westingwriting

[westingwriting]

irrational fears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFEyT4B7JJE Personal traumas can learn to understandable irrational fears that we have to work to overcome. They are understandable from an evolutionary defense mechanism perspective, and it's a great step to be aware of the bias, of the irrational nature of it, so you can take therapy steps to overcome it. At certain points in certain societies, acknowledgement of these irrational fears, publicly, might be more or less acceptable, depending on the subject. But we should be patient and understanding with people who want to be better. Anyone who demonstrates self-awareness and a desire to improve, is on the team of reason.

[westingwriting]

“what if black americans just didn’t exist? would that fix whites’ problems?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ti_fsQFlaY No. If black Americans didn't exist, white racists would STILL have the same problems--because those problems are actually caused by rich, powerful people who are scamming their base into thinking it's other poor people who are the problem. So in other words, if black people didn't exist, some OTHER group would HAVE to be scapegoated, and we'd be sitting here watching these same racist assholes bitch and fantasize about some OTHER group not existing in America.

[westingwriting]

game dev studios remaking the same geometry over and over.

in general I don't know why game studios insist on remaking the same geometry and characters every time they start a project. seriously. The Resident Evil HD Remaster would have been simple if they'd just ported the Umbrella and Darkside Chronicles geometry, cleaned it up, lit it, and got new HD pre-rendered backgrounds from it. But instead they just upsized the old 2d images. I also wish studios would license out their model sets after their games. For instance, there are dozens of games and experiences you could get out of using the French architecture models and textures from Assassin's Creed Unity. But noooo. they are made for 1 game, then shelved/lost forever. And anyone else who wants a similar setting has to reinvent the wheel.

[westingwriting]

https://www.facebook.com/xroadsfilm/videos/1949015538465521/?hc_ref=ARTdy5wU-5B1LRXDO23YGSjSdywUjMFw3Nu4y7uQYJV1Tyiy6Gj31g4DcK1XahSiR-s Eric Adam Hovis  I am totally for universal healthcare and tuition-free college. What I'm not for is vague assessments of vague problems that make negative assumptions about human nature with vaguely homeopathic and pseudophilosophical rhetoric. And using generalized terms while telling others not to. Generalizing about “my generation” and “capitalism”, for example. It's just so obnoxious for a person to be like "we solve our problems by doing things that are right...." Try something helpful instead: we solve our problems by getting universal healthcare, tuition-free college, ending gerrymandering, creating ranked choice voting, same day voter registatration, open primaries, increasing women's rights, ending the interventionist regime-change wars, housing the homeless, keeping a free and open internet, bringing back glass steagall and an uptick on short selling, breaking up the big banks, getting a constitutional amendment to overturn buckley v valeo and citizens united, getting anti-corruption acts at the local, state, and federal level. We all agree that "being empathic" is a good thing. But we need actual suggestions for POLICIES about it. The vagueness of "we have to do things that are right and not do things that are wrong" in this video, is the same kind of vapid BS that corporate democrats do. OFFER SPECIFIC POLICY POSITIONS or I can tell you're trying to SEDATE me rather than HELP me. This guy is like Deepak Chopra. FEELS smart, but has not actually said anything useful.

[westingwriting]

agnostic

you can be, get ready: an agnostic theist, a gnostic theist, an agnostic atheist, or a gnostic atheist. agnostic means "uncertain". gnostic means" feels certain." theism and atheism are about god claims. if you believe in bigfoot but aren't certain there's a bigfoot, you are an "agnostic bigfootist." please start getting this right, guys.    

[westingwriting]

president clinton

You mean "former president" before he was impeached? Wait why are we listening to him again?        

first of all, clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, which proves what idiots/hypocrites republican politicians are, considering many are falling over themselves to support alleged child molester Roy Moore in Alabama. secondly, Clinton was not removed from office because he was not convicted during that impeachment. thirdly, former politicians are forever afterward referred to as the highest office they held, in this case, President Clinton. Fourthly, it is a genetic fallacy and ad hominem attack to say "this person was wrong about issue X, so therefore they CANNOT be right about issue Y." His personality has nothing to do with whether he's RIGHT. Don't be intellectually lazy and look for cheap ways out of considering an issue or viewpoint.    

[westingwriting]

gop tax plan. corporate errand boys

the wealthy will get tax BILLIONS in tax breaks under the GOP plan. And teachers will STOP getting a tax credit for things they buy themselves for their classrooms. And people who adopt kids will STOP getting a tax credit for doing so. And people who move to a new city for a job will STOP getting a tax credit. The Republican Party is a party of CORPORATE CON MEN. Wake up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGx1SbvNVl4

[westingwriting]

gun control again

"criminals will find guns no matter what, so reducing them makes no diffference." as soon as you hear of mass knifings that injure 500 people, try again. And until then, I guess we should make nukes easier to get for terrorists, since they really want them and are clearly finding them anyway. And I guess we should just get rid of murder laws, too, since they don't make a difference, and underage drinking laws. don't make a perfect solution fallacy. the goal is not to ELIMINATE 100% of shootings. it's to REDUCE the number of shootings.

[westingwriting]

millennial voter turnout

 for anyone saying millennials have a terrible voter turnout...the youth voter turnout has ALWAYS been low. It's a serious sharpshooter fallacy to claim millennials are especially apathetic. millennials are overwhelmingly progressive and non-religious, and they're just starting to become politically aware. you're not ready for the political revolution that is starting now. also, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/20/more-young-people-voted-for-bernie-sanders-than-trump-and-clinton-combined-by-a-lot/?utm_term=.84fb46802bc4

[westingwriting]

why people victim blame

women being harrassed or groped or raped. “it’s their clothes! or something they did!” It's a weird karma mentality, a desire to feel like bad things are deserved if they happen, a feeling of discomfort with having to empathize with an innocent who was clearly mistreated. You gotta catch yourself if you start doing that. "Oh,  a bad thing happened to someone? Uh, uh, let's go through a checklist of mistakes they may have made, to find one where I can go "oh, thank goodness, the world is just and acting as it should, and I don't have to feel bad for this victim, because empathy is draining and makes me feel obligated to do something to prevent bad things." It's a defense mechanism people use when they feel powerless or overwhelmed. It's "oh, boy, the world would be complicated and require action by me if something unjust like this happened randomly. Thank goodness it was deserved, so I can rest easy and not feel emotionally entangled.”

[westingwriting]

human nature sucks and doesn’t change. that’s being a “realist.”

based on all the actual facts, the world is getting safer and healthier than ever before, barring some real problems with climate change and income inequality in places like america due to corporate ownership of elections. worldwide, more people are entering the middle class than ever before. Read Steven Pinker's Better Angels of Our Nature. The BS that "human nature sucks and people suck" is just something "give uppers" say to make themselves feel better for not trying.  "realist" is just something cynics and pessimists call themselves so they don't have to confront how destructive they are.

[westingwriting]

why is The Matrix good?

The Matrix is amazing and important because it took a super abstract philosophical concept like solipsism and made it easily understandable even by 8th graders. The Matrix actually EDUCATED people and demonstrated there's no such thing as a complicated idea -- only complicated explanations. Anyway, that's why I value The Matrix.

[westingwriting]

gun control more

Susannah Otašević-Scullin  I want to continue to own my rifle. When you take guns away, do you think explosives might not then become employed? Or knives, or bare hands? When someone WANTS to kill you they are going to find a way. Drown you, run you over with their car, choke you with a cord, shank you, make pipe bombs, and plastic explosives. Why do you feel safer without guns? There are people who will kill. Taking their guns away won’t stop them. Nope. Not at all. Humans are very creative.Like · Reply · 1 hrManageEric Adam Hovis  crimes of passion can be prevented or reduced in damage if, during that moment of impulse, powerful weapons are not easy to obtain. Most people who hurt people aren't pre-meditating unibomber types. they're angry, or upset irrational people who wanted, in that moment, to cause harm. the guy in las vegas would have done far less harm with knives. columbine was meant to be a bombing, but the bombs didn't work. if they had then only had knives, less harm would have been done. according to the logic of "if people want it bad enough, they can get it", then all drug laws are a waste of time and should be abolished because they make no difference. right? not everybody "wants it bad enough" to jump through those extra hoops. seriously, let's just make it easy for terrorists to get nukes, since they can get them anyway if they want them bad enough. right? oh, wait. barriers DO make a difference

[westingwriting]

don’t assume worst about corporations

  okay, so the evidence isn't concrete yet. but "calculated misery" is a thing with airlines. I don't see why other giant corporations driven solely by profit would NOT do this. As far as anti-corporate bias goes...sure. Giant multinational corporations don't need your help profiting off of you. They have giant teams of lawyers, think tanks, focus groups, and PR departments (and our government) looking out for them. Taking the "buyer beware" idea a little too far could ONLY help consumers level the playing field a bit. A corporation is an amoral machine designed to maximize profit in the short term, designed to think --and fire unprofitable CEOs -- on a quarterly basis. in the fight between profit and consumer protections, giant corporations by far have the upper hand and again, don't need us to be on their side, too.

[westingwriting]

supernatural realism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR_Qsu4Wpek

dan: such a waste of electricity, each room has like 20 lamps they light up only 1 foot. i'm sorry my kid's nightlight can light up more then that.    

other person: “ This game has supernatural elements and you are worried about realism. “

me: i always dislike the argument of "one thing in the game/movie is designed to be unrealistic as a creative conceit, so therefore nothing else needs to be grounded and make sense." no. having ghosts doesn't mean your lights don't need to work realistically. if your player could randomly fly, it might be far enough for you to go..."wait...that's not part of the suspension of disbelief."

[westingwriting]

guns

this crazy shooter had no criminal history and maybe could not have been prevented. outside of this case, we need common sense gun reforms and universal healthcare including mental healthcare. we can't stop all gun violence, but that's not the point. the point is to REDUCE it with common sense reforms. no other country has a gun violence problem this big. and saying "people who really want guns will get them" ignores that most people don't "really really want guns" but cause more damage because getting guns was EASY. if nukes were easy for isis to get, would they be doing more or less damage? don't you think they really, really want them? but they're HARD TO GET, so less damage is done. common sense reforms would reduce the damage done during impulsive crimes of passion by creating extra hurdles.

[westingwriting]

“why don’t you people just stop having sex?”

                                         gam mal                                                              24 minutes ago                                                                                but in all seriousness though, how hard is it for you to not have sex or not get pregnant? you guys are like people who complain if you are drunk while you committed a crime, it shouldnt be judged as hard as if you are sober. how hard is it to not get drunk and not drive a vehicle and not kill people?     driving drunk is not a basic biological need/impulse. sex is. a better comparison would be "how hard is it to just stop eating so you can lose weight? The answer, VERY hard. And if you expect people to just stop eating to lose weight, it is UNLIKELY to work, and there's some evidence it's UNHEALTHY, just like abstaining from sex is. We need better sex ed, better birth control, easier access to birth control. The key is to make food healthier, not to tell people not to eat it. This is basic human nature stuff. Fighting human nature, you will lose...as all the red states that have abstinence only education, have seen but ignore.

Not only is it not easy to tell people to go against human nature, but there's shouldn't be a need to. You are approaching the problem wrong. Let's make sex safer, not harder to get.

"If you start your sentence with "why don't you just..." there's a good chance you don't understand the complexities of the problem.                                                                                                                  bgt125                                                              1 hour ago                                                                                39 years old. ZERO STD'S, ZERO KIDS. If you're too stupid to use condoms, YOU DESERVE EVERYTHING YOU GET. Kids you want to whine about having to pay for and take care of now, a baby mama you hate, a baby daddy you hate, kids into foster care, grandparents raising kids for their deadbeat parent children, etc.                                                                              2                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    westingtyler ideas                                                              30 seconds ago (edited)                                                                             what an ignorant thing to say, OP.   I never like the “if you are uneducated, you deserve bad things to happen to you.” The reality is, if bad things happen to you, it makes MY life and SOCIETY worse.  The reality is, people don’t CHOOSE to be uneducated. The reality is, whether or not your believe your life is under your control, is due to factors that are not under your control. WE need better sex ed, and education in general, and easier access to birth control.