A Little Bit Of Kink For Chrissy

I hear that if you want Santa to come, you have to be good for a whole year.

Christ, he doesn't want much, does he?

MERRY XXXMAS, EVERYBODY!

Where you least expect it.

Do you ever go out into public spaces, and observe how people behave, and just come away feeling sad? Like when you see a six-year-old girl give another kid a lap-dance? On the one hand, you think about how far we've come since the bad old days, when it was considered scandalous for a grown woman to expose her knees; and on the other hand, you see this little kid grinding away and you think, "No, there's definitely a limit to how crass and vulgar we should let mainstream culture get".

I was lining up at the checkout the other day, and there was a middle-aged woman in front of me whose teenage daughter obviously had mental problems. The girl looked about sixteen, but when she spoke, she sounded like she had the intelligence of about an eight-year-old, and she had that drawl—or accent—or whatever you call it, that retarded people often have. Most people I've seen who are like that—even kids—tend to look slovenly and overweight, but this girl was neat, slim, and attractive. I'm guessing she was naturally ectomorphic, and on top of that, her mother probably put a lot of effort into keeping her tidy and presentable.

Anyway, as their groceries were going through the scanner, the girl asked if she could borrow her mother's mobile phone. Knowing my nibblings, I of course thought she wanted to play video games. Nope. Upon receiving the phone, she instead started to play generic sounding modern pop music, and dancing like a stripper.

At one point, I caught the mother's eye, and we both exchanged a kind of exasperated, "Well, what the fuck can you do about it?", look.

On the one hand, watching that girl dance made me sad. It made me think of the attention she was likely to attract in the future, and the fact that she probably wouldn't always have her mother around to watch over her. I thought about how, despite her mother's protection, the depravity of the big bad world had already touched her, as evidenced by the way she danced. And I thought about the worry and effort that her mother would pour into her, and the fact that her mother would still probably go to her death, wracked by the knowledge that there would be nobody there to take care of her little girl once she was gone. And on the other hand, I looked at that young girl, dancing through the checkout of the grocery store, without a single care in the world, and somewhere, deep down, a little piece of me felt happy.

Poms, Paddies, Jocks & Taffies: Election 2019

It's report card season for the teachers in the family, which means I've been getting extra baby-sitting duties these last couple of weeks. Of course, that means I've been even more stretched for time than I was before. But I can't complain really—it has been pretty fun. I've finally gotten to play some backyard cricket with the nibblings, and we all got together to watch the last few games of the WomBBL—and amazingly—the Brisbane Heat girls managed to bumble and fumble their way to their second premiership win in a row—knocking over the incredibly in-form Adelaide Strikers in the process. It was fantastic.

The down side is, of course, I've been seriously neglecting things here. And while it's too late to take bets on how people think the UK election is going to turn out, I thought I'd open up a thread for people's thoughts and feelings, both before and after.

I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I heard a disgruntled member of the British public make the following point:

Boris Johnson wants to lift immigration caps and give an amnesty to every illegal immigrant in the country. Jeremy Corbyn wants to open up the borders and give non-citizens the right to vote. Even Farage says he wants to bring large numbers of people in from other parts of the commonwealth. Where is the representative for people like me, who just want fewer immigrants?

Granted, I have been listening to a lot of material from European nationalists lately, but this one was from the mainstream news. It reminded me that leading up to the Brexit referendum—even before Europe got hit with the massive waves of refugees that started coming in from the Middle East and North Africa—the one issue I heard being touted over and over, was that blue-collar workers wanted to shut down the border, because they were being driven out of the labour market by Eastern Europeans—mainly Pols and Romanians.

Of course, at that time, nobody was taking those people seriously, and nobody thought Brexit had a hope in hell of getting up … and look how that turned out. I get the sense that there's pressure building in Pommyland, and if somebody in power doesn't provide a relief valve, things could end up getting ugly. The most recent jihadi stabbing attack probably didn't help.

But of course, I'm on the other side of the world. It'd be nice to hear from someone a little closer to the action. Any thoughts, Squib?

Slow Down, Summer!

Summer is finally here. And by Summer, I mean the heat. And by heat, I don't mean the QLD cricket team—I'll get to them later.

I'm finally back to going topless around the house, and my bed has nothing on it apart from a pillow and a fitted sheet; making laundry day a breeze. My teapot now has a fan sitting next to it, so that it cools down in a reasonable amount of time. Once again, I'm seriously considering lopping off my hair. Seriously.

But I still haven't really had time to enjoy a few of the things that I should be enjoying about this time of year. I haven't gotten around to putting any Chrissy decorations up. Australian Spartan is back on telly, but I haven't gotten around to watching any of it yet. The women's big bash cricket tournament is two thirds finished, and I haven't watched any of it either. Painful, considering the nibbling's beloved Brisbane Heat are currently top of the points table. Speaking of which, I haven't played any backyard cricket with the nibblings yet this year, either. Actually, I haven't really spent any time outside at all.

I'm headed down to my brother's place this weekend, so maybe I might squeeze a game in while I'm down there. I dunno. I know Summer's only just started, but already it feels like it's going by so quickly that I'm not going to get to enjoy it.

How's your Summer shaping up?

White Identitarianism Part 2: Europe

Yes, I know it's taken us a while, but we're finally here. In case you're wondering, there's a few things that have caused this post to be postponed for as long as it has . Not least among them is the fact that the poorly constructed billy-cart that is my life, crashed headlong into a wall of time-management issues this year … but I'm guessing you're probably sick of hearing me talk about that already. The other major factor in the delay is that there's been quite a bit going on in the white-identity/dissident-right sphere, and I keep having to amend and/or append information as everything unfolds. In any case, we're doing it now, so if something earth-shattering happens tomorrow, which changes the entire online landscape … well … stiff shit, I guess.

In my last post on white-identity—which nobody will remember, since it went up so long ago—I mentioned that white-identitarianism in Europe had a completely different feel to it than white-identitarianism in the former British colonies. Today, I'll be attempting to expand on that statement.

The arguments of colonial identitarians tend to be based around concepts that are pragmatic, utilitarian, empirical, and objective in nature. A lot of it has to do with crime statistics, employment statistics, voting statistics, research into human behaviour, case studies of discrimination against whites, and critiquing the visible shortcomings of multiculturalism. Basically, the core of their belief is that a demographic shift away from a white majority will be demonstrably and quantifiably harmful to their children and deleterious to society in general. And while European identitarians frequently make use of exactly the same pragmatic arguments, those arguments tend to be more supplementary, and far less central to the typical European perspective.

For the most part, European identitarians tend to see themselves as being a type of indigenous peoples; their history, language, and culture, stretching back thousands of years, and inextricably linked to a specific patch of land. The biggest blow-up that's on my radar at the moment is happening in Ireland. Apparently, the govt there announced that they would be moving thousands of refugees into rural towns; and apparently, some of these towns are basically pre-industrial farming communities, where the way of life has barely changed in centuries, families trace their ancestry back millennia, and the Irish language has remained in constant day-to-day usage since who the fuck knows when. As you might imagine, Irish identitarians are viewing this as an act of cultural vandalism. The govt have in turn responded by proposing strict hate-speech laws, which would, amongst other things, criminalise the vilification of people based on their immigration status.

By the way, I should probably point out that this is all the rage at the moment. This year, most of the big social media platforms introduced amendments to their terms of service which put immigration status into the same protected category as race, gender, sexuality, etc. So, in theory, you can now get kicked off of Facebook for complaining about illegal immigrants … who are technically criminals, since by definition, they have immigrated to a country illegally.

I should also clear up a point of potential confusion around the term "European identitarian". While it's true that quite a lot of Yanks, Canucks, Aussies, etc, see themselves as "European", and believe in a pan-European cultural identity (the Christchurch shooter, for example), this is almost entirely NOT the case amongst actual European white identitarians. The English do not want their country full of Romanian and Polish labourers; the Spanish and Portuguese do not want their country full of English tourists and retirees; the Finns are not happy about the Swedes coming across the border and clogging up their hospitals, since the Swedish health care system is buckling under the weight of their enormous refugee intake; the Estonians don't care for the large number of Russians they have to share their country with; the Romanians want the Hungarians to piss off out of Transylvania; etc, etc, etc …

The other big point of difference I've noticed is that colonial identitarianism tends to be heavily influenced by American libertarianism. Once you've listened to them for a while, you'll start to notice some recurring thought patterns; such as the root of all evil being socialism, and the answer to most problems being smaller government, fewer laws, and lower taxes. On the other hand, European identitarians tend to exhibit a strong tendency towards what I would call old-school left wing thinking. Let me explain …

I'm no history buff, but my understanding is that when Australia federated, there were two big political factions. There was the right-wingers, who would eventually go on to form the Liberal party, and they mostly represented business interests who wanted to be able to import cheap goods and cheap workers from overseas; and then there was the left-wing, the Labor party and their allies, who wanted high import tariffs and a total ban on immigration. The compromise they came to on migrant workers was the suite of legislation that came to be known as "the white Australia policy", which didn't block immigration entirely, but stopped the country from being flooded with low-skilled labourers from India, China, and the Pacific Islands.

That's the kind of left-wing ideals that I grew up with and absorbed as a kid—the kind that puts the practical concerns of the common working Australian front and centre. From memory, it wasn't until Hawke, and to a greater extent Keating, that left-wing ideals started to mean simply right-wing economic liberalism + a social safety net. Thinking about it, this was actually accelerated by the rise of Greens, who championed a kind of humanitarian universalism, whereby placing the concerns of Australians above those of other people was decried as racist and xenophobic. Hmmm, a discussion for another time, perhaps.

Getting back to the topic at hand: Even though European identitarians universally self identify as right-wing, it's not uncommon for them to openly state that they oppose capitalism. For a lot of them, the big boogeyman they're fighting against is something they refer to as "globo-homo"; and yes, when I first heard the term, I also thought it was a dig at the so-called "gay agenda"; however, it turns out it's actually shorthand for "global homogeneity". Basically, they think that if multi-national corporations are left to run wild, they will devour the world—all cultural diversity will be stripped away and replaced with a single global culture—which will probably resemble a bunch of lonely, miserable, overweight cunts, sitting in shoe-box apartments, scarfing down KFC and anti-depressants, while playing video games on their new iPhone, and arguing about the latest Star Wars film on Facebook. Global capital is a dread machine that breaks communities of people down into atomised economic units, tuned for maximum levels of consumption.

… If those concerns don't remind you of hardcore lefties from the 1980s, you obviously grew up around completely different people than I did …

European identitarians also tend to be heavily in favour of environmental protections and against overpopulation. And in opposition to their more liberty-minded American cousins, most of them seem to support universal health care and free education. In fact, rather than being proponents of any one economic or social model, the European identitarian tends to be in favour of whatever they think will help make their families and communities stronger and more cohesive. To that end, they actually tend to reject the notion of individual liberty in favour of conformity and tradition. At first blush, that may sound contradictory to what I said before about them being opposed to global homogeneity; so, to summarise: while they're in favour of different communities having completely different cultures and norms, they also think that individuals within those communities have a responsibility to abide by said cultures and norms, for the sake of community cohesion.

Actually, what most of them really seem to want, is to live in safe communities; with low crime rates; where there's no traffic; and everybody has a job; but life isn't too hectic; and there are plenty of wide open spaces for kids to run and play and ride bikes; and where everybody is friends with everyone else; and for the most part, most people look alike, and think alike, and talk alike. So, basically, they want to live in a rural town from the 1950s.

Here's a video from an Paddy named Keith, who up until recently, worked in a call centre, and likes to read philosophy in his spare time. Give it a listen and tell me this bloke doesn't sound like a rabid lefty?

And here's a selection of videos from a film buff who goes by the name "Morgoth". As far as I know, he comes from Northern England, and I think he works on the floor of a warehouse. I find his presentation style quite entertaining.

• Bladerunner And The Grid
• Liberalism vs The Borg
• Yorkshire Gets A Modern Art Punishment Beating
• Portland's Antifa vs Alt-Light Cringefest
• Stormzy - A Talentless Tool Of The Establishment
• The Good, The Bragg & The Stormzy

Oh, and by the way, I'm linking to these videos on BitChute, since YouTube is actively banning people who post this kind of material. They're not pussyfooting around either. In the latest round of censorship, they apparently banned a bunch of people—not only from YouTube—but from Google services in general; meaning people with Gmail accounts lost access to their email. Unfortunately, BitChute can be a bit crap. Let me know if any of these videos don't play, and I'll see if I can hunt them up on YouTube for you.

Still getting myself sorted out.

In the meantime, here's a YouTube video. Enjoy.

Here's a legitimately creepy story for Halloween.

I haven't been watching much in the way of news lately, so I dunno whether what I'm going to talk about here has been widely reported, or if it's gone relatively unnoticed. I'm guessing the latter, but with the Jeffrey Epstein stuff still so fresh in people's minds, I might be wrong about that.

The FBI has a website where they publish declassified information, and of course, there are now podcasts and YouTube channels which specialise in going through that information with a fine-toothed comb. The other night, I tuned into what turned out to be a 4hr long live-stream of a bloke reading through the latest data dump, and occasionally pulling up old newspaper stories as corroborating evidence.

The dump in question, is a twenty-five year old dossier which the FBI compiled on a shadowy organisation known as "The Finders". Basically, what was going on is that members of the organisation would get pulled over with van-loads of kids; the local police would investigate; they'd find that the kids had been starved, malnourished, mistreated, and sexually abused; after a few days, CIA agents would show up and get involved with the investigation; then, mysteriously, all charges would be dropped, the suspects released, and the children released back into their custody. This same pattern of events would play out half a dozen times, in different parts of the country.

Starting to get chills yet?

In the middle of this dossier is a report, which is basically the FBI pulling together all of the information they had, and having their best go at explaining what the fuck was going on. What they reckon is that this group started out in the '60s, as a bunch of rebellious, anti-establishment uni students from wealthy families, who—as you might expect—got into psychedelic drugs, sexual experimentation, anarcho-communism, and anti-christian woo—such as paganism, the occult, witchcraft, and satanism. Fast-forward to the '80s, and "The Finders" had morphed into a fucked-up Manson-Family-style cult (led by a guru calling himself "The Game Caller"), that specialised in trafficking flesh for wealthy elites who liked to indulge in both the sexual and non-sexual abuse of children.

So, why were the CIA protecting these lowlifes, you might ask. Well, before I get to that, let me just remind you that all of this was taking place against the backdrop of the cold war. Let me also remind you that a lot of these cultists were communist-sympathisers who had come from wealthy backgrounds … and as it turns out, quite a few of them were making regular visits to places like China, Vietnam, and The Soviet Union - and acting as go-betweens for those countries' intelligence agencies and various pro-communist groups in the United States. And, as you've probably already guessed, The Finders had also been infiltrated by the CIA, which was using them as both a source of intelligence, and as a means of funnelling disinformation back to their communist rivals.

To sum that up: In 2019, the FBI have released a dossier containing a report that speculates that for a period of more than 20 years, the CIA protected a child-trafficking ring, because they saw them as a valuable tool in battling the spread of communism.

I've downloaded a copy of the dossier, but haven't read it yet; and given that it's hundreds of pages long, and I'm currently in the middle of reorganising my life in an attempt to better manage my time, I don't think I'll be getting around to it at any point in the near future. In other words, I'm putting my faith in some bloke on YouTube to have given this document an accurate reading, without making shit up along the way. If you're less time-poor than I am right now, and you'd rather read it for yourself, the link is here.

Oh, and before I forget, here's the REALLY creepy bit: Remember the McMartin preschool trial? It was that bizarre case in the late '80s, in which it was alleged that satanists had taken over a preschool in Southern California, where they were systematically grooming and molesting children, and then forcing them to participate in ritualistic animal sacrifices, in a secret underground bunker beneath the school building. Authorities investigated but found no physical evidence to corroborate the stories. The trial went ahead, based solely on the testimony of the children involved, and the defendants were ultimately acquitted. The preschool was closed down and demolished, and the whole incident became known as the best example of mass hysteria in recorded history, and is often referenced as the pinnacle of unhinged puritanical delusion know as the "satanic panic" of the 1980s.

Yeah, well, according to the dossier, when authorities investigated McMartin preschool, what they actually found was dozens of animal carcasses buried in the school grounds, and an underground bunker filled with occult paraphernalia—just like the children described. So, the official story was a complete cover-up.

Good luck sleeping tonight.

Hair

Last week's She-Ra post included a link to a video that talked about the cultural significance of women's hair. Here it is again, in case you're interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=754-ML6Afu8

It's got me thinking. For a lot of years, I had very short hair, and I loved it. You don't have to worry about knots and tangles; it doesn't take forever to dry; it almost never gets caught on things, or under things; babies can't grab hold of it; it never falls in your food; it doesn't blow around in the wind; you don't get massive plugs of hair in your drains; and it's way cooler in the summer.

… However …

I haven't cut my hair for a couple of years now … and I don't know why. I mean, for all the reasons I stated above, I really really want to … but of all the things I procrastinate over, this is the thing I find easiest to put off indefinitely. I dunno, it's like once it got to a certain length, it almost took on a life of its own, and cutting it almost started to feel a little bit like having a pet euthanised. … A really annoying pet, that pisses and shits everywhere, and occasionally destroys your stuff, but … well … you get what I mean, right?

Princess Power

Apart from Star Wars, attempts to introduce the nibblings to classic TV shows and movies has not met with a great deal of success. Who would have guessed that kids these days would have their own ideas about culture, taste, and entertainment, and that stuff made for kids forty years ago wouldn't have instant, cross-generational appeal. Shocking, I tell you. Anyway, there have been a few things here and there, that some of them have glommed onto, and one of the things that the Terra has gravitated towards is the old She-Ra cartoon. If you aren't familiar with it, this video pretty much covers it:

She Ra and the Best of Science Fantasy

I think that's reasonably accurate, except for the bit about the show being a completely cynical vehicle to advertise toys. I think that part gets overstated quite a bit. While it's true, that the show was commissioned by a toy company, it was actually produced by Filmation, America's last family-owned animation studio; who did everything from writing the scripts, to drawing the animation frames, to recording the voices. And when you listen to interviews with the show's creators (included with the DVD box-sets), you get the impression that there really was quite a bit of love and care put into it.

Anyway, the main takeaway is that it's science-fantasy aimed at six-to-ten-year-olds, and despite a lot of the ideas being incredibly silly, they're presented with a surprising amount of sincerity. There's no irony or sarcasm, the main characters are all grown-ups, and you're never going to hear fart jokes, stoner humour, or the retarded skater-punk slang that you get with crap like the Ninja Turtles. And since I quite enjoy sitting down and watching the show with Terra, it's kind of become one of "our things".

Therefore, it was only natural that we would want to check out the Netflix original reboot of the show. Despite the fact that it's turned out to be an entirely different type of show from the original, we have both gotten rather into it as well; and catching up on the latest batch of episodes was something Terra and I did as soon as I got back from my trip away.

In case you're wondering what the show is about, here's a quick rundown. This info is dribbled out over the course of many episodes, so skip over this bit if you want to avoid spoilers:

Etheria is a planet that used to be home to a highly advanced civilisation, referred to in legends as "The First Ones". Their technology appears to permeate everything, and it's possible that the planet itself might be an artificially created Death-Star type super-weapon. Anyway, The First Ones society was destroyed by some unknown catastrophe, and the more primitive and barbaric society which has grown out of the ashes has created a system of "magic" based on the surviving technology.

Certain women are born with the innate ability to tap into the planet's "magic", effectively giving them comic-book-super-hero type powers. Rather than being labelled "witches" or "sorcerers", these women are referred to as "princesses"; so yes, this show literally revolves around super-powered princesses. The most powerful type of princess is "The She-Ra", but there hasn't been one of those in over a thousand years.

Decades ago, an alien named Hordak, a disgraced general from an intergalactic military empire, crashed his ship through a dimensional portal, and became stranded on Etheria. Hoping to win back favour with his superiors, he has been building an army with which to conquer the planet, and a machine with which to contact the rest of the empire. Working against him are a loose affiliation of princesses and their followers. Time is also not on Hordak's side, as he is slowly dying from some sort of degenerative illness.

Our story begins when a teenage girl in Hordak's army (Adora) discovers that she can tap into the power of She-Ra. She defects, and joins the other princesses, but her best friend and fellow soldier (Catra) refuses to follow her—thus setting up a bitter rivalry and the basis for much angsty drama.

The first thing you notice about the new version is that it's aimed at an older crowd than the original—I'm guessing around the 10-14 age range. Which is okay, I suppose, given how old Terra is now. On the other hand, she's not particularly mature for her age. I dunno. At any rate, she doesn't seem to be having any trouble handling the subject matter, so it's fine, I guess.

The second thing you notice is that the writing is very heavily influenced by Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The protagonist is a teenage girl, who was chosen by fate to have powers and responsibilities that alienate her from everyone else; she's super strong; she has her own version of the scooby gang, central to which are her two best friends (one male and one female); she has her own version of a watcher, who is tasked with training her; there's a reasonable amount of action, but the driving force of the show is emotional drama, inter-personal conflict, and internal struggle; and most of the dialogue can really only be described as "Whedon-esque" in nature.

Fortunately, most of that stuff is handled pretty well. While this could be said about most of the characters, Adora and Catra in particular, are wonderfully constructed, and the development of their complicated love/hate relationship is beautifully played out. And even though there are more than a few sarcastic teenagers in the show, most of the characters aren't annoying and completely unlikable arseholes … most of them … Adora's talking horse is kind of an unbearable cunt.

Unfortunately, the show also has its weak points. For starters, Adora's talking horse is kind of an unbearable cunt. Some of the fight scenes are crappy and anti-climactic; the rich and complex character development is occasionally undermined, when someone does something really childish, like describing themselves as being on either the side of good or evil; and sometimes the world they're in feels empty and kind of fake. For example, both Hordak's forces and the princess alliance are supposed to be these huge armies, but a lot of the time it feels like each side might have—like—maybe 150 members, tops. In one episode, Adora and her friends journey to a "kingdom" ruled by a princess with plant-related powers, and from what we see, it appears her entire realm is just a commune of about 30 hippies living in a clearing in the woods. Kind of a shame, considering how fun and interesting the characters are … most of the time.

On the other hand, I'm not sure how much of a fault any of this actually is. Even though I find these things disappointing and distracting, the show's target audience (Terra), either hasn't noticed or isn't bothered by them. There is one thing that she thought was beyond the pail though. There's one character who has a dozen brothers and two gay dads, and Terra was adamant that she wanted to know where all of those babies came from if there was no mum involved. At this point, I don't know if the show ever intends to answer that question. Probably not.

Interestingly, I think both of us are more invested in the villains than we are in the heroes. I suspect there's a few reasons for this. First of all, the world of the villains feels more dangerous and exciting. Being a military outfit, Hordak's forces are pretty tough when it comes to disobeying orders, and there's been times in the show when main characters have literally been locked up, awaiting execution (though never actually executed), or sent on suicide missions as a form of punishment (but didn't actually die). On top of that, our main villain (Catra) has a much more dramatic—and I would posit, sympathetic—character arc than our protagonist (Adora). She's been abused and betrayed by her adopted mother, abandoned by her best friend, and the only thing that's ever got her anywhere in life is being dishonest, taking massive risks, and looking out for number one. At this point in the show, she's an emotionally wrecked nihilist, and unfortunately for me, her behaviour sometimes seems a little bit too familiar to be comfortable.

Lastly, the villains are the only group on the show who have a romantic sub-plot … and I'm totally into it. I never would have suspected that at my age, I'd be this invested in watching a relationship blossom between a crippled and dying alien warlord and his chief technologist—an autistic genius (yes, the writers have confirmed that she is intentionally written as autistic)—who also happens to be a princess who defected to the dark side "because they have better tech" … Oh, and she also has magical hair powers … because y'know … she's a princess. Actually, I can't even remember the last time I saw a show which had a romantic sub-plot I was really into. Was there one in Game Of Thrones?

To end this post, I'd like to take a little bit of time to talk about the She-Ra fandom. Since my favourite niece is into it, I thought I might have a poke around the internet and check out the sorts of things she's likely to find online. For the most part, it all seemed pretty normal. There's a wiki that explains every aspect of the show in minute detail. There's YouTube videos reviewing the show and making predictions about what might happen in future episodes. There's chat forums where people post memes and fan-art, talk about shipping, discuss the romance angle, and hotly debate which of the villains should get reformed, and which ones should stay villains to the end. Mostly harmless, mostly kid-friendly fluff.

Having said that, there was apparently some controversy when the show was first announced (of course there was) because fans of the old show felt like She-Ra's character design made her look too masculine. Here's a video from the same woman as before, talking about it:

SheRa - Femininity and the Power of Hair

Finally, I went and looked at some of the fan-made She-Ra music videos on YouTube. I think I've mentioned before that I used to work as a video editor way back in the day, and one of the first communities I got involved with when I first got the internet was the fan-made music video mob. While I still have a soft spot for it, it's been a long while since I've actively gone looking for material. A couple of things that I found interesting:

1) The use of special effects is a lot more common and a lot more sophisticated than it used to be. I'm guessing this is due to consumer video editing software coming with more and better "one click" presets. In the old days, if you wanted a complicated effect, you usually had to build it out of more basic effects, and then hope it didn't crash the application during the rendering stage.

2) Apparently people no longer feel like they have to make a video that last for the entire duration of a song. A lot of the videos I saw were less than 2 minutes long. What I found even more bizarre is that people generally don't even feel the need to fade them out or do anything else at the end of them. Most of them just stop … really fuckin' abruptly.

3) It's still the case that most people don't seem to get the concept of syncing the "flow" of the video to the "flow" of the music, and that both of them are going to have "beats" that need to be matched up if you want the final product to really grab people.

4) YouTube isn't a very productive place to make music videos, since 99.9% of the feedback you're going to get will be about the show you pulled the clips from, rather than constructive criticism regarding your editing.

In any case, here are the two videos I found which I liked the best. Of course, they both concern the romantic sub-plot I fawned over earlier. One is from the perspective of our dark alien overlord, and the other from our adorably unfiltered inventer, so they work well as a complimentary pair.

HIM

HER

I find this second one especially interesting, because of the amount of work that's gone into the audio. Somebody—probably not the person who made the video—but somebody has taken a shitty pop song, stripped out the music and half of the vocals, then they've completely stripped out the vocals from a second shitty pop song (leaving only the music), and then they've remixed those two bits together to make something far superior to the source material. Consider my hat is tipped.

So anyway, in closing, if you're looking for something to watch with a nine-year-old girl, you could probably do a lot worse than the new She-Ra cartoon. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thot report #592

Yes, I'm talking about this again.

The first thing I'd like to mention, is that I recently went down a YouTube rabbit hole, and discovered that there is a whole sub-genre of videos, which are labelled "ASMR", but are actually young women doing pornographic radio-plays, with just a still image from a Japanese cartoon as the video. I find this interesting, because most of the "ASMR" thottery I've seen up until this point has been unquestionably visual-oriented—young girls in low-cut tops giving blowjobs to lollipops, and so forth; but this stuff is entirely auditory. Not only is it something that I didn't know existed, it didn't even occur to me that there'd be a market for it. And yes, I know phone-sex hotlines have been around for decades, but I assumed that the internet, and it's unfathomable abundance of hardcore imagery would have killed that off. Apparently I was wrong.

And now, on to the main topic of the day.

Last Sunday, the family had a little bit of a get-together for the NRL finals. Disappointingly, NSW teams won both of the men's games, but on a positive note, QLD walked all over their opposition, to secure the women's premiership two years running. Oh, and this was despite the fact that half of their team from the previous season was playing for the other side. Have I mentioned before how much of a legend Ali Brigginshaw is? Anyway, it was a much-needed victory for the nibblings, since this year, their home state has bombed out of the AFLW, AFL, NRL, and the netball.

However, the most interesting part of the day was that one of the older nibblings spent the entire time glued to his iPad. Okay, okay, that's neither interesting nor unusual, I hear you; but what was interesting, was that when I asked him what he was doing, he informed me that he was following the game on social media. Now, why you'd choose to read comments from random strangers about something, rather than just watching it for yourself, and talking to the people around you, I don't know, but it did get me curious. I can remember earlier in the year, there was all that hoo-ha about that photo of the female AFL player that attracted a lot of derogatory comments; so I decided to see for myself what crowd-sourced commentary was like when it came to rugby league.

Firstly I'd like to mention that Facebook is horrible, ugly, annoying, and hard to navigate, and if I knew anybody who had a personal or professional website that looked and functioned like a Facebook page, I would immediately advise them to change everything. I also don't know what people are primarily using it for now, since there doesn't seem to be a hell of a lot in the way of interesting conversation going on there. Secondly, I don't understand how people use Twitter. "Following a conversation" doesn't feel at all like following an actual conversation. It feels more like being in a room full of mentally retarded people who are all just spouting out half-coherent thoughts and non-sequiturs. Actually, now that I think about it, it probably feels more like being stoned to the point where you can follow what people are saying for a sentence of two, but you can't string any of it together into anything meaningful.

So, that brought me to Reddit … which basically functions like an old-fashioned forum, or the comments section in a blog … so at least I know how to follow and make sense of it. I ended up reading through the threads on both the men's and women's grand finals. Here's what I found:

1) 99% of the abuse was directed at the refs and the TV commentators, not at the players.

2) Apart from jokes poking fun at how badly the Dragons and Broncos men's teams did this year, I only saw one comment comparing the female and male athletes. This was meant with a half dozen replies along the lines of: "Yes, thank you, everybody here is well aware that male athletes perform at a higher level than female athletes. You are not contributing anything new or original to the conversation. If that is all you want to talk about, please kindly fuck off and let the rest of us enjoy watching the game."

3) When it came to the men's game, there was a lot of old school jokes about NRL players being knuckle-dragging morons. There was one crack about a player being a "big ape", which I guess you could have interpreted as being racist, if you were really trying; but I don't think it was meant to be, given the context. Apart from that, I didn't see anything else which could be construed as racist; which I actually found a little surprising, considering half the players in the league are Pacific Islanders now.

4) This may have been a factor of how much longer the men's thread was than the women's, but it contained a higher percentage of sexually themed comments than I would have expected, and it also contained the most explicit comments. One person described a male player as having "great blowjob lips", and another bloke was giving commentary on which parts of the game he was masturbating to. Which leads me into the next point:

5) A lot of the sexually themed comments, for both the men's and women's games, seemed to be homoerotic in nature. I know that lesbians are massively over-represented in elite sport—and especially in full-contact sports—but I don't know if that's also true for the audiences of said sports. I guess it wouldn't surprise me. How popular footy is amongst gay men, I have no idea.

6) Most of the sexually themed comments in the women's threads were directed at a handful of specific players, and a lot of them made reference to Instagram. So I went and looked at said players Instagram accounts. And here's where we circle back to the topic from earlier.

It never occurred to me, that there'd be internet thots who are also elite athletes. Now, I get that if you're young and beautiful, and you spend a lot of time working out, you'd want to show off your body. But there's posting the odd photo of yourself lifting weights, or flexing, or wearing a tank-top that shows off your rippling abs; and then there's having a social media account where 30% of the content you post is just you bending over in a g-string while looking over your shoulder and making a kissy-face.

Of course, I can remember how shocking and scandalous it was, back in the day, when sporting celebrities would do raunchy photo-shoots; so this isn't entirely new ground. What is new however, is how the internet has changed things. First of all, these girls are running these social media accounts themselves, which basically disarms any argument you might get over exploitation. Secondly, this isn't like a magazine here, or a calendar there. They're putting out a constant stream of content, and intentionally cultivating a devoted audience of literal wankers. The point being, should anyone be shocked, or surprised, or even upset, when said wankers then show up on sports-discussion forums, talking about how great their favourite athlete's arse is?

Then you have the questions of whether this hurts women's sport as a whole; or tarnishes the brand of the NRL; and whether professional athletes have a responsibility to be good role-models; and whether employers should be able to discipline or sack people for things they do or say outside of work - and that's not even taking into account the fact that NRLW isn't even fully professional, and some of these girls may be using this to supplement their income.

Interested to get some opinions on this.

The Tortoise And The Hare My Arse

I've suspected it was happening for a while, but now I'm sure of it. Settling back into my old routine after being away for a couple of months, it's become undeniable. I'm slowing down. Walking slower, moving slower, typing slower, even thinking slower. I'm working the same hours as before, but I'm getting less done. I'm doing the same exercise routine as always, but it's taking me an extra 10 minutes to get through it. Walking to the shops takes longer. Eating a meal takes longer. Hell, even having a shower takes longer than it used to.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means I'm going to have to adjust the giant "to-do" list that governs my entire life, so that the weekly schedule better reflects reality … ironically, THAT means yet another item tacked onto the end of said list. It also means I'm probably going to have to wind back the amount of work I take on—which unfortunately, also means less money coming in.

Fuck. I guess it had to happen eventually. Doesn't make it any easier to take though.

Invasion of the Amazons

I started noticing them before I went away. Every time I went to the shops, I'd see one or two of them. Now they're everywhere. GIANT white people. And I don't mean obese; I don't think I've seen one of them yet that's even remotely over weight. What I mean is that the women are all at least six feet tall and the men are all at least 6'6". There's one girl, who looks about 14, who has to be at least 5'11"; maybe 5'10" when you take into account her masses of frizzy red hair. It's almost surreal, when you see them wading through groups of tiny Asians at the supermarket. It's like looking at a Great Dane playing with a Fox Terrier, and marvelling at the fact that they're the same species.

Who they are and where they came from—and why—is still a mystery. At first, I just thought that a family of freakishly big people had moved into the neighbourhood; but there's too many of them for that to be the case. My first clue came a week or so ago, when I heard one of them speaking for the first time. Definitely an accent, but not enough for me to pick up on what it was. Then I noticed that a few of the men were wearing singlets that were a particular shade of orange. "I know that shade of orange", I thought. It's what the national sporting teams of Holland wear. Okay, so why would a whole bunch of Dutch people be moving into my neighbourhood all of a sudden? So I did a search for Afrikaner flags and symbols, and sure enough, they almost all prominently featured that particular "Dutch Orange" colour.

So, assuming they are Afrikaners, why so many so suddenly? Are they South African refugees? I've talked before about how creepy I find it when I talk about something on the blog and then it manifests itself in real life. I think Squib described the feeling you get when these kinds of things happen as being like experiencing a "glitch" in The Matrix. On the other hand, I suppose I would have actually noticed these people cropping up before I started talking about white-minorities, so maybe it subconsciously pushed me in that direction? Or maybe the fact that I'm talking about it is leading me to jump to conclusions? I mean, I don't know for absolute certain that that's what they are. But what else could they be?

Any thoughts?

The OFFICIALLY LICENSED Game Of Thrones Browser Game

So, I sort of got sucked down a bit of a rabbit-hole while researching fan reactions to the children's cartoon I want to talk about. Hence, that post is not finished.

I thought, however, that I might post some Game Of Thrones related material that I came across in my journey down said rabbit-hole. Even though I don't have any experience with, or knowledge of, modern video games, I still found these hilarious. Hopefully you will too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m08Z-oDdvlY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc70Y3odAvk

Long time, no see

I guess an explanation is in order.

I've just gotten back from several months work on a building project in the top end. Part-way through the trip, I turned off the auto-post feature on the blog, so that I could do a little series on my armchair-exploration into white-identitarianism. Unfortunately, I severely misjudged how much of an opportunity I was going to have to post manually, and so, the blog has ended up virtually dormant for the past six weeks or so.

The best laid plans, eh? Sorry about that, folks.

Anyway, here's what's going on:

1. I am re-enabling the auto-post function, and returning to posting on Wednesdays.

2. There are still two more posts to come on white-identitarianism—one on Europe, and the other on anti-semitism—but they are being pushed back a bit so that I can talk about the more important topic of children's cartoons.

3. I have just spent a weekend with my parents, at my brother's house, where I caught up on several cartoons with the nibblings—but more importantly—I also made sure that everybody's Apple device was up to date. While I still use Android myself, my entire family has now made the switch, and I am left with little option but to concede that the cursed fruit is indeed easier for non-techies to get a handle on. Putting that aside, there's been an incredibly serious flaw discovered in older versions of iOS, which allows a device to be taken over, simply by visiting an infected website. If you own an Apple product, or know somebody who does, please make certain the operating system has been upgraded to the latest release.

Since my internet access was so severely limited while I was away, I ended up spending a good deal of my spare time with workmates, either watching free-to-air telly, or other videos that somebody had pirated onto an external hard-drive. I would now like to make the following observations:

1. If it wasn't for Steve Smith, the Australian cricket team would be fucked.

2. Women's rugby league kicks off this weekend. If this year's tournament is anything like last year's, it should be an absolute cracker.

3. I am now a huge fan of Australian Ninja Warrior, and am considering doing an entire post dedicated to the show. In the meantime, you can stream all three seasons from the channel Nien website.

4. I never want to see another super-hero themed movie or television series for the rest of my life.

5. If you feel similarly to myself on that last point, might I suggest you check out the Amazon series "The Boys". It's a super-hero themed show based on a comic book, which was written by an Irish comic-book writer who is famous for his hatred of super-heroes.

   The show is only loosely based on the comic, which is fine, since the story in the comic was never as interesting as the concept. And while the show also has its problems, it absolutely nails said concept.

   Basically, one in a million people are born with super-powers, and most of them end up getting recruited by the gigantic multi-national "Vought Corporation", which goes about turning them into super-heroes. As far as the public is concerned, the "supes" are out there, fighting crime, and keeping the streets safe at night. In reality, they're professional celebrities and reality TV stars, with multi-billion dollar merchandising lines, who are largely motived by sex, drugs, money, and fame, and have never stopped a crime in their lives.

   Of course, managing super-powered people is inherently dangerous. What do you do if Super-Man murders somebody? What if you find out that The Flash is running a paedophile ring? That's where "The Boys" come in.

   The clever bit is that to start off, you mainly see the super-heroes as the bad guys, but as things progress, that focus shifts onto the faceless suits pulling the strings. Eventually, however, it becomes clear that the supes and the bureaucrats are all replaceable cogs, and what is truly evil, is the corporate machine itself.

   I highly recommend giving it a watch.

A Look At White Identitarianism (Part 1): A Slightly Late Wednesday Waffle

When Trump became the Republican nominee, I talked about how he and Bernie Sanders were the only two mainstream politicians who were realistically addressing the economic situation facing working-class Americans, and that if I was a working-class American, I could easily see myself voting for Trump over Clinton.

When Trump became president, I was horrified by how determined the left-wing media were to ignore this reality, and instead became fixated on calling everyone who didn't vote for Hillary a racist, sexist, anti-gay, Islamophobe. Mercifully, they did eventually let this go, and instead became swept up in an unsubstantiated fantasy about a grand Russian conspiracy. Mercifully, this too, seems to have almost perished.

After the election, I pointed out that the Trump problem wasn't the sort of thing that could be solved through sanctimonious finger-wagging, and that if lefties couldn't bring themselves to listen to the legitimate grievances coming from Trump's voter-base, it was in fact, a problem that was only going to get worse.

For a while now, I've been a strong believer in the notion of trying to see the world through the eyes of people you disagree with. I think it might have started in 2001, when I couldn't bring myself to blindly swallow the prevailing narrative that "Muslims attack us because they resent our freedom". Oh, and if you're keen on bullshit narratives, you might be interested to know that the role of investment-banks and ratings-agencies has almost been entirely erased from the collapse of the Greek economy. Listen to any financial expert now, and the story you'll get is basically "Greece went tits-up because Wogs are lazy and don't pay tax".

Anyway, after Christchurch, I decided I was going to have a serious look into white-identitarianism. So I did. This is what I've found so far.

According to demographic projections, whites are transitioning from being an ethic majority to an ethnic minority in most parts of the world—including a number of European countries. Some of those whites are looking at what's going on in South Africa and concluding that this is not going to be a good thing for them. They may have a point.

"Critical Race Theory" is an academic field that apparently came out of America in the '80s, and is basically an intellectual attempt at explaining why the existence of white people makes the world worse for everybody else. The general idea is that whites have constructed the modern world in a way that benefits themselves at the expense of others. So, even if overt racism were to be completely eliminated, inherent racism is so thoroughly baked into the fabric of society that non-whites will always be perpetually disadvantaged.

It's a theory which can be used to explain any statistical measure where whites do better than non-whites, including academic performance, wealth distribution, and incarceration rates. And yes, in case you're wondering, this is where the notion of white-privilege comes from.

More radical advocates of CRT argue that the mere existence of white people in a society creates an oppressive force. Some hold the position that the only way to overcome this is through racial segregation; others insist that society itself needs to be torn down and rebuilt, free from structural racism. I've heard people go so far as to say that things as basic as the scientific method have to be thrown out and replaced with something less intrinsically white. If you poke around the internet long enough, you can even find people on the furthest extremes, talking about how whiteness is so toxic, and so infects anything it touches, that non-whites will never be free from oppression so long as whites exist anywhere on the planet.

All this probably wouldn't be such a big deal if it was totally fringe stuff that nobody cared about, but CRT seems to have become incredibly popular amongst young people on the far left. The old Marxist outlook, whereby the majority of the world's ills are caused by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few—has been replaced with the idea that there is a deeper issue, whereby society is structured in such a way that money naturally flows towards "whiteness", which is in fact the true root of all evil.

And if you're thinking that a lot of this stuff sounds suspiciously like anti-Jewish propaganda from the 1930s, I probably wouldn't have much of a beef with that assessment. I guess the biggest difference is that—for the time being—whites are still a majority in most Western countries, and still occupy a majority of the positions of power.

And this, I think, is what has allowed the less radical side of CRT to seep into the mainstream. We're now at a point where the majority of people will more-or-less shrug off any disparaging remarks directed towards whites, while the mere utterance of the word "nigger", even when talking about the use of the word "nigger", is seen as utterly scandalous (hence this "N-word" bullshit). One of these things is viewed as an oppressive force punching down on a victim class, whereas the other is seen as a rebellious underdog punching up towards an intrinsic position of power and authority.

Probably the best example that I've talked about on the blog, was when Google published their last "Inclusivity Report". It showed that, amongst their US employees, there was a massive MASSIVE over-representation of Asians, and an under-representation of every other race (including whites), and that over time, there had been a trend towards even more Asians, and even fewer of every other race (including whites); and yet if you looked at the media, all you could find was article after article talking about how Google should "fix" its diversity problem by employing fewer whites and more black and brown people. Here is the Noel Plum video that I linked to at the time, if you want to get into the details of that one. While Noel isn't a white-identitarian, he's not fucking blind either.

So you've got a growing number of white people who are noticing this weird asymmetrical bigotry that's crept into the culture, and they're looking at what's going on in South Africa, and then they're looking at the demographic trajectory of their own countries—and somewhat understandably—they're starting to feel like their backs are up against the wall, and the future might not be looking all that bright for their children.

For their part, a lot of white-identitarians have adopted a counter-theory to CRT, known as "Race Realism". Proponents of RR argue that human beings are instinctively tribal animals and that race is one of the factors that we instinctively form those tribal allegiances around; so, most of them would concede that there is some degree of latent racism inherent within society. However, they also believe that for the past sixty years, whites have struggled to overcome their innate biases, and have built the most egalitarian and meritocratic societies ever to have existed … and here's where things get interesting …

These meritocratic societies are competitive by nature, with the biggest advantages going towards people with the highest levels of intelligence. Advocates of RR claim that while there is massive overlap between the intelligence levels of the races, there is also a measurable difference between the averages. This results in a natural distribution where Asians and ethnic Jews have become dramatically over-represented in the top echelons of society, while black and brown people are still dramatically over-represented at the bottom (with white people sitting somewhere in the middle). What I find interesting about RR is that it explains why some ethic minorities have succeeded spectacularly while others have not; a point that I have never seen CRT address satisfactorily.

Hard-line proponents of RR will then go on to argue that because race is something that people naturally form tribal bonds around, this stratified society inevitably becomes a breeding ground for tension. Racial groups will naturally envy those that dominate a higher strata and show contempt towards those of a lower strata. And because nobody wants to admit that they're tribe is intellectually inferior to another, the existence of the strata themselves gets blamed on prejudice, nepotism, injustice, and all manner of other things. So, just like the really hard-line CRT acolytes, radical proponents of RR also advocate for racial segregation, preferably with each race having their own separate country. This is why you will sometimes hear the term "ethno-nationalist" used interchangeably with "white-identitarian".

Or, at least, that's the case with white-identitarians in the former British colonies (Australia, New Zealand, Canada, US). The white-identity movement in Europe is a slightly different, and in my opinion, a far more interesting kettle of fish. I was going to cover it in this post, but I've already gone on for quite a while, and I'm already more than a day late in posting (this was meant to go up Wednesday). … So, to be continued, I suppose …

I don't care what you do, so long as you're not hurting anybody else.

Written Today.

What's that old saying about people getting less liberal as they get older? You know, I think I'm actually starting to notice it with myself.

See, when I was young, I was convinced that I was clever enough to work out any problem that came my may, so why would I ever need somebody else to tell me what I should and shouldn't do. Growing up has been a process of realising just how little I know about anything; and looking back on my life, I can see how lucky I am that stupid over-confident younger me didn't fuck things up irreparably. I can also see how much I've benefited from having older, wiser, more experience, and non-fucked-up people around to help keep me from going off the rails completely. Without proper guidance, the right opportunities, and a fair amount of luck, I could have easily ended up as an unemployed, obese, alcoholic, single-mother with six kids to seven different fathers—just like half the girls I was mates with at school.

To be clear, when I talk about liberalism, I'm talking about the broad philosophical notion that we should never ask the questions "what are the outcomes likely to be?" or "how does this affect society as a whole?" The purpose of society should be to protect the rights of the individual, and the individual should have the right to do anything they want—regardless of how stupid, naive, or irresponsible said individual is—so long as they don't cause directly physical harm to another person or their property. Right, so what does liberalism tell us we should do with my old school mates who are now unemployed, obese, alcoholic, single-mothers with six kids to seven different fathers? Well, on the far left end of the spectrum, we have the more socialists liberals, who think we should just throw taxpayer money at these people until they get themselves sorted out; and on the far right, we have the American-style libertarians, who reckon it's better to give them nothing, and then bung them in prison when they inevitably turn to crime.

I have reached a point in my life, where I no longer find either of these answers—nor anything in between—particularly satisfying. Instead, I'm looking at the underlying philosophical principle, and wondering if it's all it's cracked up to be.

A while ago (can't remember if it was months or years now) this music video, put out by NITV to encourage indigenous children to stop sniffing petrol, went viral across certain corners of the internet. Basically, people from other parts of the world were laughing at the fact that there were communities that were so fucked up and dysfunctional that they would even need something like this. Once you get over your knee-jerk feelings of anger and disgust, give that point some serious consideration, and see how sad it makes you. I can't listen to that song now without shedding a tear or two.

On my current inland journey, I've been through a couple of outback Queensland's newly minted "meth towns". The locals tell me that when they were growing up out here, nobody locked their doors—in fact, a lot of houses didn't even have locks on the doors. Now, people are afraid to go away on holidays, because as soon as the neighbourhood junkies realise a home has been left unattended, they break in and ransack the place. I mentioned in a previous post, that one of my cousins is looking into importing a mail-order bride from Eastern Europe, because he can't find a single woman in his home town who doesn't have needle marks in her arms.

According to liberal principles, there should be no prohibitions on recreational drugs. In fact, truly liberal-minded people will go as far as telling you they should be advertised and sold openly, just like alcohol. In fact, we shouldn't even have any negative social stigma attached to using them. After all, who are you to judge someone else for what they put into their own body? Huh? What business is it of yours, ya nosy judgemental cunt? … Well, let's talk about that, shall we. Maybe if the number of junkies living in your area is significantly less than 1%, you can manage the issue through either welfare or incarceration. What happens when that number gets to be over 10%? 20%? 30%? The problem with liberalism is that it's a philosophy that tells you no matter how much of a filthy, crime-ridden shit-hole your community becomes, you must always stick to cleaning up the mess, and never ever look at tackling the root cause of the problem; because then you're getting onto the slippery slope that leads to a repressive authoritarian nanny-state.

Well, maybe sometimes the nanny state needs to strap on a pair of jackboots, and give things a fuckin' good kick up the arse.

And before anyone points out that the main reason we have so many junkies is because there's a lack of jobs, I'd just like to point out that the main reason we have a lack of jobs is because ECONOMIC liberalism provided us with the philosophical rationale for moving so many of them to the fuckin' third world.

Now, moving on to the obesity crisis. According to right-wing liberals, we can't put any kind of limits on food or food advertising, and left-wing liberals tell us that all body types are beautiful, and we mustn't stigmatise being overweight. Meanwhile, I'm going to family barbecues where P.E. teachers are telling me it's now common to see ten-year-olds with type two diabetes who are so fuckin' fat that they can't even WALK a hundred metres without getting out of breath. It's one thing to say that this should all be a matter of personal responsibility, but if enough people aren't being responsible, this is the sort of thing that's eventually going to collapse the health-care system. And unlike the liberal fuck-heads on the far right, I actually want to keep public health care in this country.

Which brings me to the story that nudged me over the edge and into writing this post. About a week ago, the podcasts I follow were full of the news that the internet's most infamous thot—Belle Delphine—an English teenager, who makes a quarter of a million pounds a year filming herself playing video games in her undies—had sold, overnight, five hundred bottles of her used bathwater, at $30 US a pop, and that the bottles were now being resold on eBay for several times that amount. As you might expect, most of the coverage was fairly lighthearted in tone, with flabbergasted admirers congratulating the young entrepreneur for turning herself into such a marketable commodity. Ten years ago, I probably would have agreed with them without giving it a second thought. Now all I get from hearing a story like that is the uneasy feeling that maybe there's something not quite right about a culture that can even produce that kind of market … and maybe there's something not quite right about the fact that nobody else even seems to be questioning it.

Actually, it reminded me of a story I read around four or five years ago, about some bloke on the British board of education (or something similar), who was sacked, after he proposed that guidance councillors should be able to recommend that girls with low grades look at getting into sex work. In his mind, sex work wasn't something to be vilified or stigmatised, so why wouldn't schools push young women in that direction? And really, if you're a liberal-minded sort of person, how can you argue against it? Actually, now that I think about it, that might have been the story that started me down this line of questioning in the first place.

Behold Belle's most iconic image. I can't remember what the proper name for that facial expression is, but the important thing is that it's meant to resemble the way Japanese cartoonists draw women having an orgasm. Not even joking.

Three years ago, I was listening to a fair number of libertarian podcasters. Now I listen to almost none. And it's not that I stopped listening to them, so much as that most of them stopped being libertarians. I'd say about 80% of them gave up their liberal views when either they, or someone they knew, got banned from one of the social media giants for saying something a moderator didn't like. Of course, from a liberal point of view, there should be no limits placed on how big a private company can become, and private companies should always be able to refuse a person service, for any reason they like, or for no reason at all. Hell, even the people running the power company should be able to cut you off if they feel like it.

The other 20% or so, mostly live in parts of Europe where there have been large numbers of refugees resettled. Of course, a good liberal should believe in open borders, allowing for the unfettered free movement of people, goods, and capital. Once again, a fine sounding philosophy, so long as an extreme case doesn't actually manifest itself in reality, and find some way to impact you directly.

I found this video on the YouTube channel of a former liberal from Ireland, who has now turned to white-nationalism. I plan to start writing a post on white-nationalism as soon as I get this one out of the way. The video is of Tucker Carlson, an obnoxious Fox News presenter who is not a white-nationalist. He is, however, a former libertarian, and in the video, he absolutely rips into his former belief system, and shows it up for the unrealistic pile of flaming dog shit that it actually is. If you can overlook the fact that Carlson is a rude prick who doesn't let the other bloke get a word in edgewise, you may be able to appreciate the consistently good points he makes throughout the entirety of this forty minute ramble.

Reading back over what I've written here, I think this post sounds angrier and more combative than it's actually meant to; and look, I don't have any intention of going full-authoritarian when it comes to my views on social policy; but I think I've reached a point where I can no longer put the freedom of the individual over the good of the community as a simple matter of principle. And if someone wants to convince me that I'm wrong about something—which I wholeheartedly invite them to do—it's not going to be enough to point out that something I've said is philosophically illiberal. Tell me why my ideas are going to yield shitty results. Simply put, I think my patience for principles and philosophy has just about run out.

Forever Alone

30th June 2019

You might remember that a while back, I posted a link to a YouTube video by an ugly Swedish fella who'd only had two girlfriends in his life, both of whom were abusive and controlling. This just happened to tie in perfectly with the research I'd been looking at, which suggested that the tiny percentage of people who genuinely aren't bothered by physical appearance, are usually abusive, controlling, psychos. Well, I thought you might like to know that through his YouTube fame, Ugly Swede has managed to find himself a new girlfriend. Let's hope, for his sake, she's different to the others.

Anyway, the reason I found this out is because I was doing some more digging into the incel (involuntarily celibate) community. Do you remember that incel in America who went on a shooting spree, and the one in Canada who drove his van along a crowded footpath? Well, after that second one, it seems a number of prominent incel forums were taken down by their hosting providers, forcing some interesting changes in the community.

Also interesting is the debate over whether or not the Canuck was even an incel. Apparently the whole assertion hinges on a single unverified screenshot of his Facebook page, which Facebook took down within minutes on his arrest. The court case is scheduled for early next year, so I guess we'll find out then if it was the real deal or not. The Yank on the other hand was most definitely an incel, albeit an almost uniquely atypical one. Regardless of how long you spend ghosting their haunts, you'll be hard pressed finding a single delusional narcissists who believes he's god's gift to women, and cannot understand why they don't find him attractive. To the contrary, there seems to be a universal and near dogmatic belief amongst incels that their loneliness is a product of their own genetically predetermined shortcomings in comparison to other men.

Anyway, after the term became toxic, a good number of incels apparently rebranded themselves as "forever alone". I heard one member describe FA communities as being "all of the sadness with only a fraction of the rage". Which brings me to the point of this post. The single saddest thing that I have seen since looking into this subculture, is that there's a subculture within the subculture, of men with no mates. Forget about blokes who are desperate for a bit of feminine affection; what these fellas write their tortured essays about is their dream of one day having a single solitary friend (male or female) that they can sit down and talk to, face to face. These are people who are completely and totally alone, readily acknowledge that their misery is brought about by their own deficiencies, and are also painfully aware that they lack the mental and/or physical tools to make positive changes in their own lives.

I tell you what, if that doesn't make you feel better about the state of your own life, I don't know what will.

North for the Winter

Hey, everybody; sorry I haven't been more responsive, but I'm currently on a trip out bush. Time has been short and internet availability has been spotty. I don't know when I'll be back, but in any event, I have enough posts in reserve to keep things going for the foreseeable future. Feel free to talk about whatever you want in the comments, just don't expect a timely response.

Hope everybody is well. Looking forward to catching up down the track. Take care, 'ay?

Queue Nut Jokes

IT security guru and podcaster Steve Gibson has finally finished SQRL (pronounced "Squirrel"); an identification authentication protocol he's been working on for the last five years or so. It streamlines tried and tested public key encryption technology in such a way that it has the potential to eliminate usernames and passwords, make website login completely effortless, stop online tracking, and put an end to phishing scams. I probably should have put the word "potential" in inverted commas there, since—despite it being such a promising bit of tech—there's absolutely no indication thus far that anybody has any interest in adopting it. Likely it's going to be yet another potentially revolutionary invention that goes straight from the lab, directly into the rubbish bin of history.

*sigh*

The website is here. You can download the demo client for Windows, but at this point in time, the only thing you can use it to log into is the demo server on the same site. There's also a twenty-two page overview, written in plain English, that I highly recommend reading. Of course, if you don't want to read it, let me know, and I'll have a crack at explaining it in the comments.

Sometimes it's nice to just appreciate a thing of functional beauty, and not think about the fact that it'll probably never amount to anything. Y'know what I mean?

Conspiracy Theories

I've mentioned before, that I like to consume commentary from all corners of the political compass. Commies, anarchists, christian conservatives, radical feminists, men's rights activists, white-nationalists, black-nationalists—you name it. On top of that though, every once in a while, I like to take a dive off the absolute deep end, and go exploring the murky depths of conspiracy theories on YouTube.

In the past, I've uncovered hidden gems, such as the concept of "gang stalking". "What's gang stalking", you might ask. Well, you know how really paranoid nut-jobs will sometimes see a person two or three times in the space of a few days, and then assume that person is stalking them? Well, gang stalking is next level paranoid. It's when a nutter sees a bunch of different people, in different places, at different times, and assumes that they're all working together in some sort of mass stalking operation. Sometimes they're government agents, sometimes they're demonic cultists, sometimes they're part of a human-trafficking ring; but whatever the case, when you're dealing with gang stalking, absolutely anyone, and sometimes absolutely everyone, can absolutely be in on it.

There are hundreds of videos on YouTube, made by crazies who believe they're being gang stalked. Many of them consist of a single long shot of a busy street, overlayed with lunatic commentary, like, "See that woman in the green top? She's one of them. You can tell by the red shoes. That's a dead give away. And see when she looks up at this blue sedan driving by? That's her signalling to the driver. He's obviously in on it too". I find the whole thing to be equal parts tragic, hilarious, and terrifying.

And then, sometimes I stumble on to something that I think is going to be totally idiotic, but ends up being completely believable. For example, I recently found a video with two "independent journalists" who were supposed to be discussing the cover-up of satanic human sacrifices in modern day Britain—except, that part of it was basically just click bait. The gist of the conversation was actually about how, despite there being thousands of reported cases of human sacrifices by satanic cults, if you investigate them, they almost always turn out to be tall tales, spun by delusional fantasists or attention seekers. They then went on to bemoan the fact that all of these red-herrings get in the way of investigating real paedophile rings, which can access children through orphanages, foster homes, and detention centres, and then cover up their crimes, by arranging for the victims to suffer a drug overdose, or something similar. They also talked about the cult-like nature of some of these underground groups, where victims "graduate" into abusers, and the abuse they suffered actually helps bind them to the group—since everybody will have shared in a common traumatic experience that nobody on the outside understands—kind of similar to what child soldiers go through, I suppose. I actually found it rather fascinating.

Anyway, I thought I'd end this post with a conspiracy theory of my own. So, you know how there's currently a lot of talk about jobs being lost to automation? Experts are predicting that within 50 years, robots will have replaced most blue-collar workers, and will be making serious inroads into replacing white-collar workers as well. Regardless of whether or not that time-frame seems credible to you, I just want you to picture a world where there is absolutely no job that a human can do that a robot can't do better, faster, and cheaper. At that point, the wealthy elite who control the levers of power will have no further need for human servants, workers, or guards. In fact, the unwashed masses will present little more to them than a potential threat, should there ever be any sort of political uprising. At that point, why wouldn't they order the robots to get rid of us? Everybody's worried about the terminator-style holocaust being initiated by self-aware artificial-intelligence, but do we even need to think that far out?

Toxic Masculinity vs The Suburban Yobbo Sheila

I went to a footy match the other day. Not a professional one. I went to see one of the nephews play. I did not particularly enjoy the experience. You see, they had twelve, thirteen, and fourteen year old boys playing in the same match. Some of them were under five feet tall and looked like primary school children, while others were over six feet tall, with budding facial hair, and physiques like grown men. The smaller boys were routinely steamrolled, trampled underfoot, and carted off injured. It was carnage.

However, one thing that caught my attention was the behaviour of the adult spectators. I expected many of them to be as horrified with the situation as I was, but none of them were. I suppose most of them had seen it all before. Even more interesting, was the general discrepancy between how the men and women carried on over the course of the match.

For their part, the men restricted themselves to shouting words of encouragement. "Go son!", "Kick it to Mikey!", "Move Up!", "That's the way, boys!". Any disparaging remarks they had, were quietly shared amongst themselves via a muttered whisper. "Bloody one-eyed ref", "What's the coach thinking, putting Billy on the wing."

The women on the other hand were not so reserved. Not only were they far more vocal with their disapproval, they were also a hell of a lot nastier with it too. At one point, I saw a young fella, who had been crushed in a tackle, limp over to the sideline, clutching his ribs, and drop down on one knee. A group of six or seven women, standing not more than a couple of meters away, then proceeded to berate him for coming off the field—calling him, amongst other things—a wimp, a wuss, a pansy, an embarrassment, and a girl. I have to say, I can't remember the last time I saw a twelve-year-old boy get completely emasculated by a group of forty-year-old women. After a few minutes of copping this abuse, the young bloke got up, and quietly limped his way down the sideline, presumably in search of a less stressful place to nurse his ribs.

I didn't know the boy, but I couldn't help but imagine how I would feel if he had been my nephew—and it made my heart sink.

If I was being super generous, I could write it off as a form of ultra tough love. That these horrible, loud, obnoxious, cows were doing the boys a favour, by desensitising them to the abuse that they might cop from larger crowds at more important games, at some point down the track. But of course, if that was the case, it begs the question, why was it only the women? Why weren't the men getting involved too?

I don't watch a lot of television these days, but I'm tangentially aware of the ads that the federal government has been running around domestic violence and respect for women. As far as I know, these ads focus almost exclusively on the bad examples fathers sometimes set for their sons. After my day out at the footy, I'm left wondering: (A) if these ads might actually be having some sort of positive effect on the way Aussie dads are behaving, at least when they're out in public; and (B) whether the govt might have missed a trick by excluding mothers from this message.

Any thoughts?

Communication

According to a podcast I was listening to the other day, there's been an industry study into the health of the American telecommunications system. One of its findings is that regular people are abandoning landline phones in droves. Now, that may not sound particularly interesting or surprising in and of itself, but wait until you hear the main reason given by respondents …

Scammers, telemarketers, and various forms of robo-calls.

Apparently, this cloud of pestilence now constitutes more than 50% of all the telephone calls made to US numbers, and people are disconnecting their phones, just to get some peace and quiet. In conjunction, many people now block all calls on their mobile phones from numbers that aren't already in their contacts' list, making the telephone an increasingly unreliable means of reaching someone in The United States.

People are also relying more on email, chat-apps, and social-media sites, to communicate with each other, with businesses, and other non-person entities (such as schools and govt).

On a related note, Facebook is apparently working on massively expanding the services they offer, in an attempt to halt the spread of WeChat outside of Asia. In case you don't know, WeChat is like Chinese Facebook on steroids. On top of all the services Facebook offers, they also offer the complete shopping experience of Amazon … and on top of that, you can also use the app to make phone calls, send text messages, call for a taxi, order food, book tickets, make purchases, pay your bills, book a doctor's appointment, do your banking, and even pay govt fines. For millions of Chinese, WeChat has become the be-all and end-all of the internet, and Facebook are shitting their pants at the prospect of them getting a foothold in the developed world.

In other news, by the time this gets posted, new episodes of Black Mirror should be out.

Another Juicy Plum

This post is mainly for Suze, and it's a continuation of our long-running discussion on gender division in sport. Once again, it's a Noel Plum video; this one covering the history of Caster Semenya's athletic career, and how it has been interwoven with changes in regulations from the relevant sporting bodies. I know you've said you no longer have the patience for long-form content; however, I thought this one was so fuckin' interesting that I implore you to at least attempt to listen to the entire 50mins of it. The audio is all that matters—there's absolutely no need to watch it, unless of course, you like looking at spunky British firies (enough said).

One of the most interesting bits—and something I had no idea about—was just how tricky the definition of cis-gendered can be when discussing these things, and also, how irrelevant it should be when deciding these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsqfoEr4zQM

She sells sea shells

I don't know whether ICC stands for International Cricket Comity or Commission or some other word beginning with C. In any case, with the introduction of the ICC Women's World Cup, the men's competition has had to re-brand from the ICC World Cup to the ICC Men's World Cup.

If you're not being very careful as a commentator, that can easily come out as the "Icy Semen's World Cup"—which makes it sound like the competition is being sponsored by a company that specialises in artificial insemination.

Just something to watch out for if you're tuning in of an evening. Enjoy.

Great Affectations

I don't have a particularly large circle of people I talk to. Basically, there's my family, the people I interact with through work, and youse mob here on the blog. And since the tiny handful of gay men that I know well enough to ask this question to are too masculine to answer it, I'm going to throw it out here and see if anyone can tell me anything.

But first, a little back story …

The other day, I had to discuss a job with a client … or at least try to. From the guy's accent it was clear that he wasn't born in Australia. I'm going to guess he was Greek … or maybe Macedonian? Look, I don't really know, the point is he had a reasonably heavy accent, but not so thick you couldn't deal with it. However, on top of the accent he also had a pronounced Elmer Fudd type speech impediment (I believe the proper term is rhotacism?), where all of his "L" and "R" sounds were coming out as "W". AND on top of that, he also had one of the gayest gay "accents" I've ever heard outside of stage or screen.

After chatting to this bloke for nearly an hour about the pros and cons of responsive web design versus dedicated mobile phone apps, I was relieved to be able to end the conversation. As you may know, if you've ever had to have a serious and prolonged dialogue with somebody working in an overseas call-centre, talking turkey to someone whose speech is that difficult to decipher can be downright draining. As I thought about it though, a couple of questions started going around and around in my head …

First of all, exactly how much of the gay lilt is natural and how much of it is a performance? If it's completely natural, what causes it? Why does it manifest in only a subset of gay men? Why is there no equivalent in gay women? And are there equivalents found in languages other than English? If it's more of a conscious affectation, what's the point of it? Is it predominantly about signalling to other gay men? How many gay men actually find that way of talking attractive? Can it be modulated, or turned off altogether? And if it can, why the fuck would you purposefully choose to layer it ON TOP of a foreign accent AND a fucking speech impediment!?

You know, in spite of all the docos I've seen, and shit I've read about linguistics and sexuality as separate and independent topics, I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about the way they influence each other—and I've certainly never heard anyone explain the phenomenon of gay-speak. I'm not saying that nobody ever has, and given how prevalent it is, I would have to assume that somebody almost certainly has, it's just not something that I've ever come across.

And so, I throw this question open to you, my friends. Has anybody here ever had it explained to them by a gay mate? Have you ever read anything? Seen anything? Can anybody shed any light on this whatsoever?

The Final Game Of Thrones Discussion Thread

NOTE: I intend to keep this post pinned for the duration of the season.

Another ASMR Update

Remember a while back, I mentioned that I caught an ASMR live stream; a naturally funny young lass from Northern England, who was struggling to make enough money to move out of her parents' house, and was discussing with her audience the possibility of increasing her viewership by taking her clothes off on camera. At the time, she said that she was going to start by making some videos wearing low-cut tops. As far as I can tell, she never actually did. However, she has just uploaded a video, in which she plays a socially awkward and religiously oppressed nerd, who is attempting to seduce the viewer—to comedic effect. It's still too early to tell whether this will be a successful tactic for boosting views, but if the responses in the comments section so far are anything to go by, the current audience are on board with things moving further in this direction.

***

I've also discovered an Aussie girl doing ASMR, which, if it isn't a first, is rare enough that I can't remember ever seeing it before. She looks to be in her early twenties, her channel is less than a year old, and she's already jumped feet-first into doing strip-shows. According to SocialBlade—a website that tracks social media engagement—her decision to go semi-nude coincided with her viewership numbers tripling overnight, from 300K/month to 1M/month. And on top of what she's making through YouTube advertising, her Patreon indicates that she's also pulling in at least $2.5K/month from direct donations.

The other interesting thing I found out, is that she appears to be a fairly aggressive feminist. I suppose I can write this off as the naivete of youth, but does anybody want to have a go at explaining to me how you can be vocally opposed to the sexual objectification of women and societal norms pandering to "the male gaze", and also make a living selling pictures of your tits to blokes masturbating in front of their computers? I would be curious to know it there's something I've missed there.

***

Finally, I was watching yet another ASMR live stream the other night. To give you some idea of what this one was like, the girl was a French Canadian with a reasonably thick accent, an unusually high-pitched voice, and was aged—I'm guessing—in about her early to mid twenties. At one point, one of her viewers asked her what kind of men she liked. Her response:

"Errr … I like … tall boys. Yes. I like, ah, very TALL boys."

What I find interesting about this, is that I think any time I've ever heard that question asked, the answer has always been funny boys. "I like a fella with a sense of humour; someone who can make me laugh; etc". Now, I don't know if that response comes from a place of true conviction, cultural conditioning, or just a fear of being seen as shallow; but the point is, I don't think I've ever heard a woman publicly admit that physical characteristics are at the top of the list of things she looks for in a man.

Of course, the reason I find that interesting is because I only recently spent some time looking into this subject and found that, despite what we say we want (or even think we want), physical attractiveness is what we actually go for (true for both men and women). And here's something even more interesting—for women, height was the single most important factor when it came to assessing a man's attractiveness. That is to say, most of us won't go for a bloke who's shorter than we are.

Which got me thinking; as far as I can remember, I've gone for a shorter bloke twice in my life, which I guess puts me, at least a little bit, outside the norm. How about youse mob?

***

Despite the fact that a huge number of ASMRtists are doing everything they can to distance themselves from accusations of professional thottery, or just being viewed as servicing a bizarre sexual fetish; this thing—that I consume primarily as a sleep-aid—continues to provide me with a fascinating window into the development of young women, in a world where technology has created the promise of instant adulation and easy money for anyone willing to get their kit off. Like I said before, I shudder to think what I might've ended up doing if I'd had that kind of temptation waved in my face when I was that age.

***

But since I'd rather end this post on a happy note, here's a link to a video by a young Scottish lassie, who does humorous wee videos taking the piss out of Scottish stereotypes. Enjoy.

Follow Up

A while back, I posted about a pommy YouTuber by the name of Carl Benjamin, who had lost his main source of income, when payment-services provider Patreon kicked him off their platform, after they found out that he had once called a group of far-right racists "white niggers".

Well, it seems that C.BenJamin has had something of an interesting time since then; and as I'd mentioned him before, I thought I'd bring you all up to speed. As a staunch nationalist and Brexiteer, he's been running in the European elections, as a member of UKIP. This has not been going well.

Apparently, a number of years ago, he got into a twitter spat with a Labor MP called Jess Phillips. Phillips complained that she had been inundated with rape and death threats via the platform. BenJamin looked into the matter and concluded this was a lie, since telling someone, "I hope you get raped and murdered", is not technically a threat. In order to test how liberal her definition of the term "threat" was, he tweeted at her the now infamous phrase, "I wouldn't even rape you". A large number of his followers echoed these sentiments, and this torrent of … um, abuse? … ended up becoming a (very) minor news event in Britain.

Well, it seems this (very) minor news event has now come back to haunt C.BenJamin, as his (non)threat has been the only thing anyone has wanted to talk to him about during his campaign. As one commentator put it, BenJamin has basically made himself the face of rape in England. Reporters have heaped scorn upon him, rape victims have come out to shout abuse at him, he's been pelted with fish and had milkshakes tipped over him, fellow UKIP candidates have distanced themselves from him, and the former UKIP leader—Nigel Farage—has labeled him disgusting, and stated that he warned the party not to open its doors to the lunatic fringe.

And amidst all this controversy, UKIP have completely tanked in the polls. I believe results are due to be announced tomorrow, but it seems like C.BenJamin's tilt at politics has not played out exactly as he would have envisioned it.