites bitching about this demographic pivot in ads and coloureds and Indians would also that the shift in ad actors were changing, but ONLY towards blacks, NOT towards Indians and coloureds. In fact the ads were entirely disproportionate. And while it is true that 75-80% of the country is black and Indians and Coloureds only make 13% of the country, even with that proportion in mind, the amount of coloureds specifically in ads were very lacking, if never seldom. This would become a bitching point amongst coloureds and Indians, whom are even more prone to vote DA than even the average white in general and could similar to RSA companies, also sense this change in character from both the corporate world and the general national Government mentality.

It became clear by the time the 2005 era arrived that the ANC would exist to benefit black peeps near exclusively and coloureds could only hope for scraps. There became a common saying that Coloureds were too brown for the Apartheid government, and too white for the modern ANC government. And like dispassionate restless young poor men in all nations, the conspiracy theories in the country amongst coloured young peeps was that the ANC was manipulating the nations' businesses to cater exclusively to blacks, at the expense of all the other (non-white) minorities like Indians, coloureds and chinese.

Of course there have never been evidence for this, as I said all of this was genuine gradual corporate lowest common denominator grassroots movement amongst businesses who just deemed that the pivot towards catering towards mostly black peeps would give the best returns on their advertising costs.

INTERNATIONAL COMPANIES ARE R-SLURRED:

Of course the coarseness of the Corporate world also sometimes failed to cater to black South Africans - especially International companies, who tried to advertise to black South Africans same way they did to whites, and completely blew it They basically just race swapped actors and ironically this would often backfire, as black safricans tended to hold different cultural norms to their hearts.

So even with the massive pivot towards black peeps, many companies ironically didn't fricking make enough returns on investment to actually warrant the shift, at the expense of alienating their coloured and white customer bases entirely! Here is an example article below.

https://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/423/17229.html

====(from article)

The strong South African economy and the growth of the black middle class have been responsible for many opportunities for South African companies. These opportunities have also seen advertisers caught with the need to attract new black consumers without isolating and losing their traditional white market. Unfortunately most companies are getting caught with their pants down – choosing middle of the road campaigns that fall into the void of untargeted advertising.

Effective advertising and marketing communication must take into account people's race, culture and social dynamics. Tailor made communication, sent through targeted media channels, talks to segmented target groups in a tone and manner that they not only understand but also appreciate. This will ensure that the product has an emotive link with the consumer.

Africaness:

Recently a white marketer put to me that when a black South African acquires a higher living standard, they become westernised and lose their Africaness, their desires and needs suddenly shift to be those of their white counterparts and they consume the same products as whites. This shows a complete misunderstanding of Africaness.

If we look deeper we realise that a black/white member of the higher LSM might be in the same income bracket but they are also very different. They come from different backgrounds and cultures and the experiences that have shaped their lives are far from identical. Although I agree that some experiences are intrinsically human, their Africaness sets them very much apart.

Research conducted by the Unilever Institute of Strategic Marketing and Research Surveys among “Black Diamonds” showed that 75% of them believed in slaughtering cows to thank their ancestors. The research also stated 86% of its respondents said they still believe in the practice of ilobolo. According to an article “Witness The Birth Of the Black South African Middle Class”, published on the Unilever Institute website on 26 March 2006, nearly half of the surveys respondents believed in the role and function of traditional healers. [So medicine adverts catering to black peeps, like headache Disprins, would fail badly!]

Very different answers

There is no debating that white consumers in the same LSM rating would have had very different answers to these questions (if they even understood the questions.) We have to wake up to the fact that black people are not the same as white people no matter how much money they have in the bank.

=====

Mataboge also notes that “SA's black middle class was a very complex group to understand because they lived in two worlds. The modern and traditional.”

We know too well of advertisers/marketers that insert black faces in ads that were initially targeted at their white consumers. This disrespectful and ineffective advertising is being rolled out by misinformed marketers who are under the impression that the black middle class aspire to be white and that a black face in an ad conceptualised originally for a segment of the white market is enough.

There are also those who make the mistake of lumping all blacks together as if they were all Black Diamonds and live the same lifestyle. Lazy advertisers who don't take time to conduct research about their target markets also contribute a great deal to this tragedy.

=====(end article)

Anyways the rest of the article bitches about how diverse the country and that all advertisers should try to make demographically oriented ads aimed at specific groups, but adknowledges that budgets force businesses to aim towards the maximum potential customers, thus leaving the ads to be very washed out and generic.

CULTURAL UNDERSTANDINGS IN ADS:

Anyways, the point of the article was to show that the massive "blackwashing" of all ads on the media, from basic shopping chains showing a generic good looking couple smiling with butter and bread in their hands, to clothing chains showing women in the latest fashion, didn't even appear to have such a concrete effect on black peeps in south africa, whom were culturally very different from the Burgerland black peers, whom were fully westernized. And thus just switching white actors into black actors, with westernized clothes ironically didn't show such an increase in revenue as they thought.

Example: many large shopping chains would be turbo cucked by local afrikaans butchers when it came to selling meat to Zulus, Xhosas, Sothos and lesothos, the ads didn't do shit in terms of getting them to buy meat, as they didn't celebrate westoid holidays and buying large quantities of red meat for the celebration of things like Easter or Christmas like whites.

However, afrikaners and boers who live in proximity to Zulus and sothos, were aware of the practice of ilobolo (ceremonies), and the high value of ancestor-worship which tribes like the Sothos have regarding funeral services, and the cultural need to slaughter cows on important days, and would place the most basic ads for their butcheries next to funeral homes or municipal notice boards, and black sothos would swamp these local butcheries and basically keep them from being overtaken by the much larger chain shopping stores, which had even larger butcheries and amenities, but basically would end up being associated with white middle class shoppers.

https://www.derebus.org.za/the-recognition-of-customary-marriages-act-and-the-practice-of-lobola-through-the-lens-of-the-sca/

The irony of the racist boers having a stronger cultural understanding than international corporations trying explicitly to placate them. A black guy on the shop for festival meat doesn't care about a Globohomo ad trying not to offend anyone, but a boer butcher who comprehends the importance of the specific cut of meat, or the type of cattle blacks prefer, would become immediately evident towards them with regards to the boer using phrases present in the practice of ilobolo (The custom involving the provision of marriage payments in cattle or cash, from the groom's family to the parents of the bride) and how they would like it to be slaughtered.

By this I don't wish to imply that no black-oriented ads ever work towards Safrican black peeps, or that they are somehow a bunch of savages who can't even comprehend medicine ads and instead use ritual junk to cure themselves, or that Safrican blacks do not wear western clothing, but merely that the cultural separation can be so strong, that ironically an offensive advert in the Globohomo style would end up less than useless, even as it attempted to pander to them in the most egregious sense.

THE BLACK MIDDLE CLASS:

Now back to Ben10Enyers question, as far as I'm aware there aren't exclusively black peeps in modern adverts anymore, it's still dominated of course, but has ironically become more diverse and even handed, or as even handed as generic featureless corpo crap ads can be.

Since the 2005-2015 period onwards, corporations would change their tactic to be more inclusive, it was believed that the Black Middle class was less stable than their white peers. While the current black middle class have grown to outnumber their white middle class by a factor of 2-3, depending on city, most Black middle class peeps have been found to be very unstable, because it's mostly in debt. White middle class had financial inter-generational wealth, and in comparison basically owned what they owned, where as black middeclass owned high class cars and homes onnly through debt which they paid on monthly credit disproportionally!

https://www.jstor.org/stable/48614444

Even worse, many economic investigations by university proctors have deemed that as much as a third of all Middle Class black peeps are only wealthy because of political connection and corruption meaning that it was only through political connections that they were middle class - aka they obtained jobs or positions through nepotism. Disregarding the nepotism, the economic problem for the economy is that they are not a stable middle class, as their positions are not guaranteed based on their merits, and they could thus lose their politically connect jobs through a change in leadership, and thus lose their wealth, and thus their capacity to be middle class and contribute toward the economy and tax-base!

https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/705879/south-africas-middle-class-is-drowning-in-debt-and-stresses-are-mounting/

Many white people in comparison, whom had come from intergenerational wealth, even the middle-class, could in comparison spend their wealth more "wisely", but so many black peeps since democratization in 1994, would be new to the practice of being able to obtain loans from the banks, and falsely interpreted the concept of loans as fricking free money. Many black peeps, even those currently in the Middle class bracket failed to understand that loans have to attained strategically, and often for the objective of enhancing your future business or state in life, and that most importantly that you FRICKING PAY INTEREST.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-09-29-sas-black-middle-class-has-grown-considerably-in-10-years-but-still-playing-catch-up/

The point being, is even as of 2022, post COVID lockdowns, in comparison to the black economic Middle Class, the white middle class, though not too great either, is much more stable, and often responds to targeted westernized adverts much more tangibly than their black countrymen, the same can be said for South African Indians and coloureds, whom are also much more westernized than their black peers.

Corporations and businesses have noticed this, and have consequently changed their depictions of actors and the races have been much more proportionate, at least WITHIN south africa.

I believe @AverageBen10Enjoyer probably mostly saw International ads, directed by international corporations not based within SA. Now those adverts would probably be 100% black, with the most corpo Globohomo possible variant of ads, showcasing only black peeps which the brainless suits of their organization deemed would make catering exclusively to black peeps would give the best return on investment, in spaces like SuperSport international stadiums

Probably these fricking corpos don't even know coloured people or whites even exist in RSA

Anyways I went very long on this one question, GOOD NIGHT

Prelude: NASDAQ has heavily underperformed Europe, it's underperformed China massively. China's up 25, 30% since its January lows.

Basic:

CITI Economic Surprise Index:

Citigroup Global Markets computes and distributes an index they call The Citi Surprise Index. They survey economists and analysts to get their forecasts for a variety of variables. Then Citigroup compares the forecasts to the actual data when it is released. The index measures data surprises relative to market expectations. A positive reading means that the data releases have been stronger than expected and a negative reading means that the data releases have been worse than expected.

https://iconadvisers.com/wp-content/uploads/ICON-Econ-Surprise-2020.pdf

The index has once again turned negative for US.

So there's all these things that are going on behind the scenes and maybe we've just been so fixated on inflation (previously covered) and the Fed that we're missing this real turn. And that's why we can see this turn once again to hard landing time.

We've been very focused on the central bank divergence, the prospect of the ECB cutting interest rates in June and the Federal Reserve maybe not doing the same thing until much later this year. And we've missed the fact that the economic data has turned, that the surprise index is now negative. So, the question is, does it continue?

Investors started liking yields once they got above 460. They thought it'd be in a 10 year range, 440 to 460. Now it might pull back to 430, even 425 if the economic data continues to be weak. And to be honest, there's already been enough weak economic data that we've ignored. (All US 10 year treasury yields marked as basis points).

Then the question is how do equities respond, right? People clearly had a Goldilocks type situation in mind where bonds do well and stocks do well. That will fade. And that could fade rather quickly as people start saying, hey, this has only been a subset of the economy that's been exceptional. It's not something to be optimistic about, rather something to be more cautious about.

But investors are now very worried that there's not going to be a smooth transition. They went from no landing to maybe softish landing to hard landing. And it might be justified because the data already supports some of that fear.

Now there's obviously a question about time horizon here. And whether this is a tactical view or whether it's something that's strategic over the long term you start to see. A greater chance of some sort of downturn that could more fundamentally challenge certain equity valuations. Which is it?

To some analysts like me this is more fundamental. And we've been seeing for the past six months to a year the China resurgence as China has been trying to sell their own brands and compete more directly with the West, which I think is going to put margin pressure on US companies. And what is of more concern is that, China will work domestically first, then sell into emerging markets, which they're doing at full throttle.

But US investors have always viewed Europe kind of as a potential weak link. The US has the ability to confront China, to draw lines in the sand and fight with China. And our brands are super successful. Whereas Europe has always struck USA as a little bit more dependent on China. Xi is already meeting with Macron. Expect to see more of that. For more info, look into the cars vs cognac battle going on even as Xi visits France as France tries to rear its head as a great power once again. 20th century once more, YOLO.

And unlike in the past 20 years where when China does well, we get a big slice of that here, the US is going to get less and less of a slice of that and more and more competition. Thus this is strategic valuations territory, not just a technical or tactical trade.

But why do shrewd investors think now is the time the market's going to kind of come to terms with it or face it, given the fact that earnings have been coming in pretty well. The earnings reports (see earlier post) have seen them retain their earnings power, even if they have lost some of their pricing power. And there were a lot of things, particularly from the BLS (again, see earlier post) including the jobs report, that weren't exactly terrible.

Well, the reason I'm beating the “China scary” drum is because of this:

For the first time, as Chinese stocks are doing better, there's signs that Chinese economy has bottomed. Investors will be watching very closely for a few names to see how their sales into China go. And if their sales disappoint while Chinese brand sales, the entire model of the last 20 years breaks apart. That, oh, our sale are only weak because China's weak. That model and rationale will be deemed as outdated.

And that's when investors have to really confront these valuation issues and multiple issues.

Tl;dr - If you're investing solely based on earnings reports or your mutual funds is, be ready for a nasty shock.

Diversion:

A lot of people have been asking me about Oil and Energy so here goes:

As we head towards the election, I would not be surprised to see spots of activity in and around Russia and Ukraine, other things that kind of push crude prices higher. One theory circling in Wall Street is that if Putin wants Trump to be elected, higher crude prices would suit Putin very well. So I'd watch out on that front. Oil has been, historically, a great geopolitical hedge. As the election nears, any activity in the Russo-Ukrainian front would push oil towards more volatility.

So what did I mean by saying oil is a great hedge and it will continue to be so for the near future?

Well, BP is expected to reverse a previous commitment to reduce oil and gas production by the end of the decade amid a broader pivot in the industry to continue providing the hydrocarbons the world needs. While keeping their 2050 net-zero targets intact, Europe's major oil companies have started to scale back interim emission reduction targets, acknowledging that their priorities now lie with returning more cash to shareholders. And most if not all, of these returns come from the fossil fuel business, not from renewables.

As BP prepares to announce first-quarter results on Tuesday, shareholders expect the supermajor to announce – not necessarily this week – new oil and gas production targets that would further scale back a 2020 pledge to cut hydrocarbon production by 40% by 2030.

Natural gas markets have already turned bullish thanks to EU mulling cutting off more Russian gas as well as a late cold snap in Europe forcing EU gas inventories to reverse course. Total energies CEO Patrick Pouyanne has predicted that natural gas and LNG prices will spike after the EU stops Russian gas from the Yamal LNG project.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia raised the price of its flagship crude to Asia for a third consecutive month, as the kingdom tries to tighten the oil market to prevent a global surplus. The hike highlights Saudi Arabia's efforts to keep the market tight amid fading war risk in the Middle East, which has helped drive oil prices in London lower. Iraq and the United Arab Emirates continue to pump several hundred thousand barrels a day above their agreed limits.

Regarding Brent prices, Russia Ukraine war is the main issue, Israel and the Gaza conflict cannot progress indefinitely and as soon as Hamas said yes to a ceasefire, Brent fell 7%. Volatility will lessen as soon as a negotiation is reached, which can come any day against the backdrop of Rafah (if not already beginning to take form https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-05-06-24-intl-hnk/index.html ). No matter how much Saudi tries to retain that high price by cutting production, it won't and can't sustain that level of volatility and high price based on production cutting alone. Iran is a factor but an Israel that unilaterally escalates against Iran could jeopardize Israeli-Arab cooperation, which has become essential to Israel's security. (More on that here: https://archive.ph/E2KWe ).

Additional info on Geopolitics here:

https://archive.ph/g4dH9

More on China. - Xi's Europe visit:

https://archive.ph/9HMYR

https://www.politico.eu/article/xi-jinping-emmanuel-macron-ukraine-vladimir-putin-war-weapons-state-visit-paris-viktor-orban-trade-state-visit/

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-nudges-higher-after-saudi-arabia-hikes-prices-2024-05-06/

!math !r-slurs

Repost of my original effortpost.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/norx8s/dale_akiki_was_persecuted_by_the_paranoid_ceos_of/

Go and bully him.

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/03/us/prosecutors-rebuked-in-molestation-case.html

Someone else can give you the wayback machine link. I've got other fish to fry.

Dale Akiki was not a lucky man. He was born with Noonan syndrome, which meant he was short, ugly, and often had problems with bleeding from his orifices. He had an IQ of 89 to 93, which meant he was a bit dim but still smarter than the average srdine. He also lived in California. He worked as a computer assistant in the navy, who sadly didn't immediately invade San Diego when he was unjustly imprisoned.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/noonan-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20354422

California has always had a troubling tolerance for wackos, and the repressed memory therapy found fertile ground there. The satanic panic is often remembered as a purely religious phenomena, but there was also a lot of bullshit pseudoscience and malignant feminism in the mix for those who weren't big on Godbothering but still felt like witch hunting. It all came down to womanly hysteria in the end though.

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1998/aug/20/cover-the-memory-wars/

Here a psychiatrist admits the whole thing is bullshit

https://sdpsych.org/Jon-Nachison-Ph.D

Dale volunteered at a daycare in his church because he was too naive to know that, as a man, you're never allowed to interact with children that are not your own. A lot of parents didn't like him because he was creepy-looking. Wikipedia claims it was Jack in The Box CEO Goodall who was his main prosecutor, but they don't provide any evidence of that and they're the only one who claims that so frick them for liars.

Then someone became convinced he was bad-touching the kids and, thanks to repressed memory theory, a bunch of six year olds were convinced that he was eating babies, pooping on them, and slaughtering elephants in front of them. In the church daycare. While mass was going. With the parents just down the hall. While leaving no physical evidence. And Mr. Akiki is the one who's mentally handicapped here?

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-10-05/html/CREC-1994-10-05-pt1-PgE2.htm

He spent two and a half years in prison on charges that were obviously bullshit.

A scholarly article that mentions him and his case.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt9z3622n2/qt9z3622n2_noSplash_b913980f921afb74035e8dd10103ba8f.pdf?t=nb0pj8

Here a lawyer reflects on the case

https://www.knutjohnson.com/publications/unfair-publicity/?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=a2e999a0d3f77e091e7c897361110d2455dece09-1622433611-0-AcMwZ8zcO6xAvle-ZXGpFbLYvG3xHtp6zE6CnzpLLoQfjd6ZIttGXPSOBCiJehffmebBrHunmpu5vpKU0rQ2Aw4Izb7TXG2nhdep9sCZIw3fZU3dobrdtXdB7jIbQKZwu2frTGLW9jyv5dt8QCYVJaYkTpsJMpHkFHPi2np0Kk3mo_RfsFggjxbJr8ut0JoYa2nEMDCjghhEEaSZV4BZwQXTFn68OKKGBa-mUjhlv0s_ddqq3cDEIKwhRnHLE4S_4TVja7uucDLjteRAr_H7VDYF9C5ZRRcPHj2BDgqDnN-zU1vTdjHw-Buw54TwEVSqJxKyJichOGE30BbxYbRkpMih6PhKzV-jzppgy7YVj22qlVPD5Um1BBJRn0zVjZc-6iHRbZYAgRzSdbWzMFmsab27tUX5EQFuvNakh095gYtwtl31IHb8yio5dC0DMKn3Vw

In Jail he was adopted as under the protection of one of the gangs who realized he wasn't a chomo because he was clearly being railroaded.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-29-mn-62110-story.html

Our friend Dale, however, was found innocent on all charges and was released.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-29-mn-62110-story.html

Later on a San Diego grand Jury told the prosecutor they had no case and everything that happened was bollocks.

https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/06/03/therapists-faulted-in-child-abuse-case/

Here he reflects on his experience.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-dale-akiki-reflects-historic-molestation-trial-2012may09-story.html

On the plus side, he got 2 million dollars out of the experience.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/innocence/etc/other.html

Then his wife died of a stroke at 45, and two million dollars is nothing compared to that.

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/wife-of-dale-akiki-dies-15-years-after-famous-case/509-93a3dc83-2280-4f7d-a542-9c847023eb80

https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/sandiegouniontribune/obituary.aspx?n=sharon-elaine-akiki&pid=124036292

Reeposts are pointless, so this special is

Now with further updates!

In 2007 they released a documentary about him.

Reason magazine did an article about him

https://reason.com/volokh/2018/11/19/remembering-the-dale-akiki-case/

The ACLU mentions him in a filing in Pennsylvania

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/TR/Transcripts/1993_0123_0008_TSTMNY.pdf

He graduated from high school in spite of being literally r-slurred

https://www.classmates.com/people/dale-akiki/4000064715922

A congressional record of the incident including the claim that he sacrificed a baby and cooked monkeys.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1994-10-05/html/CREC-1994-10-05-pt1-PgE2.htm

The story from Faith Chapel's perspective. Turns it it was all dirty hippies. Pastor Charles resigned two weeks before the trial began. Pastor George died of a heart attack shortly after the trial concluded.

https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1994/sep/22/cover-inside-faith-chapel-through-akiki-trial/

Mary Avery defends her action

https://www.protectedpaths.com/wp-content/uploads/13549281-Day-Care-and-Child-Abuse-Cases.pdf

Mary Louise Avery is dead!

https://obits.mlive.com/us/obituaries/kalamazoo/name/mary-avery-obituary?id=8433768

The La times gives some more information on her perspective

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-06-28-mn-7998-story.html

Even the National Review laughs at them. Especially because Dale Akiki can't drive and they claim he used a truck to transport his victims.

https://loudouncps.org/?mdocs-file=172

Call her Javert because she was prosecuting him because she thought he was guilty.

Mary Claudette Avery resigned

https://apps.calbar.ca.gov/attorney/Licensee/Detail/85876

She lived in San Diego so it may be her

She was a member and allegedly founder of San Diego Child Abuse Prevention Foundation

Which still exists as promise2kids

https://promises2kids.org/about-us/#:~:text=Promises2Kids%20is%20a%20leading%20nonprofit,due%20to%20abuse%20and%20neglect.

Unless the Child Abuse prevention foundation of San Diego county is a different organization

RedditArds reeeact

https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/h6qx0/today_in_1991_dale_akiki_a_disabled_man_with/

They seem to think Jack hated him because he was disabled rather than that Jack hated him because he thought he was molesting children because Jack is a gullible dumbass.

Here's the book everybody is constantly citing

https://books.google.com/books?id=-5RlDhkvDakC&pg=PA296&lpg=PA296&dq=%22San+Diego+Child+Abuse+Prevention+Foundation%22+mary+avery&source=bl&ots=Dq0oMtswwQ&sig=ACfU3U0UQrf22rW1HvA-gLBli20KD4otZQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHs_O0h_WFAxWcGVkFHZT8DqoQ6AF6BAhJEAI#v=onepage&q=%22San%20Diego%20Child%20Abuse%20Prevention%20Foundation%22%20mary%20avery&f=false

I know you all get off on misery, so I thought to spread some cheer and hope. (Don't worry, there's a bit of drama)

I recently watched a series of videos on the life of one Mr. Fred Rogers, a well known man by many Americans born in the 1960s through the 1990s for his production of the TV show "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" (1968-2001). His show was notable for how groundbreaking it was at the time and how it tried to teach children about what was happening in the world around them.

Don't worry, Mr. Rogers is actually a saint

I will be sharing video clips I personally find nice at the end. Skip to the bottom of the post if you can't / don't want to read.

For Europoors , Afri-cads , Brazilian Butt Bunnies , Seven Day Shitters , or you Chinese adjacent peoples , "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" was a TV program in the United States that sought to promote healthy early childhood development through teaching an understanding of emotions that a child might feel in everyday situations in addition to basic aspects of early childhood development. This was done through puppets , songs, and Mr. Rogers simply talking with types of people who the audience might not be familiar with. This comparatively new approach to children's television programming proved to be a breakthrough, with Mr. Rogers still being a highly respected figure to this day - including online memes.

Memes? Yes!

For those who are unfamiliar with Fred, you may recognize him from such internet classics as:

_

"The Ultimate Showdown" by Lemon Demon (2005)

(An extremely popular animated indie music video that focused on a pop culture battle royale, with Mr. Rogers ultimately winning.)

The original video has long since been deleted, but even the re-upload from 4 years ago has nearly 8 million views.

"Mr T vs Mr Rogers" - Epic Rap Battles of History

Kinda cringe but sweet

"Black Dynamite" - An animated Adult Swim show based loosely around the Blaxploitation film of the same name (Michael Jai White is kool)

And more recently (but not very, like 2020) a gif of him flipping the bird grew a bit popular out of context on various sites. I believe it began on Reddit, as many gay things do, but ultimately cannot confirm.

He was actually teaching kids how to use their fingers! How sweet.

--

He became so popular in American culture that eventually they made a bio-pic about his life, and the only actor wholesome enough to play this man was none other than Tom Hanks in a film entitled "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood". (7.2/10 on IMDB btw)

This man was so wholesome I actually started to want to find something bad about him - for a moment I thought I found something when I saw that Mr. Rogers founded a company called "Family Communications". I thought it was the same company/church that one Mr. Harold Camping led which exploited the infamous 2012 Rapture phenomenon that Internet Historian did a video about, but no. Harold Camping's company was "Family Radio", no relation.

DRAMA STARTS HERE

In fact, the only time I can actually find referenced anywhere where Mr. Rogers got pissed off was in response to BURGER KING.

Yeah, the shitty burger place

You see, in 1984 , Burger King wisely produced an advertisement aimed at children using a parody character called "Mr. Rodney", who taught children that McDonalds was bad by teaching them a new word - "McFrying". Burger King doesn't fry their beef patties, nooooo sir, we FLAME BROIL our slop

You can see the ad here:

The only issue was they never got permission to use his likeness... and of course that Mr. Rodgers actually cared about children.

What did Mr. Rogers do?

He called the Senior VP of marketing for Burger King, Mr. Don Dempsey, and chewed his butt OUT.

According to the apocrypha of Fred Rogers lore, Fred angrily talked for 5 minutes with the VP. A commonly associated quote from this call is "To have someone who looks like me doing a commercial is very confusing for children". - repeated multiple times in a soft yell. According to an interview with his wife following his death in 2003, he was very much furious at the impersonation. The rumors of his rage at corporate greed actually grew so great it inspired the Black Dynamite video above.

Mr. Dempsey pulled the commercial immediately. That one single commercial cost $150,000 at the time, which would be half a million in costs today. It was shown across the nation perhaps a couple dozen times before the plug was pulled.

Coincidentally, a month later, Mr. Rogers and a longtime director for "Mister Rogers Neighborhood" Mr. Paul Lally met the very same actor who played Mr. Rodney in the commercial. This is what Mr. Lally described of it:

More background... fast forward a month later: we're in NYC to film the Dance Theater of Harlem. Fred and the film crew are on foot, waiting to cross a busy intersection of Fifth Avenue and 152nd Street.

The light turns, we take off. Halfway across, a man shouts, "Hey, Mister Rogers!" We're used to that happening all the time. But what happens next is that the guy says, "I was the actor on that Burger King spot."

Fred comes to a complete stop and smiles to beat the band. "You did a marvelous job. I'm proud of you."

The actor grins, "Thanks, Mister Rogers." Then frowns. "Look I'm sorry it made fun of you."

Fred says, "I am too, but more importantly, I'm sorry you won't be getting any residuals."

The actor shrugs. "There's always another day."

"Exactly, and you're going to do just fine."

I'm watching the lights... they turn from green to yellow.... the traffic's getting ready to roll...

Just as I get ready to play traffic cop, Fred and the actor shake hands. He wishes him the very best, and we make it safely across to the other side of the street.

____________________________

TLDR/R-SLUR SCROLLERS STOP HERE

These are the videos I thought best capture the spirit of Fred, and if not that then the influence his shows had on the world around him. We will go in chronological order.

1. Bobby Kennedy's Assassination - "What is Death?" (1968)

2. Fred Rogers successfully argues to the US Senate for more funding - From Thousands to Millions (1969)

3. Fred cools his feet in a small pool with a black man during Jim Crow - Christ Did Thus (1969)

4. The Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz isn't so scary... - An Act is Just an Act (1975)

5. First major children's exposure to disabilities on TV - Jeff Erlanger Shows His Electric Wheelchair (1980)

6. Mr. Rogers Achieves the TV Hall of Fame (Special Guest: Jeff Erlanger) - Fame is a Four Letter Word (1999)

____

There's probably more, but I don't feel like looking for it :)

Willow, 27, Tuscon Arizona

Personal Life:

• Got COVID last week timestamp

  • tested negative this

• Has a kid in Tuscon, divorce just finished

• Has an IT degree + some IT certs

• Subsisting off severance pay, savings, and freezer meals timestamp

• Has a "partner" timestamp

  • Rekt the partner's car earlier this year

    • Early on in the relationship, things still going well

  • Partner is currently in the room

Career:

• Usually IT, got laid off 3 weeks ago timestamp

  • Has been applying to a jobs, about 10 applications a day, "getting kind of desparate"

• Uber driving timestamp

  • Was using the truck but it broke "really bad" and couldn't the fix

  • "Very first drive got blinded by the sun and wrapped it around a pole"

  • Car was worth 4 or 5 grand, Ford Focus

    • Mother gave money to bail out? And give partner?

  • Truck has since aged out of Uber

Financials:

• 401k $32'000

  • "About to get split in half" (divorce)

• Divorce Deets timestamp

  • 20k legal fees

    • Lawyer felt bad so no interest on a pay as you go timestamp

  • Caleb pretends he didn't notice this guest is transgender

  • "My ex-wife decided to kidnap my child across the country when I started hormones"

  • "She lied just long enough to establish residency in Tuscon and then I got served divorce papers"

  • Sold home in Michigan (a half-acre) for net $53'000

    • Home was a gift from family?

  • "My ex does have to pay for a portion of my attorney's fees now which feels nice" timestamp

    • About a third of them

  • Married for 4 or 5 years timestamp

    • Married because wife got pregnant

    • "A lot of pretty terrible things she did in the meantime which resulted in other bills I had to pay off"

      • Psych ward visit "from her abuses that sent me going insane"

    • 50/50 custody of the daughter, 4 years old

  • "Why was the divorce messy?" timestamp

    • "She got really resentful because she didn't want me to [transition] because she's Catholic and very strong in her belief that trans people aren't real"

    • "She wanted me not to have unsupervised access to my kid"

    • "During the divorce she accused me falsely of five felonies"

      • "Forging, child abuse, diddling the kid, and abusing her, and I forget what the fifth one was"

      • "That's why she has to pay a large portion of my lawyers fees, the judge was not pleased with that"

  • Wife is living with her parents rent-free, judge decided to count this free rent as income

  • Has until June 1st to get a job

  • Does not qualify for unemployment currently

  • Wife did have a job during the marriage

  • Used to have 3 cars, sold a Chevy 1 ton truck to help pay for the lawyer

  • More deets timestamp

    • Ex's mother is retired

    • Communication is "sparse" with a rude message from her here and there

• Worked for 6 months of the last year? Intiaily timestamp

  • Got a job mid-last year but it was "an IT sweat shop"

    • Explanation of this - timestamp

    • Making $52'000, "much lower than what I made in Michigan"

  • Tried to start a business, "it didn't work out well, I ended up breaking even"

• So where'd the money go? timestamp

  • "So first, I have a big stupid truck I love, that I keep fixing and I have a loan on it. It's lifted and-"

  • "So here me out-"

• Self-scored 1 or 2, "it's pretty bad"

• Credit Card 1 (Quicksilver) (9'167) timestamp

  • $334 minimum payment

  • $10 in transactions

  • 242 interest accrued

  • $167 over the credit limit

  • 30.7% interest rate

  • "For a while I wasn't allowed to touch the funds from the house" timestamp

    • Explanation of how he has this bill from needing to keep "both his cars"

    • Has another car in Michigan at his mother's house

      • "It's also very old and broken"

      • First car, it's always broken but he wants to keep it. "It works, mostly, there's always something a little wrong with it"

      • "I actually hate car-based transportation but I like cars"

• Credit Card 2 (Wells Fargo) (7'270) timestamp

  • $73 minimum payments

  • interest free but not any more, now 30%

  • no new purchases

  • "I've gotten very used to losing money at this point."

    • Caleb takes shots at the Reddit, guest takes a potshot as well

  • Thinking about bankruptcy timestamp

    • Pretty reasonable thoughts behind this actually

    • Has already talked to a lawyer about this, $1700

    • Planning to pull the lawyer fees from his retirement this goes forward

    • Would take about a month or two for the proceeding

  • Mother has agreed to sign onto a loan if needed, already bailed out once while he wasn't able to touch the house funds

• Credit Card 3 (Trio) (2461) timestamp

  • $49 interest accrued

  • $73 minimum payment

• Does not plan on using credit cards again timestamp

• Rent is $850

• Tried applying other places, "Walmart, the gas station down the road" timestamp

  • Rejected from these

  • Walmart mentioned specifically as ghosting him

• Car (Dodge Ram 1500) ($7'000) timestamp

  • From 2007

  • Bought in 2021 - 4 year term, cost 11'000

  • Truck deets timestamp

  • Thinks about $7'000 in repairs over the time he's had it

  • Uses for off road driving frequently for fun (based)

  • Repaired own front suspension

  • Partner bought him new tires

  • Thinks that it's worth more than he owes on it

  • 1 payment late right now

• RV ($20'000) timestamp

  • Bank this is from is "super shady" and won't give statements

  • Thinks 7% or 8%

  • 10 year term

  • has had it a little more than a year

  • Thinks it's worse more than he owes but would be extremely difficult to sell

  • 1 payment late right now

• Caleb pushes back on the bankruptcy timestamp

  • Caleb suggests that he move to Phoenix for better job prospects and only see kid on weekends [timestamp]

    • "That doesn't feel like an option - that kid has so many emotional problems from being taken from me, I couldn't do it to her"

  • Some pushback on whether ending up in this situation was actually out of the guest's control

• Checking Account timestamp

  • Some eating out, oil changes, fair bit of amazon, google, a car wash for the '90s car

  • He gets maybe 5 more car washes for the '90s car - wanted to fix rust on it?

  • $64 worth of steam games

  • $45 venmo to Therapist

• Got state health care? timestamp

• Partner hops on timestamp

  • Did not know about this much CC debts

  • Dog barks because nobody's paying attention to it

  • Partner has "about 10'000" in CC debt

  • On marriage

    • "not happening any time soon" both divorcees

    • partner is 25

  • Dog had lime disease when younger

  • Don't live together, did briefly because guest was briefly homeless in January

  • Guest and daughter were staying in the apartment for a little while

  • "She doesn't know how to cook so she heads to McDonalds"

  • "She hasn't been applying to fast food jobs" timestamp

    • "Only thing I can't see myself being able to deal with is fast food - it just seems so overwhelming"

    • "She's neurodivergent" timestamp

  • Guest hates IT and wants to become a lawyer timestamp

    • Thinks mother or grandmother might pay through school

  • Mention of a quarter million inheritance

• Birds-eye view of the debts timestamp

  • Caleb thinks it's 2 years to pay off

  • Caleb cuts it there