You’re Doing it Wrong – Page 48

Activism Fail

Readers of my blog know that I have a major problem with the way homeless individuals are treated in our society. Various stores and apartment complexes in the United Kingdom have been busy installing spikes designed specially to prevent homeless individuals from sleeping on their property. Libertarians will point out that private property owners have a right to do such things and as a libertarian I concur. But as a decent human being I will also point out that doing so violates the don’t be a dick principle. Therefore it didn’t surprise me when activists decided to vandalize the spikes. However the vandals failed miserably:

They were all carrying buckets, which I soon found out were full of concrete. Tipping the containers all over the spikes, the stuff inside landed with a messy thud on the ledge. The activists then tried to spread the concrete out with some wooden slats, but it looked a little thick and wasn’t really budging.

When they dashed down a side street, I caught up and asked one what exactly they were doing. They explained that they were trying to drown the spikes in concrete, rendering the ledge non-spikey. “These [spikes] are in places where people are trying to find a cosy, less wet place to put their head down,” one said. “These are places that the underclass rely on. We give [Tesco] our money and this is how they treat us.”

[…]

After our chat they prepared themselves for a second round. This time they poured concrete mix directly out of a bag, then mixed it with the water al fresco. This mostly resulted in a powdery mess and a load of concrete-y water running down the pavement.

The lesson from this story is if you’re going to do activism don’t fuck it up. Have a plan and understand the elements that plan relies on. For example, if you’re planning to cover anti-homeless spikes with concrete understand how to work with concrete. Doing so will help you understand that concrete hardens over time, which means mixing it before you’re onsite is risky unless you don’t have far to travel. Likewise dumping concrete mix on a ledge and pouring water over it will simply cause the mix to wash away. What you really need to do is bring concrete mix, water, and a container to combine the two in to the site you’re going to be working at.

Take some damn pride in your work. If you believe something is worth doing then learn how to do it well. Otherwise people are just going to laugh at you.

The GOP Stupid Train; The Only Train in America the Run On Time

Will you look at the time, it’s almost Republican Candidate Says Something Stupid O’clock! Oh, and here’s the GOP stupid train right on time:

This week, an Oklahoma magazine discovered that last summer, Tea Party state House candidate Scott Esk endorsed stoning gay people to death: “I think we would be totally in the right to do it,” he said in a Facebook post. Esk went on to add nuance to his position:

That [stoning gay people to death] goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I’m largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.

If you go to the source link you will see that this isn’t one of those instances where Slate took something a GOP candidate said way out of context. No. Mr. Esk actually said this shit! And then he calls himself largely libertarian.

But this is par for the course. The Republican Party has a long history of candidates who say really stupid shit in public.

There Hasn’t Been 74 School Shootings

Advocates for gun control wouldn’t irritate me so much if they stuck to the truth. Granted if they did that they wouldn’t have a case for gun control but that’s another story for another time. One of Michael Bloomberg’s shell corporations, Everytown for Gun Safety, released a map that showed that 74 school shootings have occurred since the one in Newtown:

Tuesday’s school shooting in Oregon is at least the 74th instance of shots being fired on school grounds or in school buildings since the late-2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to a list maintained by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for policies it believes limit gun violence.

The problem is the list is a lie:

Charles Johnson, a journalist and writer, started sorting through the list Everytown published. He spent hours yesterday on Twitter publishing his analysis, one by one. See below for embeds of his stream.

What he found is that the group was far off base in its classification of what constitutes a “school shooting.” Events that occurred after hours, accidental shootings, suicides, gang activity and even a shooting in self-defense somehow meet the group’s definition.

In the fine print of their report the group says, “Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds.”

So Everytown for Gun Safety took every incident of a firearm being discharged on a school property and labeled it a school shooting. I don’t understand why anybody takes anything gun control groups publish seriously. Time and time again it has been demonstrated that they either outright lie or twist facts until they fit their agenda. Oh well, for the time being the media and a lot of people will lap up their lies so I will continue joining the rest of the gun rights movement in pointing out those lies.

Only Hillary’s Wealth Allowed Her to Go So Far Into Debt

Hillary Clinton has been trying to build sympathy by claiming she and Bill went broke during her stint ~~as a war criminal~~ in office. In all likelihood they simply shuffled their money elsewhere so they appear to be broke on paper but I digress. Assuming she has been telling the truth (I know that’s a pretty big pill to swallow but stay with me) and the Clintons are actually millions of dollars in debt. For that to even happen the Clintons needed to be both wealthy and have perceptible future value:

The story with the Clintons is that they left office millions of dollars in hock to various law firms. But this wasn’t some random financial misfortune that could have happened to anyone. If you found yourself in legal hot water, you wouldn’t possibly be able to hire the Clinton’s lawyers. No firm would let you run a multi-million dollar tab. The reason the Clintons were able to get away with it is that it was always obvious that Bill had enormous post-presidential earnings potential. This is a situation where the Clintons’ ability to go so deeply into debt is a sign of the vast economic privileges they enjoyed. Not just the ability to become millionaires after leaving office, but the ability to access certain aspects of the millionaire lifestyle even before leaving office.

To put it into social justice warrior language the Clintons’ wealth privilege (which is probably derived from their white privilege or something) is the only thing that enabled them to go millions of dollars into debt. It will be interesting to see the social justice warriors’ take on this matter. On the one hand Hillary is a woman and therefore a member of the oppressed class. On the other hand she was wealthy and has the ability to be wealthy again so she is certainly riding some serious wealth privilege. From what I’ve seen wealth privilege tends to override almost any oppression points and therefore Hillary is probably in shitlord territory.

Ermahgerd Weapon Lights

Do you have a weapon light mounted on any of your rifles or handguns? If so you’re a bad person. At least that’s what I get from the Denver Post’s recent article disguised as a study that attempts to link weapon lights to negligent police shootings:

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

“I don’t want anyone to ever sit in a chair I’m in right now,” he said. “Think about the officers that aren’t as well trained, officers that don’t take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will.”

Flanagan was right. Three months after the October 2010 shooting in Plano, a 76-year-old man took a bullet in the stomach from a New York police officer trying to switch on the same flashlight model.

At least three other people in the U.S. over the past nine years have been shot accidentally by police officers with gun-mounted flashlights, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Two victims were fellow officers.

In Colorado, Denver’s police chief banned the use of tactical flashlights with switches below the trigger guard after two officers accidentally fired their guns last year.

One of the officers may have shot a suspect when his finger slipped from the flashlight switch to the trigger, firing a bullet into a car window of the fleeing driver.

How your finger could slip off of a light activation button located on the grip is positively beyond me. But reading through this article one is supposed to take away how dangerous weapon mounted lights are. In reality the article demonstrates that police departments provide poor training for offices.

I’m a firm believer that you should become intimately familiar with any weapon you plan to carry. You should know how everything on it operates normally, how it will likely fail, and how to recover from any failures. If you add accessories to a weapon you plan to carry you should know how to properly use them. Any failure due to inadequate training isn’t an indicator that the equipment is faulty, it’s an indicator that the training is faulty.

If police departments are having problems with officers and weapon mounted lights it demonstrates that those departments really suck at teaching their officers how to use weapons with attached lights. In my opinion it also demonstrates the poor quality of the officers since weapon mounted lights aren’t fucking rocket science. On lights with with a switch in front of the trigger guard I guess I can kind of see a scenario where a very inept person could negligently discharge the firearm when trying to activate the light. But I can perceive of no scenario where a light with a grip mounted switch could lead to a negligent discharge when the user went to activate the light. The trigger finger doesn’t even touch the switch. I think you would literally have to be retarded to fire a gun when you were really trying to press the grip mounted light switch.

Hosting Major Gladiatorial Events is Expensive

Minneapolis will be hosting the Super Bowl in 2018. In order to do this the city had to agree to a long confidential list of demands from the National Football League (NFL):

Free police escorts for team owners, and 35,000 free parking spaces. Presidential suites at no cost in high-end hotels. Free billboards across the Twin Cities. Guarantees to receive all revenue from the game’s ticket sales — even a requirement for NFL-preferred ATMs at the stadium.

Those requirements and many others are detailed in 153 pages of NFL specifications for the game. An official on the host committee that successfully sought the game — Minneapolis beat out Indianapolis and New Orleans — said the panel had agreed to a majority of the conditions but would not elaborate.

The document, which the Star Tribune obtained through sources, has not been released publicly but shows how the NFL will control the event and many of its public aspects. The NFL declined to comment on the document and host committee officials are declining to make it public, citing state data privacy laws.

It doesn’t appear as though the Star Tribune posted the document so I can only assume that making the lives of the homeless miserable was also stipulated somewhere in that contract.

It’s amazing what a bunch of wealthy NFL officials demand from a city in order for it to be allowed the “privilege” of hosting one year’s major game. City officials will justify paying for all of this with tax money by claiming the game will bring major economic activity. Of course there is no way for them to know that before, during, or after the event because such things are unknowable (sorry Keynesians but you can’t accurately predict such things as the continued failure of you school to accurately predict economic matters has demonstrated). And we also know that hosting these games has nothing to do with economic activity. They’re just ways for city officials to make their dicks look bigger to other cities that wanted to host the game.

Real Life Idiocracy

I keep telling people that the movie Idiocracy made an accurate prediction it just set itself too far into the future. We now officially have the opening to the movie. There is currently an investigation into a prostitution ring as Ford Hood:

FORT HOOD, Texas – Testimony was to resume at the military court hearing of a Fort Hood sergeant accused of setting up a prostitution ring with cash-strapped female soldiers.

Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen is facing more than 21 criminal charges filed in March that include pandering, adultery and sexual assault.

I’m betting Mr. McQueen knows a pimp by the name of Upgrayedd:

After Getting the Super Bowl Minneapolis Begins Cracking Down on the Homeless

Minneapolis “won” (in other words bought) the “prestigious” award of hosting the 2018 Super Bowl. With only four years until the big game Minneapolis is scrambling to finish up its new stadium and to rid the city of, shall we say, undesirables. Stage one of creating the facade that Minneapolis doesn’t have a homeless problem has already begun:

As part of a campaign called “Give Real Change,” billboards have popped up along Hennepin Avenue urging people to instead give money to the organization, which aims to end homelessness.

Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said the effort is designed to help panhandlers, not hurt them.

“Everyone agrees, five bucks on the street is just going to perpetuate a life circumstance that is not conducive to long-term health,” he said. “That five dollars would be better invested in longer-term solutions to deal with the root cause of someone’s homelessness.”

When a city official talks about helping the homeless what he really means is making their lives so miserable that they go somewhere else. Part of this involves regulations that prevent people from assisting the homeless (for example, feeding them). Another part involves centralizing as much homeless assistance as possible under one easily controlled roof. Once resources are centralized it’s a trivial matter to distribute them in such a way as to maximize homeless misery.

We must also remember that this campaign is only stage one. Stage two will probably involve making it illegal to give money to panhandlers, stage three will likely involve a crackdown on anybody attempting to feed the homeless (again, to protect the homeless from food of questionable nutrition!), and stage four will probably involve rounding up all of the homeless people and driving them to the border of North Dakota a week before the Super Bowl begins.

But sometimes you have to make a few miserable lives more miserable if you want everybody coming into town for the big game to see how problem-free your town is!

My Favorite Part of the Minimum Wage Battle

My favorite part of the minimum wage battle, which is also my favorite part of the gun control battle, is no matter how much the advocates get they still demand more. Seattle just passed a $15 per hour minimum wage. Much celebration was had but now it is time to begin complaining that $15 per hour isn’t enough:

SEATTLE (AP) — A $15 minimum wage like the one adopted in Seattle doesn’t buy many luxuries in most American cities.

Lattes, theater tickets and cable television will still be out of reach for most minimum-wage workers. But about $31,000 a year should be enough to pay the average rent for a shared one-bedroom apartment, plus utilities, health insurance, groceries and an inexpensive cellphone plan.

At first we were told that the minimum wage was a living wage. That is to say it was supposed be enough to allow a person to acquire the bare essentials to survive. Now it’s about luxuries as well. Hopefully this eventually leads to $1 million per year minimum wage so we all become millionaires. That’ll totally solve all of our problems, right?

Science, How Does That Work

One of my pet peeves are agenda pieces pushed as scientific research. As the political climate in the United States becomes more toxic the propensity for individuals to create agenda pieces and attempt to pass them off as scientific research seems to be increasing, which isn’t surprising. Most of you who have read this far probably think I’m going to go into a tirade about global warming. I’m sorry to disappoint you but that’s not happening. No the subject of this post is a link that I’ve been seeing make the rounds in the social justice warrior circles. In their pursuit to be offended they have found a supposed research paper that demonstrates without a doubt that we’re all a bunch of sexist fucks:

ople don’t take hurricanes as seriously if they have a feminine name and the consequences are deadly, finds a new groundbreaking study.

Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.

Well isn’t that something our societal sexism is literally kill us. Except, you know, it probably isn’t. A minor snag in the paper’s claim is accidentally mentioned in the article:

Hurricanes have been named since 1950. Originally, only female names were used; male names were introduced into the mix in 1979.

For the first 29 years of the hurricane naming system all hurricanes have been given female names. Now this may not seem significant in relation to the paper but it is. If you look a figure 10 on page 6 of this research paper [PDF], titled Deaths and Death Rates from
Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008, you will see a rather interesting trend:

Will you look at that, it’s a noticeably downward trend! This shouldn’t be surprising. As our technology has improved, especially in regards to computer modeling, we’ve developed a better understanding of hurricanes. We can more accurately predict when, where, and how hard a hurricane is going to hit, which has allowed us to reduce the number of lives lost. Since for the first 29 years hurricanes had exclusively female names and since hurricane deaths have been steadily declining since 1900 it’s pretty easy to deduce that the reason more deaths have been caused by hurricanes with female names is because more hurricanes had female names when hurricanes were killing more people on average.

If we gave every hurricane a male name from here on it would likely be quite some time before the number of deaths caused by hurricanes with male names exceeded the number of deaths caused by hurricanes with female names. You know, because of that overall downward trend thingy.

I actually hypothesize that the gender of a hurricanes’ name has no bearing whatsoever on the number of deaths it causes. This is because most sane people probably don’t put any bearing into a hurricane’s name. If it’s predicted to be a category 5 hurricane, for example, most people are going to get the fuck out of its way or find some serious shelter. That’s because the category, not the name, is what most people are going to base their course of action on. As much as the social justice warriors hate to hear it most people aren’t actually so petty as to risk their life on things as pointless as the gender of the name of a hurricane.

Sorry social justice warriors, I usually try to avoid involving myself in your wars. But when you claim to have scientific proof that society is made up of sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic men I’m going to look at the research and see if the conclusion is plausible or if there’s another possible explanation. If the conclusion isn’t plausible and there is a much more scientific explanation I am going to call you on your bugshit craziness.