Random Awesome Shit – A Geek With Guns

The Collapse of Civilization

Some people are never happy. After decades of warning about overpopulation, the BBC and other news agencies are now freaking out because population growth is beginning to decline:

There has been a remarkable global decline in the number of children women are having, say researchers.

Their report found fertility rate falls meant nearly half of countries were now facing a “baby bust” – meaning there are insufficient children to maintain their population size.

Fewer tax cattle to milk. Fewer future solders to send off to die. Fewer future slave laborers to staff the prison factories. This could be the collapse of civilization as we know it!

Of course civilization as we know it is a cesspool and I’m not convinced that nomadic peoples didn’t have the right idea, but I digress.

Why would the BBC, after warning people for decades about overpopulation, report this news as being bad? Probably because it recognizes that, as a government agency, its livelihood is at risk because a population decline makes it impossible to continue the Ponzi schemes that are government programs. When there aren’t enough tax cattle being born to prop up the system, the system necessarily has to make cuts and most politicians are going to be more apt to cut something like the BBC than something like welfare programs.

Large Free Library

Here in the Twin Cities quite a few houses have little free libraries (as opposed to Little Free Libraries, which are specifically sanctioned by some 501 nonprofit organization that thinks it owns that term), which are small boxes filled with books. Anybody can take a book and it’s expected that anybody taking a book should also leave a book.

Little free libraries are a neat concept but some garbage collectors in Turkey decided to go bigger:

Turkish garbage collectors in the country’s capital city of Ankara have opened a public library that is full of books that were originally destined to be put into landfill. The workers began collecting discarded books and opened the new library in the Çankaya district of Ankara. News of the library has spread and now people have begun donating books directly to the library, rather than throwing them away.

[…]

The library now has over 6,000 fiction and non-fiction books and includes a children’s section, an area dedicated to scientific research books, and a number of English and French language books for those who are bilingual.

I would love to see this become a trend here in the United States. Although there are a lot of opportunities here to either donate unwanted books or sell them, I know a lot of books still end up in a landfill. Those books are effectively free inventory for anybody who wants to start a library of any size.

Firebirds

Humanity has enjoyed its position as an apex predator for only a brief period of Earth’s history. And while this time at the top was fun, the time to hail our avian overlords will soon be at hand:

The claim is that the birds pick up burning twigs from existing fires and drop them elsewhere to start new blazes. This would flush out prey hidden in the brush.

It starts with them using fire to flush our prey but it will end in them using fire to flush humans out of their cities!

Plan Ahead

Planning ahead can save you a great deal of grief, frustration, and money:

Two things are true of all festivals: the security is super tight and the booze is very expensive.

[…]

One guy from New York named Alex found an ingenious way to get past these two road blocks. Three weeks before the Electric Zoo festival in New York City, Alex travelled to the Randall’s Island where the event is located with a bottle of Vodka in arm.

He filled a reusable bottle with the Vodka and using a small shovel that he brought with him, Alex and his friends buried the bottle of booze in the ground a long time before the festival crew arrived to construct the stages for the event.

Alex is a real American hero (I know this story could be fake but I want it to be true so I’m going to believe it is).

On a more serious note, this tactic could also work for smuggling weapons into outdoor festivals. I wonder how many security providers have considered such a threat model. It’s also a difficult threat model to defend against since a security team would have to run metal detectors across the entire grounds and that would only offer protection against metallic weapons.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Not much good came out of the fiasco in Charlottesville but watching Christopher Cantwell cry like a bitch was one of them. The universe apparently decided I was a good boy because it didn’t stop there. OKCupid, an online dating site, announced that it was booting Cantwell from its service:

OKCupid joins a growing corporate backlash against neo-Nazis in the U.S. after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. Technology companies that once tolerated white supremacists are now booting them from their services.

The latest rally participant to see his digital footprint erased is Christopher Cantwell, a white nationalist and Web commentator who was filmed by Vice in Charlottesville. Facebook and Instagram removed accounts belonging to Cantwell and his YouTube account appears to have also been shut down. Now even his dating life is being targeted.

I guess Cantwell won’t be getting a date anytime soon. So nothing has actually changed for him. But this news is still damned funny.

Without Government, Who Will Plow the Roads

If you live somewhere that gets hammered by frequent snow storms, you’ve probably heard some statist tell you that the government is necessary to plow the roads. After all, without government, who would plow the roads? It turns out that porn websites will:

When Boston plow truck drivers get to work clearing snow during tomorrow’s big storm, they’ll have some help—from Pornhub.

Pledging to assist anyone who “wants to get plowed,” the adult entertainment site says it is sending out a fleet of branded trucks to clean the city’s streets and parking lots for free.

“The Pornhub team understands that by this time of year, most cities have run up their budget in snow removal,” Pornhub Vice President Corey Price tells Boston, “and we thought we’d lend a hand in getting our fans plowed.”

[…]

The trucks will also be available on demand to clear lots owned by small businesses, Price says. Requests for a plowing are being accepted via email at phubplows@gmail.com. They are not offering to plow driveways, he says.

And unlike government, Pornhub won’t force you to use its service or steal your fucking property if you refuse to pay it for services you’re not using.

The Future is Awesome

People don’t appreciate how awesome the future we live in today really is. Compare the life you live with the life lived by some of history’s wealthiest people:

If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you traveled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.

And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit — as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent — were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.

To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.

Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.
You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And — I feel certain — even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.”

While I spend a lot of time complaining about horrors statism has wrought upon us, we do live better today than anybody did in any point of history thanks to the wonders of the market. And since technology is cumulative the rate of advancement is even more rapid, which means our lives are improving faster than the lives of people in the past. For example, in my fairly short lifetime home Internet access went from nonexistent to dial-up to fiber directly into the home. The computing power available in my phone wasn’t available to the consumer market for any price when I was young. Even simple toys, such as Nerf guns, improve a lot since my childhood. Kids today have electrically powered fully automatic Nerf guns, something young me could only dream of. Although various diseases such as cancer are still a scourge our chances of surviving it have increased significantly.

While there’s a lot of terrible things going on in this world don’t forget that our present is an overall great time to be alive.

Good People Exist in This World

With all of the terrible shit that happens in this world I periodically need a reminder that there are some really good people out there. Take Mohamed Bzeek, for example:

The children were going to die.

Mohamed Bzeek knew that. But in his more than two decades as a foster father, he took them in anyway — the sickest of the sick in Los Angeles County’s sprawling foster care system.

He has buried about 10 children. Some died in his arms.

Now, Bzeek spends long days and sleepless nights caring for a bedridden 6-year-old foster girl with a rare brain defect. She’s blind and deaf. She has daily seizures. Her arms and legs are paralyzed.

Bzeek, a quiet, devout Libyan-born Muslim who lives in Azusa, just wants her to know she’s not alone in this life.

I have nothing but respect for Mr. Bzeek. Taking in and caring for children that are terminally ill is a tremendous emotional burden but it makes the last days of those children more comfortable. The world would be a far better place if it had more Mohamed Bzeeks in it.

Don’t Mess with Elves

Iceland is one of those countries on my list of places I’d consider moving to. The island has a strong history of statelessness, which still influences their society today in the fact that the Icelandic government is one of the less psychopathic governments in the world. Violent crime, whether it be perpetrated by a private or government individual, is very rare. And best of all, the elves on the island keep people in check:

Reykjavik (AFP) – Iceland has been forced to bow to pressure from elves and uncover a supposedly enchanted elfin rock after highway workers accidentally buried it — infuriating the mythical creatures, reports said Tuesday.

The angry elves were suspected of causing a series of mishaps after the rock was covered over when workers cleared away the debris from a landslide, the Morgunbladid daily reported.

This isn’t the first time elves have thrown a monkey wrench into the State’s mechanisms. The elves have been fucking with the island’s highway department since the 1930s. I have to say, living on an island where the government is actually wary of something would be pretty nice.

We Can’t Let There be a Giant War God Monument Gap

For being a super power the United States certainly doesn’t put much effort into its monuments. The Washington monument, for example, is just a giant phallus. The Lincoln Memorial is a bit neater since it does have a giant statue of a man on a chair. Mount Rushmore may be one of our most impressive monuments but it’s still just the faces of four dudes carved into stone. Other superpowers put a bit more effort into living up to the title. China, for example, just showed us who’s boss by building a gigantic 1,350-ton statue of a war god:

The statue has just been unveiled in Guan Yu Park in Jingzhou, China. It’s 58 metres (190ft) tall and weighs over 1,320 tonnes, and it contains over 4,000 strips of bronze. It was designed by Han Meilin, who is probably best known for his designs of the 2008 Beijing Olympics mascots, and the monument is so big that there’s even an 8,000sqm museum inside it! Guan Yu lived during China’s turbulent Three Kingdoms period. He carried an axe-like weapon called a Green Dragon Crescent Blade, which has been immortalised with him as part of the statue. The only difference is that the weapon now weighs 136 tonnes!

It truly puts everything the American Empire has built to shame. Not only is it huge but it also looks awesome: