Still…

Edit (1-19-12): Ah, all better now!

Seriously, though, SOPA and PIPA must die.

12:00am, the 16th: Introductory “yay it’s #16tovote on the 16th!” tweet along with link to Top 10 Reasons to Lower the Voting Age

12:02am: tweets some basic voting age point to get things started

12:10am: trying to think of another voting age tweet, comes up with crap

12:15am: finally just tweets link to recent voting age news article, if one’s available

12:30am: facepalms at Max’s “#16tovote or I’ll chop off your dick and shove it down your throat” tweet

1:00am: manages to tweet some good stuff, perhaps a couple tweets and/or retweets from regulars

1:30am: can’t come up with anything else for night but stays up late with it for some reason

2:00am: finally tweets link to NYRA voting age page or something from the downloads section, to get people through night

2:30am: goes to bed, ready to get up and get to work nice and early to resume

9:00am: swears loudly for having overslept, throws on clothes and leaves house

9:30am: gets to work, posts “good morning!” tweet

10:00am: posts some brilliant points that go ignored since no one’s paying attention this time of day

10:30am: retweets stuff posted from the sciville account night before

11:00am: other than Silver Fang retweeting everything, nothing much else, tweeting whatever voting age crap I come up with

12:00pm: midpoint! tweets NYRA-SEFL’s old voting age ad

12:15pm: can’t come up with anything to tweet after the voting age ad

12:30pm: says screw it and tweets that dumb picture where I wrote a #16tovote tweet in Ocean City beach sand

1:00pm: some jerk trolls #16tovote feed or at-replies us with bullshit, is ignored

2:00pm: tweets Usi’s awesome Supreme Court speech video

2:30pm: tweets something about student rights, perhaps how lower voting age would eliminate school paddling

2:35pm: some asshole pipes up saying school paddling is sometimes needed, is ignored

3:00pm: “Thanks, everyone! Once again, Top 10 Reasons to Lower the Voting Age!” a la SNL announcing second performance of musical guest

3:15pm: Alexander Cohen tweets same six #16tovote tweets he does every month

4:00pm: some more regulars start coming in

5:00pm: think about heading home, yet still tweet some more

5:30pm: get stuck on points about consent of the governed

5:45pm: head home

6:00pm: get inside house and to computer, tweet again NYRA-SEFL’s voting age ad, a la SNL announcing second performance of musical guest

6:30pm: Alex remembers it’s the 16th, over 18 hours into it, and only then (if at all) posts about it on Facebook

7:00pm: posts Alex’s famous Huffington Post article refuting Ann Coulter’s asshattery

8:00pm: thanks people for participation, says it’s been great, maybe posts link to voting age page again

8:45pm: realizes hasn’t tweeted in 45 minutes, tries to come up with something, comes up with crap that somehow winds up widely retweeted

9:00pm: reposts Usi’s Supreme Court speech, a la SNL announcing second performance of musical guest

9:30pm: tweeting slows, tweets sarcastic bullshit from sciville account

9:45pm: someone tweets stupid question about a #16tovote tweet, not bothering to see answer to it was tweeted earlier, is ignored

10:00pm: bugs Galen to finally participate since I see him tweeting other things, he finally does, but inappropriate for retweet from NYRA

10:30pm: Alex finally remembers it’s the 16th despite this having been going on a while and finally shows up and tweets something

10:31pm: facepalms because Alex can never seem to remember that starting a tweet with someone’s username makes it so that tweet can only be seen by those following that person

11:15pm: realizes again I went a long time without tweeting anything, bleh

11:30pm: announces there’s half hour to go, to give it a big finish

11:40pm: bunch of people only just now realize the event’s going and retweet lots of stuff

11:55pm: gives my final remarks, whatever crap I come up with based on whatever got tweeted earlier, cranks out some eloquent sounding closing speech

12:00am, the 17th: it’s over, I breathe sigh of relief, start counting number of participants and recording rest of #16tovote tweets

12:20am: post several tweets thanking participants, then announces the next one will be – you’ll never guess! – the 16th of next month! yay!

Weekend:

12:00am, the 16th: Introductory tweet, calling this run a Saturday Edition or Sunday Edition!

3:00am: decides to finally go to bed despite sparse tweets, intends to get up early next morning to get back to it

11:00am: crap, I overslept! rushes back into it

12:00pm: tweets voting age ad

The rest is about the same.

For youth rights. For NYRA. *brandishes fist*

Anyway, the idea is that there are a lot of tweets on this specific day in support of lowering the voting age, and all tweets must use the hashtag #16tovote. This way, I can watch the search results for the hashtag to see who and what has contributed to the event. Fairly simple. Yet even so, I often find myself having to clarify the same things constantly, to bust some myths that don’t want to be busted. Such as…

Myth: The #16tovote hashtag is for use only on the 16th.

Fact: The #16tovote hashtag is for use whenever, for any tweet about lowering the voting age. The event #16tovote on the 16th of course is special in that it specifically uses the hashtag because of the emphasis on voting age tweeting. Sort of how even though Thanksgiving is about eating turkey, we still eat turkey throughout the rest of the year.

Myth: On #16tovote on the 16th, we’re trying to get #16tovote into the Trending Topics.

Fact: Uhhh, no. Trending topics are not what hashtags are for. First of all, for something to trend, there needs to be like millions of people tweeting about it within a very short span of time. The highest number of participants a 24-hour run of #16tovote on the 16th has had is… 52. In its second run in March. So not only is Trending Topics not at all the goal of this event, it’s not even remotely feasible. The point of the hashtag is to be a, well, tag, to identify a tweet about lowering the voting age with others about that, so they all appear in the search feed.

Myth: If you don’t want to tweet, just get an account anyway and just tweet on the 16th.

Fact: Well, actually, there’s nothing particularly wrong with having an account for use only on the 16th, because if you’re using it to create original #16tovote tweets (as opposed to just retweeting), then that’s more content. Always welcome. Thing is, it tends to lack the other important aspect of #16tovote on the 16th, which is that participation, in tweeting and retweeting your own #16tovote tweets, shows these to your followers, thus spreading the word to them and encouraging them to participate as well. When you ignore your account the rest of the month, chances are you don’t have much in the way of followers, so your retweets don’t really go far. Don’t get me wrong. You’re still participating. But it’s a lot more effective if you’re doing so as an active Twitter user in general, not just looking like you’re an account created only for this one specific monthly hashtag campaign. So, by all means, if you want a Twitter account to participate in the event, do it, but try to also use it on other days, follow some other stuff too based on other interests you have.

Myth: #16tovote on the 16th is only for people who just want to lower the voting age rather than abolish it.

Fact: This one annoys me the most. The hashtag says that you should be able to vote at 16, but it does NOT mean that the voting age should not be even lower than that. Earlier today, I even answered this with this tweet: “When we say #16tovote, we do NOT mean “but not anyone younger!” We mean “let’s at least get this far then go from there”.” So surely that quelled everyone’s concerns… no, it didn’t, we still got shit about it. *facepalm* I mean, we’re not doing this to be dicks, nor is it out of fear (despite popular assumption). It’s because if the voting age is going to drop from where it is at all, the only realistic way it’ll happen is a little at a time. Yes, this will take a while. I mean, very true, many #16tovote tweets use arguments that question the whole idea of a voting age, and I realize the silliness of specifying an age with an argument that decries there being an age, but whatever. We’re all still supposed to be on the same side here, as in people who believe 18 is too high. Solidarity!

Eh, I don’t mean to complain, though. I do appreciate the participation, really! I’m amazed that the event has reached its eleventh run, that even the couple months that were relatively low in participation still happened. Each month, there are new people noticing the campaign and joining in, tweeting and retweeting, thinking about the issue, asking the about the issue, spreading the word to their followers. Gradually, #16tovote on the 16th is doing what it was meant to do, to bring together somewhat likeminded youth rights supporters to speak up about this little issue that so few have ever given a real thought about, an issue far more vital than many realize.

And, on a semi-related note, today is also the anniversary of us winning the $25,000 in that Chase contest!

That’s one infamous thing about me that anyone who knows me even a little bit knows or will find out soon enough. When I first mention it, I get some strange looks and shocked reactions, as if I’d just praised Satan or something. Some wonder if I’m healthy. Some ask if or assume I’m a vegan. A college roommate said “but cheese is a nutrient!” (If that quote hurt your brain a little, that’s nothing. The same girl once told me that I shouldn’t carry such a heavy backpack or I’ll give myself cerebral palsy… yeah.) I’m not really a big fan of dairy products in general. Don’t care for yogurt. Only ever buy milk if it’s to have it with cereal. I like ice cream, of course, but most ice cream has very little milk in it anyway. I was glad to notice on a Cool Whip tub one time that it contains no dairy (or, well, at the time, it does now). I mentioned this to someone and the immediate response was “yeah, I know, that sucks, stick to Redi-Whip instead” or something like that. They just assumed the observation of no dairy was to me a bad thing, but not at all. To be normal, you must want lots and lots of dairy products.

Then I saw yesterday’s Cracked list, 6 Insane Conspiracies Hiding Behind Non-Profit Groups. Go read it. I’ll wait.

See that? Right there in #1. Our society is being intentionally overloaded with cheese.

In 2009, Dairy Management worked with Domino’s Pizza on its now-famous “new menu,” otherwise known as “our pizzas no longer taste so much like ketchup-splattered drywall” campaign. Not surprisingly for a bunch of guys who like dairy farmers, this involved adding a lot of cheese to Domino’s pizzas. Forty percent more cheese. So much cheese, in fact, that you can now go over your recommended daily saturated fat level by eating two slices of some of Domino’s pies.

Ah, thanks for the warning, Cracked. I shall be avoiding the new Domino’s pizza then. I avoid pizzas with too much cheese, of course. Pizza cheese’s only function to me is topping-glue. Over copious amounts of tomato sauce!

It’s the United States Department of Agriculture. Granted, the majority of Dairy Management’s funding now comes from fees imposed on American dairy farmers, but last year the USDA added funding to the tune of $5 million. This is despite the fact that other people in the USDA are also using your tax money to continually promote a diet low in saturated fats.

So why the intense government-sponsored focus on cheese, rather than milk or other cow products? Well, over the years Americans have increasingly come to prefer low-fat milk, and dairy farmers have been left with a huge excess of extracted milk fat that they’ve skimmed off it all. We’re talking millions of pounds here. All this fat, and nothing to do with it. So why not make it into cheese, and then spend a lot of money encouraging Americans to eat it?

Yeah, goodness, how dare people try to lower their fat intake? Just pump that crap into them through other, devious ways.

While, true, Cracked is full of shit on occasion and is certainly ableist, very ageist, sexist, and other nasty traits now and then, I was quite glad to see this! Everyone’s all like “oh, Katrina, you’re so weird, you don’t like cheese!” yet I’m not the one falling for government-sponsored “put this milk fat into your body some way or another!” campaigns.

Okay, true, lots of things I do eat are still under the category of some big business and/or the government wanting people to eat it for their own profit beyond that from merely selling the product in general. But the cheese is one I do avoid. Whatever that’s worth.

December 2, 2009: Inaction of Grace
December 2, 2008: Meet the Snipers
December 2, 2007: For Children
December 2, 2006: I Met Chip

Ignorance does not make you cool.

What a surprise after reading the title. Anyway, on this first of the 2009 December “blogathon” right here on Sure, Why Not?, I want to blast those idiots who are under the impression that being unfamiliar with certain knowledge or technology somehow makes them superior.

It’s yet another issue that adults always blame teens for doing while in reality the adults are way worse about it. The stereotype is that teens don’t want to admit to their friends that they know about history or that they have good grades or what have you. Yeah, right, five minutes on NYRA’s forums will kill that mindset quite nicely.

In the case of adults, it is often in the form of their pride in being luddites. They often say “ooh, I don’t know anything about Facebook, hahaha” as if it’s amusing and at least they’re not among the inferior beings that do have the extra knowledge of what Facebook is. Replace Facebook with Twitter, YouTube, or any other similar site, and the responses are the same. Because, despite the fact that all of these sites are being used more and more by older crowds, those older crowds usually avoid admitting it, or passing it off as being necessary for work or in order to appeal to younger people for a business or something lame. You know, because, gasp!, how could a mature adult use a tool that is supposed to be aimed at young people?! You’re all growed up so you don’t use things those little (read: under 30) people use. Don’t you feel special?

And at times when I inform the proudly ignorant adult of the benefits of social networking, no matter how well I point out the helpfulness of it for whatever issues they’re having or ways they’d like to make things easier, I’m met with denial or indifference. Because Twitter could spit gold out of the monitor and they would still refuse to try to learn it for fear of being uncool in the adult realm.

Of course, this is hardly limited to websites or technology in general. Some of this I’ll rant on separately later (hey, I’ve got 30 more consecutive days to fill here!).

Anyway, first I commented on the ACLU’s Blog of Rights, where they condemned sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Here’s my comment:

It is sick, especially when you consider how very few rights teens have. Everyone is always talking about how they can’t handle responsibility and that they shouldn’t be voting or driving or outside past a certain hour or whatever other unjust stereotype-based regulation, yet for some reason, if one were commit a heinous crime, then everyone suddenly thinks they’re fully developed and accountable and should get the harshest punishment. Can’t have it both ways, folks. Don’t treat them like kids and punish them like adults. As Dr. Mike Males said in on this subject in one of his books, we treat teens as kids when doing so is convenient for adults, and we treat them like adults when doing so is convenient for adults. Adult convenience and privilege should not be the basis for our justice system.

Awesome.

Then just a bit ago, NYRA-SEFL posted on Twitter an article about how Rochester, NY just got their youth curfew law struck down by the court. Score!

And here’s my comment:

For those who think a curfew is to protect young people from being victims of violence, I have a question. Why are you blaming the victim? If a young person is attacked at night, the REAL question should be “why are your streets so unsafe from violence?” not whether someone under a certain age is out past their bedtime! Arrest the CRIMINALS, not the potential victims! The worst thing you can tell a young victim of a violent crime is that it was her own fault because of her “improper” behavior, and that is exactly what curfews do. Glad to see this one gone and I hope Rochester keeps it gone. Hope all other curfews see an end sometime soon and people wise up and realize we have to treat young person with more respect and to come up with REAL, non-discriminatory ways to control crime.

Mmmm, yeah. (Despite them both containing typos I’m rather pissed about.)

Want to be awesome like me? Or at least as close as you, someone who isn’t me, can get to my astronomical levels of awesomeness? Then go leave a comment yourself! Only thing more annoying than a vocal youth rights opponent is a silent youth rights supporter.

And I totally got this in in time for this week’s Youth Blog Tuesday! Which is chock full of more blog entries you should totally comment on. Power to the Youth Rights Blogosphere!

This has been Day 17 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 9.

A lot of his ideas are good. Some of them scare the hell out of me. Some of them I would need to look more into since I’m far from having a set opinion on every or even most political issues. But there is one thing about him that is consistently irritating. That thing, of course, are his die-hard supporters: the Paultards.

The Paultards love their candidate and will fight tooth and nail if you say anything close to a disparaging word about him. In other words, they need to learn how to fucking work. They seem to be far more interested in boasting about how they are smarter than everybody else for supporting the “best” candidate than actually making people want to join them and also support their candidate.

Your candidate and ideology could have the best ideas ever thought of, but no one will want to align with you if you’re nothing but dickholes. You know why most people are Democrats or Republicans? Hint: it has little to do with platforms. It has almost everything to do with what sort of people you feel like you fit in with.

Paultards never seem to grasp this concept. They somehow believe that if you insult people enough and ridicule them that they will decide “hey, you’re right!” You can’t make yourself out to be a radical, but rather make people think they have to change as little as possible. Contrary to the infectious slogan that won the presidency for Barack Obama, people are terrified of change. They just think they want it. See, Obama knew how to work with that, and that’s how he won. He led an all-around feel-good campaign. Was it just empty political bullcrap? Of course it was, but that’s what works. Paultards make themselves out to be elitist headstrong nerds, and that just isn’t appealing to very many people.

You catch more flies with honey, you know. In other words… stop being a dick!

Or, well, most of it. Certainly not all.

I wander over there one day all like “hai, u guise!” in my normal way. “Dude, I heard about this 17-year-old girl who got raped by her uncle. But at least they caught that sick fucktard and he’s rotting in prison taking it up the ass from his inmate.”

The Snipers seem less than amused. “What, just because she’s 17 that makes it rape?”

So I’m like “No, it’s rape because it’s rape.”

And they’re like “Why is it rape just because she’s under 18 and she was with a much older man?”

And I’m like “Uh, it’s not. It’s rape because it’s forceful sex she did not consent to.”

Then they’re like “What, just because she isn’t 18 yet she can’t consent to sex?”

And I say “Are you retarded? Of course she can consent to sex. She just didn’t consent to THIS sex.”

And they come back with “Oh, just because he’s her uncle she can’t have consented to it? What’s so wrong with incest? Only our idiot society thinks it’s wrong.” (Eddy: “w00t! Wincest!”)

So I’m like “I didn’t say anything about incest. I said she did not give her consent to having her body ravaged, thus it is rape.”

Then they’re like “Her body ravaged? Is that what you think sex is, you fucking prude?”

And I’m like “No, that’s what rape is.”

And they’re like “You mean you think all sex is rape?”

And I’m like “No, I think rape is rape.”

So they’re like “So what you’re saying is, because you think sex is harmful and ravaging to the body, you’re pinning your negative views of sex on this couple’s activities?”

Leaving me all like “LOL WUT?”

They add “And what do you mean believing the uncle deserves to be in prison? Why would he deserve that just because he has a sexual relationship with his niece?”

I then say “Because the niece didn’t want it.”

They’re like “What, just because she’s his niece and only 17 you think she didn’t want it?”

And I’m like “No, I think she didn’t want it because she didn’t want it and that’s a good enough reason to not have her body violated.”

And they’re like “There you go again acting like sex is a violation of the body. Sex is good. Maybe you should actually have sex so you wouldn’t condemn this couple like this.”

So I say “And the fact that the girl herself reported the uncle for rape, which she didn’t want, means nothing?”

They say “She’s just been brainwashed by the media thinking she must be a victim.”

I then say “She is a victim. He harmed her. She turned his ass in. Do I need to draw you a diagram?”

Then they come back with “She’s not a victim just because she had sex. That’s just the media making her think she’s a victim because she’s underage.”

I’m like “No, it’s a girl, despite being under 18, still having the ability to know she was being harmed and that it was wrong and that she should turn his stupid ass in rather than hiding it for years thinking it’s all her fault and cutting herself, while he gets to run free.”

And they’re like “No, that’s what happens after he gets caught and she’s forced into counseling where she’s told over and over that she’s a victim and she falls into emotional despair for the rest of her life. You think that’s a good thing?”

I say “So you think her being raped was better than some shitty counseling sessions that, given that she’s 17 rather than a lot younger, she might get through okay?”

They reply with “There you go again. Why do you think all sex is rape?”

Et cetera… et cetera…

Good times.

For four years today anyway.

Now, I was quick to tell this person that he needn’t worry since it was just a random blog entry some place, not even a high-profile blog or anything. If any random blog entry changed the world, goodness! Nonetheless, it got me thinking.

Plenty of webmasters don’t like the idea of youth reading their sites, even if there’s nothing inappropriate there. As I’ve many times pointed out, the presence of “children” offends a lot of people, whether or not they’re consciously aware of it. What scares them even more is with online anonymity, they really have no way of knowing if the person they are interacting with is a lowly 15-year-old or a respectable 35-year-old. No, no, they can’t take away from the experience that age doesn’t matter. They must cling to the artificial importance of years lived and decide the youth are wrong for not being labeled as such and having the audacity to even for a moment pass as adults.

Don’t worry about those insecure losers. If they want to judge someone by their birth year and hold onto that right so hard, they have bigger problems. Keep your dignity and move on, and you’ll find more allies than you imagined.

Like me! Of course I welcome all ages onto this site. You could be 3 or 93. True, for those who are younger, there are some wretched souls who don’t think you should read what I write. I use “foul” language. I speak truths contrary to what the adults in your life what you to know. I shed light on alternative viewpoints and lifestyles. I consider you a respectable human being, no less than your elders. That is perhaps the most dangerous message of all that I convey. That the adults in your life are not always right and, intentionally or not, will often deceive you. Not even I claim to have all the answers. You shouldn’t just obey everything an adult says, but rather give it some of your own thought. Take it with a grain of salt.

Take Wikipedia for example. It has many critics, that you can’t trust an encyclopedia that any loser can just come right in and edit, notwithstanding the obsession of the admins to correct it quickly if obviously ridiculous. There is also the viewpoint that because anyone can edit it, it’s the most truthful source out there. If there’s false information there, you can go in and correct it or at least discuss it with the other users. After all, the writers for Encarta or Britannica can just as easily be wrong about something or be biased, and often they are. Not to mention they don’t update immediately as new things happen, so you have to wait like a year or two for the next edition. But the reader won’t take this into account, believing these sources to be canon, to be completely accurate, and will thus accept every word of it. After all, it was infallible professionals writing this, correct? That there is dangerous thinking. Wikipedia has the rather important edge here in that you already know to take it with a grain of salt, while other sources don’t have such a warning, despite it still being an issue.

That is the issue here. Accept no one word as gospel. Hell, even the New Testament needed four gospels instead of just one! Trouble is, kids are taught the exact opposite. They should listen to just one viewpoint, or at least one set of virtually agreeable viewpoints, and ignore the rest as being wrong or even harmful. Why? Because adults generally see kids as helpless humanoid beings who exist for their own personal gain. They believe they can mold these unsuspecting young people into believing and perpetuating whatever they believe. They believe the kids’ hearts and minds are their own personal property. And we see private and public institutions always clamoring for who gets to have more control over these pristine hearts and minds for their own benefit.

So you believe a “separate internet” for kids somehow protects them? Hardly. It’s in fact an enormous form of exploitation. Which, contrary to what adults believe and what they want kids to believe, exploitation is not the reason kids exist. If you believe it does, go remove your balls and ovaries right now, please.

This has been Day 79 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 8.

Open it in a new window!

Holy crap, I haven’t written an entry in a while! Oh, well, here’s a new one. Be happy.

You know what pisses me off? Sometimes there’s a program on your computer that for some reason or another needs to go to a webpage. Perhaps to download an upgrade. Whatever.

Oh, did I mention you already had your browser open because you were in the middle of reading a page on the Fortress and admiring its awesomeness? Yeah.

So you click the link in the program to bring up a browser window with the page it must visit. But you see no new browser window. You are confused.

And then you realize.

The stupid program made the page open IN THE BROWSER WINDOW YOU ALREADY HAD OPEN!

What the shit?!

What the hell is the purpose of that?! No, don’t open in a new window in a nice unobtrusive way, a way that doesn’t interrupt anything you might already have going. Just move the page you’re already on into the other page.

Go die in a fire.