Yeah, seriously, what the hell?
Oh, crimony, another damn school shooting, because Colorado is the shooting state apparently.
Just a day shy of the anniversary of Sandy Hook.
Uh oh, not again…
“This is why guns should be illegal!”
“This is why we all need guns!”
“This is why young people need to be locked up until they’re 30!”
“This is why public schools must be abolished!”
“This is why we need more services for the mentally ill!”
“This is why we must do away with violent media!”
“JESUS! We all must accept JESUS!”
I’m increasingly believing that advertising executives have no souls. Certainly they have no shame about the mass genocide of brain cells they commit, hoping enough brain cells will die in any given individuals that they’d want to buy whatever they are selling. The makers of Fiat commercials certainly come to mind, but that’s not the topic at the moment, and the stupidity of those speaks for itself anyway.
I have a special loathing for the commercials running these days in which someone or some people want a newer version of their gadget and make this happen by… intentionally destroying or losing their current one. There’s one ad with a bunch of people dropping their phones in blenders or leaving them in microwaves or bathrooms, after finding out about a newer one they’d rather have. In another, a guy wants his employer to give him a new laptop so he intentionally spills coffee on his so they’d have to.
The loathing reaches a new level when I realize that the main words that come to mind about these people is “spoiled brats”. Because there’s certainly the trope about kids and teens wanting some new toy or bike or clothes or something, perhaps losing or destroying the current ones. There was even a Simpsons episode where Bart intentionally destroyed his bike so Homer would buy him a nice new one. Or the stereotypically rich teenage girl who gets a new Ferrari for her birthday but screams and cries because it’s blue instead of red. When it’s young people, such behavior is (rightly) seen as distasteful. But when it’s adults, apparently something we’re supposed to identify with?
Seriously, fuck ageism, because I want to call these people spoiled brats but that term is very ageist, but I can’t think of another term that means the same basic thing without implying anything about age. Grrr. :doitnow:
Some nearby pizza place decided they didn’t want to serve me the other day. Only they didn’t know they said this. I hadn’t even walked in the door yet.
They had one of them “we don’t serve teens” stickers on the window, announcing that the drinking age is 21, this is law, and that they follow it. Which worries me, because since the drinking age is an actual law, one would presume already that they follow it. So since I didn’t see any other stickers, I’m guessing that’s the only law they care to enforce. Maybe I should have robbed the place, since they’re indicating they wouldn’t be too bothered, just so long as I’m not drinking their alcohol ten years in the past.
So, yeah, despite not having been a teen for quite a while, I took this to mean they didn’t want to serve me, because when I can help it I don’t visit ageist businesses. I expect businesses to enforce the drinking age as it is an actual law, but rubbing it in people’s faces, without having a sticker saying they don’t tolerate aggravated assault on their premises, implies this particular law is super important to them. Well, youth rights is super important to ME, so I turned right around and returned to my car.
And found another pizza place across the street. They’re rather plentiful. Mmmm… pizza.
I hereby decree…
Screw the Prime Directive.
Been watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation lately. I like it, but one thing that just keeps pissing me off is the Prime Directive, that Starfleet may not interfere with another planet’s way of life, must not reveal themselves before that planet is “ready”, even when a situation is life-threatening to one individual or to the whole damn society.
Yeah, seriously, even where the whole planet is in danger. In one episode, Worf’s human brother saved a society whose planet was about to be destroyed by stashing them in the holodeck until they could get them to another planet, all without them knowing what’s actually happening because they don’t know about space yet and can’t know because Prime Directive. And the Enterprise crew was all pissed at Worf’s brother because of this, that he didn’t just let them all die, because Prime Directive.
Then there’s when Deanna Troi’s usually-nonsensical mother Lwaxana is the only one making any damn sense when a man she meets is about to turn 60 and thus according to his planet’s culture, he was celebrate his life and then kill himself because they’re all like “eww, old people!” And Lwaxana is the only one who rightly calls this shit out for being despicable, while her daughter and everyone else is all like “it’s their culture, it’s not our place, I’m sure our traditions look just as weird, PRIME DIRECTIVE!”
I’m thinking of the popular image of Picard facepalming, except he’s on the receiving end of this one.
Cultural relativism is one thing. Yeah, people have their different celebrations and symbols and whatnot, and that’s where such open-mindedness makes sense. But then there’s moral relativism, as if this tolerance must carry over even to things that are actually heinous and wrong, and that is not okay. If the best its adherents can come up with is “you’re not one of us, this is our culture, don’t criticize our beliefs!” Go to hell. Your beliefs are stupid and are maiming and/or killing people.
And even beyond that, the Prime Directive forbids interacting too much with planets that haven’t ventured into space yet. There are episodes where the people on such a planet find out about the Enterprise and that there’s life beyond their planet, and their society is then somehow damaged over it, whether their top scientists want to leave and explore the galaxy or they just plain go ape shit over it in some way. So, basically, leaving some planet to live under the delusion there’s nothing beyond their society and thus missing out on greater knowledge is the right thing to do? These are questions brought up in such episodes, yet there’s still Picard and others so sure they “ruined” the society by arriving there.
Maybe what is ruined by mere knowledge deserve to be ruined. 
This graphic has been floating around online.
It’s pointing out that most minimum wage earners are not teenagers as per an apparently common assumption, that in fact 88% are 20 or older, plus another large percentage being over 40, how many are parents, etc.
In other words, the main argument for not thinking little of minimum wage earners and that they ought to earn more is… They aren’t teenagers!
Because teenagers don’t deserve decent wages as they are living at home and just using that money to go to the movies or buy video games or get high, an assertion whose chief basis is… they’re teenagers.
🙄
Seriously?
I mean, do people seriously think Every Teenager In The World is living a comfortable suburban white upper-middle-class life and has their every need met by underappreciated parents? I just don’t understand the need to cling to this ridiculous assumption. Or that any teens whose lives aren’t that great are in such a situation because they did something “wrong”, like run away or get pregnant or drop out of school.
Believe it or not, “spending money” is hardly the only reason a teenager might want or need a job. Sometimes their minimum-wage-earning parents (represented in that graphic) just aren’t earning enough to support the family, so the teenager looks to contribute to the family by getting her own job. Maybe their parents have refused to pay for college, or are just incapable of paying, and they need to work to fund it themselves. Maybe they’ve been kicked out of or emancipated from their homes and need to support themselves so they don’t starve.
In fact, it’s a travesty that their earnings would even need to be justified like this. Who cares why they need to earn money? That’s really nobody’s business but theirs. Just like with everyone else.
I hereby decree…
There’s always something going around.
I’ve noticed that literally every single time I have a cold and tell someone about it, I get this same canned response: “Yeah, you and everyone else. Something must be going around.”
When is a cold ever not going around? At any given time, any time of year, a bunch of people have a cold. Not to mention that when I’ve been told this, I couldn’t think of anyone I knew that also had one or had one recently. Maybe I just grabbed the wrong can at the grocery store or played with the wrong gadget at Best Buy or something. But other than that, didn’t seem to be “going around” any more than usual.
You know, I probably shouldn’t talk, as I’m painfully terrible at small talk and surely say thoughtless quips often. And maybe nobody is good at it and yet feels the need to say something, anything, lest they look rude or stupid. Maybe the latter can’t usually be helped.
In March of last year, I wrote about bullying, and mentioned it again just over a month ago. It’s a thing that must be stopped, the victims defended, the perpetrators punished severely, the bystanders prodded to action.
However, there’s a little complication that becomes obvious to anyone who has dealt with people ever. And that is… what if it just isn’t clear which one is the bully and which is the victim?
In many cases, two people are engaging in abusive or harassing behavior toward each other and are both miserable over it. I’ve seen a number of these situations over the past couple of years, and I’ve wanted to defend one against the other, only to see the other is in the same situation. It simply isn’t so clear cut.
And that’s another reason it annoys me that adults take such a simplistic view of bullying among kids and teens. Yes, even among young people, these things can be and often are rather complicated. The bully you’re coming down hard on is probably being harassed by the supposed victim that you’re fawning over. Not to mention that, in encouraging other kids to step in, it’s then up to them to not only muster the courage to insert themselves in a clearly hostile situation that has nothing to do with them but to try to determine just which one is the villain here. They may just be seeing this one altercation and know nothing about a bigger picture. True, if anyone is being outright violent or threatening, yeah, try to diffuse the immediate situation if you can. But the bigger issue may be a lot more complicated, at any age.
Just look at basically any arguing couple to see a perfect example! 😆
Now for an inoffensively offensive edition of…
SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!
I am so sick of people complaining about political correctness. No, I don’t mean the people trying to make things more PC. They’re often annoying, sure. I’m talking about the people who are complaining about them, who whine that the slightest suggestion of better word choice is “help, the PC police are attacking!”
I saw this article in Reason a few weeks ago about the recent push for the Washington Redskins to change their name, and it’s not exactly their best work. Throughout the article it’s PC-this, PC-that, PC brigade, blah blah blah. Compared to most libertarian sources I see or read, Reason is usually the most, well, reasonable, in that they tend to do well arguing the libertarian standpoint on things without outright mocking or denying some of the real social issues going on behind their opponents’ arguments. This article is not an example of this.
The article mentions not only the push for the Redskins name change, but also a nickname for a British team (as in, not actually the team’s name) that is also an anti-Jewish slur. In the case of that one, there are cases of legal restrictions on using the term and people being ejected from games for it. In other words, that one is a pretty clear free speech violation. And yet it is talked about in the same “oh noes teh PC police” way as the push for the Redskins name change. The thing is, almost no one is suggesting anyone be arrested or punished in any way for the Redskins team name. It’s simply a matter of strong suggestion. They are requesting they CHOOSE to change the name. At the end of the day, the people in charge of the team and name still have the final say on that, and the people can do the libertarian thing of voting with their wallets on it. Why is this being framed in the same way as another team having their fans and athletes facing real penalties (assuming the above article wasn’t exaggerating this, which wouldn’t surprise me) for continued use of the name?
Continue reading “The PC-Word”
Just a little while ago, I posted something to I Support Youth Rights, a short tumblr post about some Australian mother who sold her daughter’s One Direction concert tickets as punishment, complete with bragging about it on the sale page. Honestly, I hesitated before sharing, despite the piece explaining why this mother is a pile of shit being a good one. Why? Because asshat parents like these get enough attention as it is.
In fact, the more attention we give them, the more this will happen.
And it happens so so much. That mother who sold her son’s car. That father who shot his daughter’s laptop. I can’t even count how many times now some parent had made their child stand on the side of the road with a sign detailing their transgression, whether lying or bullying or dressing like a tramp or some stupid crap. There was a coach in Utah who suspended the entire football team because some of the players were apparently cyberbullying someone. Setting aside the question of whether cyberbullying is really any of the school’s business (that and the nature of the cyberbullying was never specified), why is the entire team being punished for what only some of the players are doing? No matter. The coach has been applauded for this.
For taking a stand against bullying.
Continue reading “Going Public”
Now for a snarky, judgmental edition of…
SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!
Every once in a while, I see this image floating around online. It’s a photo of some people at a stadium cheering for their team. And the caption? “Imagine if they were this excited over something that actually matters.”
Seriously?
Perhaps one reason it’s so mind-numbing is that you hear this said to or about kids so often. There was a radio ad several years back that began with several children talking excitedly about aliens. After a little bit of this, a woman’s voice then asks “Wouldn’t it be nice if they were this excited about math?”
It takes me a second to even come up with any words of response to either of these hypotheticals other than “Go to hell”. It’s just another version of “why are people interested in things that don’t interest me?”
Actually, it’s more than that. After all, these aren’t being said to the people but about them to others who presumably are to just agree right along that said thing-that-doesn’t-matter merits no attention and such attention should be redirected to other matters. Things the speaker personally decides are important. In other words, “don’t be interested in the things you are interested in; be interested in the things I want you to be interested in!”
The thing about the stadium cheering and the discussion about aliens was that those engaging in it were having fun. I don’t really see how the mere act of having fun with these things means completely eschewing anything more serious. How do you know none of the people in that stadium biting their nails as the kicker makes a game winning field goal attempt is also planning to attend a pro-choice rally next week? Or write their Congressperson about climate change legislation tomorrow? Or are volunteering to assist LGBT youth? Believe it or not, people can be passionate about multiple things!
Not that I particularly care even if the game is the only thing some of them care that much about.
And I hope I don’t need to point out the idiocy of whining about kids having interests outside of schoolwork!
