Entries Tagged 'Disgustipated' ↓

I wish I could forget this huge waste of time. The first fifteen minutes is of this old guy walking around his apartment in the nude pouring and drinking coffee. The rest is various scenes of him doing ridiculous shit like talking to a gigolo who was someone else’s gigolo who was also a gigolo for another gigolo, etc. What a steaming pile of pretentious shit. The only siff film so far that we have walked out of.

Fucking awful.

It is practically unavoidable to read on the intarwebs today without running into posts on the Obama/Clinton primary race. Often these posts rely heavily on opinion polls, sampling, and well thought-out grouping of individuals to gauge their interest over a set time period. These are the tactics and tools of marketers, not servants of the people, and most certainly not of grand leaders.

It’s disturbing how many people have been sucked into the notion of a presidential candidate as a product, packaged brightly for consumption by the largest target market possible. We no longer are Americans, we are Black Americans, White Americans, Female Americans, Male Americans, Poor Americans, Rich Americans, Christian Americans, Jewish Americans. We are market-segments, not individuals. We are consumers of a product, not voters of a leader. The insurgence of marketing into politics, our perfection of its methods, and the dumbing-down of the general populace all work hand-in-hand towards the goal of the annihilation of personal liberty and individual thought. The dumbest 51% will hold all of us in shackles, as the lowest common denominator will rule over us.

In the free market, if a product is put forth people either buy it or don’t. If no one purchases it, the product is a failure. Imagine if our currency were our votes, and if the product that is already being marketed to us could be rejected by our saving our vote for a better product. 25% of the population (half of the voting populace) would no longer be able to buy a shoddy product on behalf of the rest of us who choose not to waste our money. No more could clinching narrow market-segments mean victory or defeat — a candidate would have to appeal to ALL Americans as individuals.

Every so often, in order to justify horrific abuses of power and destruction of civil liberties, the term “moral authority” is thrown around. It is the duty of the United States as a “moral authority” to have gone into Iraq, for instance.

What?

What moral high-ground do we have as a nation when we are invading sovereign nations on false pretenses? Much less any beyond-imagined authority to do so. Crackpot defenses like “moral authority” are used to subjugate, enslave, and persecute people. They are not used to create freedom or extend liberty.

The United States has no business policing the affairs of the world, just as the Vatican has no business policing what is on our televisions. If you find yourself about to speak those two words, “moral authority,” stop yourself and rather than to pretend to believe it, simply admit to yourself that you want to control people by force. You want to force someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do, because you think it is right for them but they shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. Just admit it: you’re a fascist, not a freedom-loving American.

We would all be a lot better off if everyone just minded their own fucking business. We wouldn’t be as comfortable, but we would be significantly more free and that is what really matters.

I was reading this SLOG post, and just had to make note of it here.

Looks like Catholic voters are still an Obama weakness, but there’s some movement in his direction. Seems to me like he could pick up a few more—especially among voters who care about just war theory, the death penalty, and asking for forgiveness when you’ve made a terrible mistake. But I was raised by hippie Catholics, so what do I know.

(If you’re curious: Obama won the small Latino vote in Virginia but lost the smaller Latino vote in Maryland.)

How disgusting. People actively showing interest in the segmentation-for-manipulation of our population in an attempt to figure out which subculture, religious affiliation, or skin color of people to appeal to for votes. The division of America is being planned and discussed in the open by politicians and their ilk who have nothing to stand on or for but turning people against each other. This Talking Points Memo puts it well at one point:

The Obama campaign’s instruction to their volunteers to steer clear of policy questions. How can we truly bring about real political change if the movement the Obama people are building is devoid of ideological content, content merely to mouth gauzy generalities about “coming together” and “yes we can”?

..and from Megan McArdle at The Atlantic:

I’m watching his speech now, and it’s inspiring. But it’s also saddening, because deep down, I don’t believe that Obama is going to change Washington, eliminate lobbying, etc. I wish he wouldn’t tell me things that I can’t possibly believe–and moreover that I can’t really understand anyone believing. He might be the best president; he might even make Washington work a little better, though I kind of doubt it. But he isn’t going to transform American politics in the utopian way his speech implies. No one who has dried out behind the ears could reasonably believe that he has this power. So why is he saying he does?

When you avoid real questions of policy and instead pander to population segments, you are not fulfilling your duty to the people as a whole. When the people themselves expect — and even encourage — that pandering, the system has failed.

A real politician who stands for actual, real, serious change, like our buddy Ron Paul, needs not pander to subgroups in an attempt to buy their votes with fake smiles and pats on the head. Unfortunately, in our broken system that means that he earns only 10% of the vote. Regardless, I would rather vote for someone I know will lose than to throw my vote away on a momentary perception of a lesser evil — or worse try to prove a point by selling my vote to a candidate with darker skin, or different genitalia.

With the latest in the “avoiding the cult” series (I, II) I want to keep you all up-to-date on the MacBook Air.

ArsTechnica has published a review of the SSD version of the MacBook Air. The question they ask is, “is it worth another $1300?” Without even having to read it, you can safely assume “no.”

However, after reading the comparison, complete with benchmarks galore, it is very easy to see just how pointless it is to get an Air. The battery life is weak, it is slow, and doesn’t begin to stack up to a MacBook or MacBook Pro, even though it is between two and three times more expensive than the former, and more expensive than the latter with a SSD.

Near the end of the article, I noticed something funny (not ha-ha-funny):

The $1,300 question is whether the SSD is worth the extra cash. The answer seems to be no. I experienced only moderate gains in battery life and not very noticeable speed differences. The one major benefit of the SSD model is that it doesn’t cause the same types of slowdowns as the HDD model during times of high disk activity, and that’s certainly a huge plus. Speedy read times are great, too, but they are balanced out by pokey write times.

Still, even if it’s more usable, it’s hard to justify the huge price difference for the SSD model. If you’ve got an extra $1,300 to blow and, for some reason, haven’t just bought a second computer with it, perhaps the SSD model is for you. For anyone else looking to buy an Air, the HDD model appears to provide the most bang for the buck.

Um.

How about the fact that the HDD version is not worth $1,800? I imagine that if someone is stupid enough to throw away $1,800 on a “thin” poorly performing version of a MacBook that they would be stupid enough to throw away another $1,300 to get a SSD regardless of any concern for “most bang for the buck.” You heard it here folks: if you want the most bang for your buck, fuck the MacBook Air and just get a vanilla MacBook instead. Get two of them. If you want to throw away $3,100 get three and give two away to people who need them.

The MacBook Air is not marketed to people with common sense, it is marketed to people — no, idiots — who have no idea of the worth or value of a computer. It is marketed to mindless Apple fanbois with a home-made rubber replica of Steve Jobs’s junk in their mouths.

Today I read on tuaw that the rude, unprofessional, immoral jackass David Watanabe was up to his usual behavior by rigging results and hiding affiliate codes within his Inquisitor app. No, I won’t provide a link to his app.

Sure, it is free software. The moral issue is not that he is profiting off of his software, it is that he is rigging search results (while implying that they are direct from Google) with links to sites containing his affiliate link at the top so that he gets maximum kick-backs. It’s a half-step above malware, and Watanabe has a history of similar practices (along with what amounts to theft of registration fees.)

So, do not buy or use any software made by David Watanabe. This includes Inquisitor, Acquisition, or xTorrent (a $20 rip-off of the free, open-source Transmission torrent lib. who pays for torrent clients?)