A blog-post about nothing in particular

I’m bored. And tired. Tired and bored; and bored and tired. And sick and tired. But mostly bored, so I’m writing about whatever is on my mind and won’t stick to one subject here.

Fuck Kyle Rittenhouse

I’ve been following the Kyle Rittenhouse case. In case you don’t know, 17 year old white boy Kyle took an assault rifle to a protest in a different state to his own in the US, during the protests for the death of George Floyd, and there, he shot three people. Then, he claimed self defence, and was found not guilty of all charges.

I find it really difficult to take their verdict seriously, and, much like my disbelief in all religions without reading their religious texts… No, I don’t need to have witnessed the court proceedings. I don’t need to know the details to be able to come to a reasonable conclusion. Here’s why… He was there. Right smack bang in the middle of the protests, right when many alt-right white supremacist militias had been known to be causing trouble, 17 year old Kyle was there, in a crowd he obviously regarded not only as the enemy, but as a racist, he would have seen them as inferior… as not even human. The fact that he was there openly with a gun is all I need to know. In my mind, the case should have been about figuring out his intent. Was he there to taunt protesters into attacking him so that he could “defend” himself, or was he really so stupid that he thought his mere presence with a weapon would intimidate people? If it’s the former, he’s guilty of murder; if the latter, manslaughter. Judging by his defence, it looks very much like the former. Either way he is guilty. Everything else is political spin.

And somehow, the takes I’ve seen on Facebook are divided almost exclusively by the political views of the people who write them. Almost, with one disturbing difference. It’s easier to express this as a bulleted list…

• Progressives: This was a travesty of justice. He went there to hunt people.
• Conservatives: Justice was served. Those who disagree are politically motivated.
• Some (white) progressives: Looking at the facts (that came up in court), claim that other progressives “don’t know the details” and they agree with the conservatives.

Both the second and third groups are suddenly experts on self defence. The second group also accept some strange smear campaign against the victims. The other main difference between the two points of view is that those saying he got away with murder express empathy for the victims, and a justifiable concern that this will lead to a precedent where armed men can freely intimidate/murder protesters without consequences, while those who say justice has been served spend much time making personal attacks against the other side.

I have no stake in this argument… although, full disclosure, I lean pretty hard to the left. But the thing is, for me the logical side is to go against the side that engages in personal attacks against their opponents and smear campaigns against the deceased. Emotionally, I’m on the side of the protesters, of BLM, and the victims (of Rittenhouse). And by common sense, I am of course opposed to the emotionally immature guy who took a gun to a protest, to “protect property”. How do I put this? Someone needs to go and defend themselves against Rittenhouse. Permanently. I’m over here in South Africa and I feel threatened.

I have one question? Would all these sudden experts in self defence like to spend some time on other cases? There are many. Women incarcerated for murdering their sexual abusers; graves of black children killed by police for holding guns they didn’t even have, who died without even a chance to defend themselves; and lastly there are other well publicized cases where people were murdered by police in their own homes. If you can seriously see this as self defence and ignore all those other cases, you are just flat out wrong. There is no debate here. I refuse to engage with anyone on Rittenhouse’s side, and although I originally intended to post screenshots of their memes and statuses, I decided against it. Their point of view doesn’t deserve any platform. Fuck them.

Edit: I am amazed though…more like aghast at what I’m seeing online. People posting things like, “Rittenhouse found not guilty. Thank goodness sanity has prevailed”, and claiming that anyone who disagrees is “politically motivated”. Um, no. Sanity has not prevailed. You have it backwards, you racist trash. (The colour of his victims doesn’t matter either. They were BLM allies.) These people are unable to see past their own bias and the irony is palpable. If I go into someone’s house, and threaten them – then they try to fight me off, I can’t kill them and claim self defence. Likewise Rittenhouse did not belong where he was, and we should take anything claimed by his defence with a generous pinch of salt. Also if this protest was such a dangerous place to be, how come Rittenhouse was the only one to shoot anybody?

I don’t know the source of this, but it sums things up nicely.

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Wow. OK, after that, I feel bad to write about anything else, but this post was meant to be a general one… not about anything in particular.

Diablo 2 > Diablo 3

It is though. They released Diablo 2 Resurrected back towards the end of September, and I bought it at the start of October. I’ve been playing it almost every day, and even though the main change is simply the graphics, which are amazing by the way, the game itself, even though it may be a 20 year old game engine, is far superior to Diablo 3. The only thing I miss is Diablo 3’s bottomless potion system. My amazon spends far too much time time trekking back to town to buy potions. But otherwise, the game is way better, way more engaging, and more fun. Of course it lacks end game content like rifts, but I have never finished Hell difficulty so that doesn’t matter yet.

My level 77 sorceress is stuck. I can’t even get past some low level zombies on the very first level of Hell difficulty, as they are completely immune to my main attack, and almost completely immune to my backup skill – such that they instantly kill my mercenary and then have me running around in circles like an idiot, barely able to hurt them. But I can get a tiny bit of XP doing Baal runs in nightmare difficulty, enough to slowly level up and try to make my backup attack better, but it’s painful. Thus I made a new character, an amazon, and gift her some awesome bows and things found by my sorceress. My amazon, who uses an amazing skill (strafe) shooting 10 arrows at a time, wipes out everything. She will probably always be OP since her attack combines physical as well as all elemental attacks, so she’s a lot more fun to play… apart from constantly having to buy new mana potions.

I hope they do a good job on Diablo 4, making it similar to Diablo 2, while taking some of the good bits out of Diablo 3…  either a pet (that can go to town like the Torchlight games), or a bottomless potion system with cooldown delay. But those are practically the only good parts of Diablo 3, other than rifts for end game content, which will in any case be unnecessary if the game world is big enough.

These fucking racist idiots

Just saw this in my notifications… I didn’t watch the video, though I have watched previous ones. That clickbait preview text with its fear mongering rhetoric is enough to inform me what they’re saying.

FYI, the right to study in Afrikaans hasn’t come under fire. Those are some strong words – one might call them fear mongering. This party is now pandering to the fears of racists. One might read something into that, as one did in one’s title.

Sorry (not sorry) but I do find it much easier to believe these people are racists than just that they’re dumb enough to pander to the fears of racists without being that way inclined themselves.

I used to vote for these people. I was dumb enough to think they were really progressive.

It was never about the troops

I just saw this on Facebook.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the guy on top is Colin Kaepernick, a US football player who got blacklisted and ‘cancelled’ (but they don’t call it that apparently when initiated by the right wing) for kneeling before matches during the US national anthem to protest police brutality.

In the picture below, we have a recent incident where a US cop racially profiled, assaulted, and pepper-sprayed a driver simply because the man was black, and that man happened to be a US army officer.

So it was never about the troops. US Nationalism is about white people, power dynamics, and Colin Kaepernick was punished because he’s a black man who didn’t know his place. Also those same nationalists don’t really care about the troops anyway.

Lastly, that’s what nationalism looks like. Always. In every country. Nationalism is evil.

Fuck the Democratic Alliance

Just in case any of my friends read this and don’t know where I stand… Yeah, the government aren’t doing a perfect job. But for the record, John Steenhuisen is a twat and fuck this party. I don’t know who they represent (not me) but I sure do know that a lot of racists support them.

This shit is fucking juvenile. Even my most inappropriately used humour somehow has more class than this.

PSA: If you have to announce that you’re “super” straight, maybe you ain’t so straight

It’s Ye Olden Psychological Projection once again!

Sigh. I had a completely different post in mind, one where I mock the people on the right who so desperately use the word “woke” as an epithet lately… where they believe that calling anyone “woke” or claiming that a person cares too much about social justice is some kind of insult that should be taken seriously. But alas, that post will have to wait and I must be woke some more first…

This: As usual, I have not bothered to expand the text beyond preview… rest assured it is a nonsensical assertion that “super straight” is a valid position.

I take it most people don’t know what “super straight” is? Fear not, neither did I but I shall get to that now.

People on the right wing, or “conservatives” or whatever the fuck they call themselves, have recently become aware that transgender people exist. And they take issue with this. With their existence, you see.

Obviously transgender people are a minority, a tiny minority. (We’ll get back to that.) In case you didn’t know, there are people born whose biological sex does not match their gender identity. It’s an unfortunate side effect of our gender identities being dictated somehow by our brains, independently of our physical bodies, and that since we are very much imperfectly evolved animals, sometimes those two things get out of sync. (That’s how I understand it, and I think it is a reasonable understanding.) So you can have a male body but your brain says you’re a woman, and vice versa.

In a nutshell, that’s what transgender people are. Women who have male bodies and men who have female bodies. Make no mistake, transgender women are women, and transgender men are men – they just have bodies that don’t match their true genders, which if you think about it, is really fucking awful. In a perfect world, we’d treat such people with compassion, we’d empathise with them. And many of us do. But not all.

There are various people who are transphobic, that is, who are prejudiced against transgender people, and I said I’d get back to it… because they are a tiny minority. Tiny minorities make great victims, and that’s what transphobia comes down to. Bullying… hatred… malicious people who have found that they have power over others and who then enjoy abusing that power.

But rather than admit their hatred, they pretend it is something else. For example, some claim that transgender women are really men who enter women’s bathrooms to predate on women. Hence they package their hatred as fighting for the rights of women. There are some famous transphobic people, including the Harry Potter author who is a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). But I don’t want to get into that today… Some people pretend that trans women in sport are really men who transition simply to win an unfair advantage. And there are always those who claim to speak for their gods, and the existence of transgender people goes against the wishes of those deities.

The meme shared to that group of bigots refers to “super straight”, where they use straight to hate against transgender people… in a way that they think is clever but is, of course, quite transparent. They deliberately conflate two different things: sexual preference vs prejudice. They claim, incorrectly, that any man who isn’t attracted to a trans woman is called transphobic. (They always seem to forget about trans men but let’s ignore that. They aren’t too bright.) They do this in response to claims that being attracted to a transgender woman does not make a man gay, because it doesn’t. (But they believe it does.) So they’ve made up a new gender called “super straight”, which consists of men who are not attracted to transgender women. In other words, they’re straighter than straight, or something, which is used to justify their hatred. (We are always the heroes in our own narratives. Our hatred isn’t hatred, it’s something else. Perhaps the bigots genuinely believe these lies they tell themselves.)

Of course it is also telling that they think it is OK to just make up a new gender, because they deny the very identities of transgender people.

I can’t believe I had to write about this, but I had to… I don’t understand why we can’t all just be empathetic. I mean, imagine how it must feel to have a body that doesn’t match your gender… That’s bad enough, but then, there are people who go out of their way to be hateful bigoted cunts just because they can. For fuck’s sake, we can be better than this.

And the only thing I’d like to add, as mentioned in line one, is that I suspect this works very much like homophobia… If you are so insecure about your own sexual identity that you must call yourself “super straight” in response to the gender identities of other people… well – that says more about you than it does about them.

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To clarify in case a TERF or other idiot reads this… We don’t have to fight for the rights of straight people, or white people, or men, or colonialists, or cisgender people. We need to address inequality where it exists, and that means fighting for those whose rights are denied. Think of a movie cliché… they don’t make movies where the bullies get their revenge. You cunts are the bullies so stop trying to play the victims. Nobody buys your bullshit.

And if another person calls me “woke” or a SJW… I’m OK with that. I’d rather be that than a poes like you.

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Update… Look at this shit from the same group:

and in the comments by the same person

Again… this is a reminder of what hate speech actually looks like. It’s rampant on Facebook, and yet the people being banned are the ones who call it out, not the ones who indulge in it.

When does race refer to skin colour and when does it refer to culture?

I’m so confused.

So I’m seeing all these articles trending about Sasha Calle, who has recently been cast as Supergirl to appear in the upcoming Flash movie.

Embed from Getty Images

And here we see the gorgeous Sasha Calle courtesy of Getty Images.

Like OMG… she is beautiful. And they can keep her brunette and make a great change to the character, not as great as calling her Superwoman, but still worthwhile…but that’s not what I’m writing about today. I keep seeing it written that she’s the first Latina Supergirl and that confuses the fuck out of me because to my eyes, she’s white.

But I am a white South African. I’ve heard and read others arguing about race before… white South Africans who call themselves “African”, and that upsets some native African, i.e. black people. Hence my confusion: Sometimes race refers to colour and sometimes it refers to culture, or maybe sometimes it means both. But when does it mean what?

Am I insulting Latina women if I call them white, or is the label itself used to prejudice against them, treating them as less than equal to white North Americans simply because it allows them to be treated as something other than white? I have a feeling a little of the latter is true, or at least, it may be. But how much?

Likewise, I will not refer to myself as African, ever, because black people born here can and do take offense to that. And this is even though I was born here and this is the only place I know or have ever been. (I have heard some people say we must go back to our countries, but I ignore those because I am fourth or fifth generation here from a mixture of Portuguese, Irish, English and French people. I have no country to “go back to”. This is my country.) So I’ll stick with saying I am South African. It doesn’t help that I’m named Jerome, and people who only know me through writing or other online medium sometimes assume I’m not white… apparently there was some sort of naming convention memo that my mother never read.

But I’m still confused about one thing: When does race refer to colour and when does it refer to culture? Or is that assumption a false dichotomy and is there something else I’m missing. It certainly does refer to social class and standing, always, and as much as some white people like to deny it and pretend that white privilege doesn’t exist, it is always white people at the top of this order. Because of hundreds of years of oppression and persecution, and social pressure.

And this brings me back to someone like Sasha Calle. Why is it important to bring up her being Latina? Why do I, on the other side of the planet in the Southern Hemisphere, have the impression that Latino people are often regarded as being inferior to white people, especially considering that they are often white and the only thing making them not white is a social construct?

I’m going to leave this open and not attempt to answer the questions I’ve raised here, but I do think it is important to use our privilege and teach our children to be aware of it. As long as any of us are more privileged than others because of this grossly unfair social construct, we can not afford to be colour blind. But I hope that we can teach future generations to put this behind them. Let the mistakes of the past be in the past.

Those weird Facebook double standards? (Trigger warning: White supremacy, racism)

I’ve mentioned this group before. And normally I stay away from accusations of hypocrisy, because they are almost always wrong. When people make such accusations in debates, it is almost always a Tu quoque fallacy, but this one isn’t. So I’m writing this reluctantly.

Look at this shit:

I’m not even going to comment on how wrong that is. Just – if you agree with it, fuck right off.

The point is, I and others get banned for calling these people out. We get banned for responding to this type of shit. Our responses violate Facebook community standards, but the original posts do not.

I’ve written about this before, and I will keep doing so as long as it persists… their algorithms detect strong language but are an absolute failure when it comes to detecting actual hate speech, which is rampant on the platform.

I’m currently on a 30 day ban for mocking religion with a “Jesus loves porn” meme that got taken down for nudity, and then put back up when I contested the decision, but they didn’t remove the ban. So I’m banned for a joke, but actual hatred like the meme shown is perfectly fine on the platform.

Society leans to the right and here’s why…

It’s the stupidity.

Seriously, I saw this in a group I’m in:

That group, in which members vote on a “hill”, choosing dead if they agree and alive if they disagree, has been filled recently with mostly transphobic posts. Also racist posts of the type that deny white privilege (in other words white supremacists), and homophobic posts. Weirdly, not so much homophobia. There are a few members who like to shout out their transphobia by tagging a group called “lgb are all the letters”. In other words, they’re like TERFS except they’re gay/lesbian who hate transgender people.

Most of them are Trump supporters to boot.

Anyway, do you want to know why so many people in so many places lean to the right?
It’s because they’re fucking stupid.
Don’t believe me? Read this.

Yes, Gina Carano is still fired. She got what she deserved.

I can’t scroll 10cm down Facebook without seeing another five articles about Gina Carano, who in her last straw of a post compared conservative Americans to Jews being persecuted by Nazis, was fired by Lucasfilm.

I’m tired of them. So without a hint of irony, I’m contributing to them. OK, maybe a little hint.

For the record, she had it coming. She’s said some stupid shit, and nobody stopped her from saying it. In fact, she’s still going, now claiming to be more free than ever and will be making a movie. She even said she won’t live in “fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob” so, let’s just admit then that cancel culture isn’t a thing. She was not censored. She still hasn’t shut the fuck up. She’s just facing consequences for her words, and that’s fair. So there’s no need to invoke free speech rights, as she hasn’t lost any.

“The Daily Wire is helping make one of my dreams—to develop and produce my own film—come true,” she shared with Deadline on Friday, Feb. 12. “I cried out and my prayer was answered. I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob.”

Do the conservacucks who suddenly care so much about “cancel culture” remember Colin Kaepernick? Do you?

Why are you defending her anyway? The part she plays in the Mandalorian is pretty generic. Anyone could play it… Any backstory for a fighter with some rebellion history would suffice. They haven’t even fleshed it out. She mostly stands around. They can get someone else to stand around – it’ll be OK. She can’t even act to begin with.

False Dichotomies matter?

I’ve already shared what I think of the “all lives matter” rhetoric. But here’s a link to refresh your memory. And here’s another reminder of what I think of false dichotomies.

So I checked my Facebook tab and see someone has found a way of combining the two. Isn’t this fucking great?

I’ve got one more day of my Facebook ban, so I shall reply to this one tomorrow.

Can you guess what all but one of the commenters answered? B, of course. Here’s what I always ask the “all lives matter” crowd: So you admit then that black lives do matter?

All lives do matter, but that’s not the point. When we say “black lives matter”, we’re not saying that other lives don’t. So posing it as a choice between black lives and all lives is a false dichotomy. But when you respond with all lives to a conversation about the plight of black people, you are saying that black lives don’t matter. And that’s the fucking point.

If it really were about all lives, that would of course include black lives. But it isn’t. Anyone who says “all lives matter” is only interested in shutting down the movement to bring about equality. Same goes for sharing articles about police in the US who killed white people when the conversation is about black people. Unless you shared those same things at the time they happened, you have no leg to stand on. You’re just using that shit to shut down people who are legitimately fed up with a system that’s treated them as subhuman for far too long.

Why are so many white people resistant to seeing this for what it is? We are all people, all the same, and should all have the same rights; should all be treated fairly. But that isn’t happening. In a perfect world, we could afford to be colour blind and say that we are all one race, and race being about skin colour is merely a social construct. But we don’t live in such a world.